The societies had regular constitutions. Their presiding officers were
called kings, princes, captains, archdeacons, or rejoiced in similar
high-sounding names. Each chamber had its treasurer, its buffoon, and
its standard-bearer for public processions. Each had its peculiar title
or blazon, as the Lily, the Marigold, or the Violet, with an appropriate
motto. By the year 1493, the associations had become so important, that
Philip the Fair summoned them all to a general assembly at Mechlin. Here
they were organized, and formally incorporated under the general
supervision of an upper or mother-society of Rhetoric, consisting of
fifteen members, and called by the title of "Jesus with the balsam
flower."

The sovereigns were always anxious to conciliate these influential guilds
by becoming members of them in person. Like the players, the
Rhetoricians were the brief abstract and chronicle of the time, and
neither prince nor private person desired their ill report. It had,
indeed, been Philip's intention to convert them into engines for the
arbitrary purposes of his house, but fortunately the publicly organized
societies were not the only chambers. On the contrary, the unchartered
guilds were the moat numerous and influential. They exercised a vast
influence upon the progress of the religious reformation, and the
subsequent revolt of the Netherlands. They ridiculed, with their farces
and their satires, the vices of the clergy. They dramatized tyranny for
public execration. It was also not surprising, that among the leaders of
the wild anabaptists who disgraced the great revolution in church and
state by their hideous antics, should be found many who, like David of
Delft, John of Leyden, and others, had been members of rhetorical
chambers. The genius for mummery and theatrical exhibitions,
transplanted from its sphere, and exerting itself for purposes of fraud
and licentiousness, was as baleful in its effects as it was healthy in