Jean de Werchin

Jean III[a] de Werchin (1374 – 25 October 1415), called the Good (le Bon), was a knight errant and poet from the County of Hainaut in the Holy Roman Empire.

In 1383 his father died and he inherited the baronies of Werchin, Walincourt and Cysoing, as well as the hereditary office of seneschal of Hainaut, which had been in his family since about 1234.

The lord of Werchin only attained his majority in 1390, when he sued to have Jacques de Harcourt in the parlement of Paris removed as his protector.

[2] In June 1402 he proclaimed his intention to take the Way of Saint James and challenged any knight or squire to joust with him before Duke Louis of Orléans as judge.

[2] In 1405 Jean left on his second trip to the Holy Land accompanied by five men, including his chaplain, Nicolle, and his squire, Guillebert de Lannoy, who kept a journal.

[c] When the French appeared to have the upper hand, the king of Sicily called an end to the tournament, but so impressed was he with Jean that he asked for his armour, or at least his bassinet, as a gift.

[2][3] Jean was preparing to return to Prussia in May 1408, when he bade farewell to his friends at the Golden Head (Tête d'Or) inn in Tournai, but he was forced to turn back shortly after to assist William of Ostrevant—now count of Hainaut—against the prince-bishop of Liège.

Jean, leading the men of Hainau, was unseated in his contest by the English leader, John Beaufort, earl of Somerset.

According to the accounts of the king's war treasurer, Jean de Pressy, he was a banneret leading a "chamber" of ten squires within a company of the duke of Burgundy's men at Bourges in 1412.

Then, on 30 March 1414, his receiver for Cysoing remitted 200 écus à la couronne to pay for a knight, three noblemen, two priests, ten valets, a herald of arms, two men to accompany his chest, two pages and a pavilion for Jean's upcoming voyage, the destination of which has not come down.

In 1412 Jean signed an agreement with her first husband's relative, Engelbert d'Enghien,[d] concerning the inheritance of Lecce (called Liches in the French document).

Centuries later, Voltaire regard him in his Essai sur les Moeurs as a ridiculous Don Quixote and Arthur Piaget considered his poetry mediocre.