Great Council of Mechelen

The Great Council of the Netherlands at Mechelen was the highest court in the Burgundian Netherlands from the fifteenth century onward, established in 1473 by Duke Charles the Bold and reestablished permanently in 1504 under Philip the Handsome. It exercised jurisdiction across the Dutch-, French- and German-speaking territories that made up the Seventeen Provinces by the sixteenth century, serving both as a court of first instance for privileged persons and institutions under royal protection and as a court of appeal and cassation for the lower provincial courts, with jurisdiction over privileges, mandates, letters of marque, property confiscation and jurisdictional disputes, though family rights and inheritance stayed under ecclesiastical authority; its power waned after the Eighty Years' War, and it was abolished during the French Revolution in 1794. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/