DAMME

municipality, West Flanders province, northwestern Belgium, on the Brugge-Sluis Canal. Originally on the Zwijn Estuary of the North Sea, it was the North Sea port for Brugge in the 13th and 14th centuries; its maritime law governed the merchants of the Hanseatic League. It declined when the Zwijn silted up and landlocked the port in the 15th century, and it is now an agricultural village on polder (land reclaimed from the sea). Damme was the birthplace (1235) of Jacob van Maerlant, the father of Flemish poetry. The forces of Edward III of England defeated the French fleet in the estuary off Sluis in 1340. Damme's medieval relics include the remains of the Church of Notre Dame (12251485, partly destroyed by fire in 1578) and the town hall (146468). The 13th-century St. John's Hospital and Count Wyt's Mansion (where Charles the Bold of Burgundy married Margaret of York on July 2, 1468) now both house museums. Pop. (1992 est.) 10,706.