History of "Pots Jacqueline" & "Jacquot" Though the English Toby jug may be better known, it owes its basic form to a faience jug that became popular in the Netherlands, Flanders, and the north of France more than 200 years before the first Toby appeared on English shores.  While the official history of these Delft pitchers is lost to time, the legend of their origin lives on.  Their creation is credited to the colorful and romantic Jacqueline de Baviére (b. 1401; d. 1436), the countess of Hainaut, Zeeland, and Holland.  Jacqueline was the only child and heir of William de Baviére, Count of Hainaut, Zeeland, and Holland. As a five-year-old child, she was betrothed to eight-year-old John of Valois, the fourth son of Charles VI, King of France and was married to him nine years later in 1415.  Four months after they were married, Jacqueline found herself married to the heir-apparent to the throne of France when John's elder brother, Louis, died, making her husband, John, the Dauphin of France.  However, any dreams she might have relished of the French throne were destined to be short-lived: John died a scant eighteen months later (April, 1417), ostensibly of an abscess in his neck, though there were rumors galore of poison.  Less than two months after her husband's death, Jacqueline's father died, leaving Jacqueline a fatherless widow and sovereign of three strategic and powerful counties at the tender age of sixteen. Her uncles, John the Pitiless (Duke of Bavaria) and John the Fearless (Duke of Burgundy), wasted no time-no sooner was her father put in the ground, and the two Johns were grappling with each other for control of their young niece, and thereby, her inheritance.  Of the two, John the Pitiless was in a weaker position due to his overwhelming unpopularity with his subjects, and he was deeply indebted to John the Fearless for rescuing him from his rebelling subjects just ten years before.  John the Fearless won the contest for guardianship of Jacqueline.  Against her wishes, he immediately arranged a marriage between Jacqueline and her fifteen-year-old first cousin, John IV, Duke of Brabant (I know, I know...another John!) and they were married in April 1418.  To bring about this marriage, John the Fearless pressured Pope Martin V for a papal dispensation, without which the marriage would have been illegal since Jacqueline and John IV were first cousins.  Jacqueline was less than impressed with her new husband; contemptuous is probably the best description of her opinion: she found him immature, spoiled and weak.  While all this was going on, Jacqueline's troublesome uncle, John the Pitiless, had NOT retired quietly to his corner; he was busy devising new schemes to wrest control of Jacqueline's inheritance.  He allied himself with Sigisbert of Germany against his niece and persuaded Sigisbert to appeal to Pope Martin V to rescind the dispensation for the marriage.  The Pope wasn't about to snub imperial Germany, so he duly rescinded the dispensation, but it was too late-Jacqueline and John IV were already married.  John the Pitiless wasn't finished with his machinations against the young Jacqueline, he immediately began a tour of Jacqueline's counties of Hainaut, Zeeland, and Holland, claiming them for himself and fueling a civil war between factions that supported him and the supporters of Jacqueline.  She held out for a little while, but eventually, John the Pitiless gained the upper hand.  Phillip, the son of Jacqueline's guardian, John the Fearless, brokered a truce in 1419 between Jacqueline and John the Pitiless, giving John the Pitiless control of much of Jacqueline's territories.  When John the Pitiless convinced Jacqueline's ineffectual husband, John of Brabant, to mortgage the counties of Holland, Zeeland, and Friesland, to him for twelve years without Jacqueline's consent, Jacqueline had had enough of her contemptible husband: This was the last straw for Jacqueline; she left her husband and fled to Hainaut and then on to England, seeking refuge in the court of Henry V in late 1420.  In England, Jacqueline declared that her marriage to John IV, Duke of Brabant, had never been legal and she was free to marry...and apparently, she had someone in mind-namely, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, brother to the King.  This development outraged all the Johns involved: both of her uncles, John the Pitiless and John the Fearless, as well as her abandoned husband, John IV of Brabant.  Philip, son of John the Fearless, was deeply chagrined to see a new and quite powerful player on the field in the person of Humphrey of Gloucester.  The last thing any of them wanted to see was the might of England brought into the games they were playing.  After much wrangling back and forth over the legality of the proposed marriage, Jacqueline and Humphrey were married in 1422 without Pope Martin's papal blessing, though the rival Avignon pope, Benedict XIII, was happy to do what Martin would not, and approved the marriage.  The legality arguments continued even after the wedding and Jacqueline and Humphrey decided to let war determine the legality of their marriage.  In late 1424, they led an army across the English channel and reached Hainaut, where Jacqueline and Humphrey were gladly received by the people as Countess and Count of Hainaut.  Phillip of Burgundy had no intention of letting Jacqueline and Humphrey regain control of her territories, and he, with his troops, mounted a contest against the Englishman and Jacqueline.  In the skirmish, Jacqueline fell into Phillip's hands and he imprisoned her in the donjon of his castle at Ghent.  Humphrey gave up his efforts, abandoning Jacqueline to her fate, and returned to England, consoling himself with a new love on his arm, Jacqueline's lady-in-waiting, Eleanor Cobham.  For Jacqueline, perhaps the only bright spot during her imprisonment was learning of the death of her hated nemesis, her uncle, John the Pitiless.  He was poisoned, possibly by, or at the behest of, her ex-husband John IV, Duke of Brabant, and died in January of 1425.  Still, the death of John the Pitiless did not leave Jacqueline any better off: Jacqueline never lacked for enemies or rivals, and his death, while she languished in Phillip's donjon was of little benefit to her.  Soon after the death of John the Pitiless, Jacqueline's erstwhile husband, John IV of Brabant turned over control of Holland and Zeeland to Phillip by mortgaging those two counties to him, just as he had done a few years earlier to John the Pitiless.   During her imprisonment, Jacqueline is said to have amused herself by fashioning pottery pots or jugs in the form of a seated man or woman and tossing them down from her cell to the townspeople below.  (Could this have been some sort of communication between Jacqueline and her numerous supporters?)  Certainly there must have been some sort of communication because in September 1425 two knights arrived at Phillip's castle at Ghent and managed to slip a disguise to Jacqueline.  She escaped the donjon in the guise of a man and made her way to Gouda.  This marked the beginning of a valiant three year effort by Jacqueline to regain control of her lands.  Jacqueline was no demure hot-house flower: as comfortable in full armor as she was in silk robes, she led her own troops into battle, and, against the overwhelming might of Burgundy, fought courageously on the battlefield to preserve the lands which were her heritage.  She scored a fabulous victory against Phillip in October 1425, and her philandering husband, Humphrey, was shamed into sending her aid in January 1426, but Phillip cut down the English forces mercilessly leaving Jacqueline on her own in defending her lands.  About this time, Pope Martin declared the John IV of Brabant was still legally Jacqueline's husband, thus releasing Humphrey of any obligation to assist her further.  With no allies against the fearsome might of Burgundy, and against all reasonable odds, Jacqueline held out as long as she could, but it was a doomed proposition from the start.  In 1428, she was forced to accept a treaty with Phillip in which she was allowed to keep her title, but ceded actual control of the counties of Holland, Zeeland, and Hainaut to Phillip.  Even after this catastrophic blow, she didn't abandon her dream of driving the Burgundians from her lands.  John IV of Brabant had died in 1427, leaving Jacqueline widowed for a second time.  In 1430,  Phillip mortgaged Holland and Zeeland to the Borselen family.  Jacqueline secretly married the most powerful of the Borselen's, Frank von Borselen, in 1432, and together with other deposed nobles, tried to foment a rebellion to overthrow the Burgundians.  Phillip threw her husband into jail and the plot unraveled.  Jacqueline was forced to abdicate her countship in 1433, and Burgundy was firmly established as a reigning power in Europe.  Jacqueline's stormy life came to its end a scant three years later when she succumbed to tuberculosis, but her name and heroics live on to this day in the memories preserved in the charming little human-shaped faience pots and jugs called "Pots Jacquelines" and "Pots Jacquot", and the romantic story of an imprisoned countess tossing them from her donjon cell to her loyal followers six hundred years ago. Back to top of page Back to Brief History of Character Pitchers Back to Library Back to Shantique Gallery Home Bibliography History of the People of the Netherlands; Petrus Johannes Blok, Oscar Albert Bierstadt, Ruth Putnam; G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York & London, 1899 Holland from 1299 to 1581: The History of the Lowlands, http://www.geerts.com/holland/holland-3.htm,L.C. Geerts, May 2007 Jacqueline, Countess of Hainaut, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline,_Countess_of_Hainaut John, Dauphin of France, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John,_Dauphin_of_France_(1398-1417) La céramique: Des exemples de parcours au sein du département "céramique" du Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, 10 Nov 2005, http://netia59a.ac-lille.fr/~siteia/ressources_peda/ecole_culture/docs/html/Ceramique.html, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille Valois Burgundy, Richard Vaughan, Archon Books, 1975