On 3 May 1475, the day of the Bruges Holy Blood procession, Reynoud Willems, dean of the plumbers' guild, came to the place appointed for the gathering of his craft near the Franciscan friary. The deans of six other guilds who were grouped with the plumbers on this day noticed that he was not wearing the required red silk sash around his shoulders over a black livery. Ordered by the town magistrates to make his peace with the other deans and appear correctly attired at the next Corpus Christi day procession, Reynoud defiantly clothed his guild's torch-bearers in outfits of meschante green. The civic authorities evidently did not regard his behaviour as a trifling sartorial faux pas: they had him banished from Flanders for fifty years. But the parlement at Mechelen, before which the case came in 1483, considered the penalty a touch draconian. It ordered the town to restore Reynoud's good name and pay him a substantial sum in compensation. The civic authorities appealed. The town of Bruges, they said, was notable, large and full of people, one of the bonnes villes that the prince held in his pays. In the town were many craft guilds, each with its own dean who was under oath to maintain the welfare and rules of his craft and do everything required of a good and loyal dean.