Texts concerning the Revolt of the Netherlands

[p. 1]

Introduction

Like most historical discussions, that on the Revolt of the Netherlands is complicated, even chaotic, and inconclusive. It remains extremely difficult to assess the impact of such factors as religion, economic depression, nationalism and so forth on the long series of disturbances which we are accustomed to include under the general label of the ‘Revolt of the Netherlands’. Even this term, incidentally, is open to criticism. It would, in the first place, not have appealed at all to sixteenth- or seventeenth-century Netherlanders. Revolt, after all, was an activity which most sixteenth-century people, educated in the discipline of strict loyalty to the natural sovereign and suspicious of systematic attempts to change the existing pattern of society, regarded as impermissible, ungodly and bound to be disastrous. The opposition to Charles V's successor in the government of the Netherlands emphatically denied being rebellious. Moreover, even if we permit ourselves to use the word ‘revolt’ as such, we may doubt whether we are justified in using it in the singular. In fact, it would perhaps be better to revert to the practice of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century historians many of whom, whether pro- or anti-Dutch, whether writing in Latin, Spanish, Dutch or French, entitled the books bearing on this much studied subject: The Wars (or: The Civil Wars) in the Netherlands. This terminology has the additional merit of avoiding the third fallacy inherent in the conventional usage. For not the whole of the Netherlands rose in revolt; some men, some groups, some towns, some areas did, at different times and for different reasons. Some persisted in their opposition; others submitted again to the legal sovereign after a short while. Some were Roman Catholic; others were Protestant. Their motives were as varied as their actions. At no time was it possible to distinguish an openly insurrectionary party that could truly make the claim that it was supported by the majority of the people and in which all the regions constituting the Netherlands were fairly, even if at all, represented.

After age-long discussions about whether the fundamental motives of the Revolt were religious, economic or political, today's sceptical historians tend to give up the search for ‘main causes’. A series of disturbances stretching over various decades cannot, they think, be explained in such a simple way. The opposition of the 1560s was essentially different from that of the 1580s, inspired by other ideals, prompted by

[p. 2]

other resentments. And it is equally vain to distinguish in the Revolt the ‘stages’ which, on the analogy of the French Revolution, we have come to expect in all other revolutions. It may be that in some areas of the Netherlands there was a development away from moderation through extremism and terrorism towards the compromise represented by the final settlement; in other areas there was nothing like it and it would be most arbitrary to take one or another region as typical and the rest as exceptional. The Revolt was a long drawn out process of estrangement not only between the Low Countries and the sovereign residing in Spain, between Protestants and the established Church, between the poor and the bourgeoisie or the bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy, but also between the various areas of the Netherlands. The result was anarchy, disintegration, and civil war. It was to these challenges that small groups of people reacted by setting up orderly governments of their own in some provinces, capable of organising life more satisfactorily in the compass of a reduced territory and with more limited responsibilities. They broke away from Spain as well as from their neighbours, entrenching themselves in an old-fashioned particularism that it would be far-fetched to characterise as the climax and fulfilment of revolutionary endeavour.

The discussion which started in the nineteenth century as to whether the Revolt was modern and revolutionary or conservative in its nature has led us nowhere. The antithesis makes no sense in a sixteenth-century context. Insofar as the events of the 1570s and 1580s praduced a new state out of which the Dutch Republic gradually developed, the disturbances were decidedly revolutionary. But of course it cannot be said that the leaders of the movement consciously set out to build up a new nation. It just happened to emerge out of failures and mistakes, as a pis aller rather than as the realisation of a positive ideal. Conservative and revolutionary elements were inextricably mixed. Misinterpretation of historical precedent, moreover, enabled the opposition to feel perfectly safe in their conservative attitudes, although in the light of modern research it is clear that they were innovating. But this much is certain: the Revolt was not made by theorists; it was not based upon a solid set of political doctrines. If in fact it was at times revolutionary and produced in some areas a form of society and government which might be called modern in comparison with those of other states such as the Southern Netherlands or Spain, this was a result of economic and social forces not controlled, nor even clearly distinguished by the opposition.

The abdication of Charles V in 1555 represented the end of an era. His

[p. 3]

son and successor as sovereign of the Netherlands, Philip II, was not only quite a different personality, educated in Spain instead of in Flanders, more naïve and self-centred than his father, whose constant travelling and endlessly varied responsibilities had prevented him from becoming doctrinaire; his functions and the possibilities open to him were also different. Of course it mattered greatly to the inhabitants of the Low Countries that their sovereign was no longer German emperor, for the imperial dignity had shed lustre on Charles and on his subjects. Moreover, Charles's handling of religious affairs in Germany had given Dutch dissidents room to hope that in their country too some measure of toleration would perhaps be granted. Under Philip II however there was little chance that the non-conformists would be left the means of survival which were then, or were soon to become, available in a major part of Central and Western Europe: in Germany, in France (where from 1562 various edicts were issued defining limited religious freedom), and in England. On the contrary, Philip's counter-reformation zeal was likely to impose upon his northern domains a way of life which would isolate them and divorce their development from that of their neighbours. The Low Countries were to become a bulwark of strict orthodoxy, carefully closed to influences from abroad, with its own hierarchy and its own university.

Of course this Ideal did not originate with Philip II. It was a corollary of what we used to call Burgundian centralising policies, and Charles V had greatly accelerated the growth to autarchy. Philip II merely continued what Charles V had begun. It was Charles who started in the 1520s the persecution of the various heretical sects - Sacramentarians, Anabaptists and, much later, Calvinists - that found broad support in the Netherlands. When in 1558 Philip II lay before the Pope a detailed project containing a complete reorganisation of the episcopacy in the Low Countries - in 1559 the Pope issued the bull in which he ordered the proposal to be carried out - he was presenting a project which had been in the making since 1525 and was acting at the instigation of his father. The new arrangement was designed in such a way as to make the bishops in the Netherlands independent of foreign prelates. Instead of the five bishoprics of the old régime, supervised by a German and a French archbishop, the Pope instituted four bishoprics in the Walloon areas (under the archbishop of Cambrai), six in the Dutch-speaking parts of the Southern Netherlands (under the archbishop of Mechlin) and five in the Northern Netherlands (under the archbishop of Utrecht). From a purely administrative point of view this was an admirable and carefully considered measure which could be expected to enhance the efficiency of the episcopacy.

[p. 4]

Yet it was one of the main factors in the dangerous movement towards anarchy. In August 1559 Philip II left for Spain and gradually became absorbed in the dramatic struggle with the Turks. The government in the Netherlands, though well organised on paper, was in fact very weak. It had little coherence and less money. The newly appointed regent, Margaret of Parma, was somewhat helpless and sought the regular advice of men like Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517-86) or Wigle van Aytta (Viglius, 1507-77), both from far outlying areas, Franche Comté and Friesland, and deeply loyal to the dynasty to which they owed their career as noblesse de robe. This made the high nobility and the clergy of the central areas suspicious; they feared that government instead of being exercised by the three so-called collateral councils established by Charles V - the Privy Council, the Council of Finance and, loftiest of all, the Council of State - was in fact concentrated in the hands of a small number of persons directly dependent on the regent. From the start the fierce debate on the ecclesiastical organisation was partly political. With undisguised distrust many of the towns chosen to become episcopal sees protested against this honour. Antwerp especially was afraid that the activities of a local bishop would make the port inaccessible to German, Lutheran merchants and thus ruin its trade. This reaction typifies the character of the opposition arising against the new, inward-looking, self-centred system. Moreover the decrees impaired all kinds of local interests. In the first place the clergy in the duchy of Brabant felt humiliated by an arrangement which imposed upon them the masterly figure of an archbishop (Granvelle) and deprived some big monasteries - destined to be ruled by the new bishops who would thus find the financial means they were in need of - of their right to elect their own abbots freely. At the same time the nobility, used to exercising various forms of patronage and to obtaining for their younger sons fat ecclesiastical posts or prebends, rightly saw that the Council of Trent's precise regulations about Church appointments and the standard of learning required for high position, regulations which the new, efficient episcopacy would undoubtedly enforce, were bound to make them lose their influence over the Church. In Brabant clergy and nobility, almighty in the provincial States, were united in their reaction to Philip's measures.

Inevitably the Protestants feared the new organisation as it would strengthen the Church but they did not yet themselves play a decisive part in the opposition. However, it was their anxieties, their unrest, their profound distrust of the king's government that the clergy and the nobility exploited in order to emphasise the seriousness of the situation.

[p. 5]

The king was duly impressed. He was moreover involved in his Mediterranean preoccupations to an extent which did not allow him to take firm initiatives in the Netherlands. Without abandoning any of his principles he was cautious enough to withdraw some particularly offensive innovations provisionally (for example, the Antwerp bishopric) and to send away the servant whom he had charged with the execution of his decrees and made primate of the Church of the Netherlands, Cardinal Granvelle. When this much-hated man left the country in March 1564, the opposition, now supported by the regent herself, was apparently the victor.

From the beginning of 1564 to the middle of 1566 those among the nobles who disliked the tendencies of which Granvelle, the royalist and absolutist, seemed the living symbol, themselves controlled the government. After nine years of constant wrangling between the king and various groups of his subjects, years during which the sovereign had, however cautiously, stuck to his own methods, one wing of the opposition was allowed to grasp and exercise power. The leader of this group was William of Orange (1533-84). He was born in Germany, the eldest son of Count William of Nassau-Dillenburg, but was educated at Brussels as one of Charles V's favourites. He owed his great status among the Burgundian noblemen to his title of sovereign prince of the minute principality of Orange in France and to his large domains in the Netherlands, specifically in Brabant. Both came into his possession in 1544 when his cousin René of Chalons died in battle, twenty-six years old and with no legitimate children. It is significant that the count and countess of Nassau who were Lutherans or on the point of becoming Lutherans allowed their eldest son to be turned into a Catholic nobleman loyal to, and dependent on, the emperor, for it indicates that in 1544 and following years some sort of understanding or compromise between the reformers and the Roman Catholic authorities in Germany and the Netherlands did not yet seem altogether impossible. Tense though the situation had become it had not yet run into a complete deadlock.

During the 1550s and the early 1560s William's outlook was a reflection of early-sixteenth-century uncertainties. He was a Catholic but in a rather easy-going, pre-Tridentine manner. He had as yet no fundamental objections to the persecution of heretics but was sceptical about the results and deplored its cruelty. It seemed to him just as unwise to withdraw the anti-Protestant edicts of Charles V as to enforce them. The first would mean religious chaos but the second - if at all possible - national ruin. Politically he was by no means a reactionary. In fact, he could not be. His social group was traditionally dependent on the

[p. 6]

Burgundian dynasty. It was to Charles V and his predecessors that he and his colleagues owed their high positions, their offices, their prestige and their immense pride at being the wealthiest nobles of the wealthiest country in Europe. William of Orange was not the representative of a ‘feudal’ outlook although as a matter of course he used, when obliged to define his attitudes in words, the terminology of the ‘feudal’ Middle Ages and emphasised his duty, as a vassal of the king, to oppose measures which he thought detrimental to the welfare of the king's possessions. But insofar as the dynasty stood for moderate modernisation of the state, a moderate form of centralisation and for order, William of Orange and his adherents loyally and scrupulously supported it.

Although Philip II did not radically alter the policies of Charles V he was a different man with a different background and lived in a rapidly changing climate of opinion. Problems left unsolved for decades, questions left unanswered, attitudes left vague, called for more definite direction. It became clearly impossible to control religious development if the courts were allowed to enforce the edicts only haphazardly and according to their whims. Equally it was impossible to improve finances if the provincial States and the States General were allowed to take advantage of the king's absence and of his being far less popular than his father, and to refuse subsidies. Royal prestige, manifestly on the decline during the 1550s, had to be enhanced. During the late 1550s and the early 1560s Philip II tried to strengthen central government. He failed, perhaps not so much because his rule was really more oppressive than his father's, but because his obvious weakness, his vacillations and his slowness destroyed confidence, leaving the impression that this man was far less able than Charles V to bring prosperity and order.

If the opposition to whom power automatically lapsed after Granvelle's departure held to any principle at all, it was that the uncertainties of the early sixteenth century should be preserved whatever the cost. From the point of view of the king and his followers the cost was of course unjustifiably high. But general opinion about the rule of the nobles has been very unfavourable, too, even among those historians who are in sympathy with the aims of the Revolt and acclaim its achievements. The nobles are criticised for their lack of administrative capacity as well as their failure to grasp the essentials of the situation and to appreciate the merits of radical Protestantism. Their government has been characterised as medieval and reactionary, as frivolous and egoist, as totally and dismally irresponsible. Yet it should be remembered that if they failed, so did such highly praised administrators as Granvelle, whom they drove away, and Alva, by

[p. 7]

whom they were crushed. It should also be realised that their aim was to revert to the system of Charles V and not to that of the long-forgotten, pre-Burgundian era. The weakness of their rule was not caused primarily by their lack of skill or public spirit but by their lack of power. They inherited the weaknesses of Philip's rule for which they had partly to blame themselves: they had too small an army and too little money. Moreover, order in the sixteenth century was based upon a careful system of patronage. Philip had wrecked this system, estranging those men upon whose goodwill the régime rested. Of course, he was not prepared to let the nobles who, he felt, were hostile to him, exploit the means of patronage in his possession with the result that the promises made by the nobles to people whose support they hoped to enlist, could not be carried out. It had been possible for Charles V to keep the situation in balance in spite of, or thanks to, its appalling uncertainties. Now that imperial prestige had vanished and royal prestige was withering away, the uncertainties which the nobles still tended to regard as a stabilising factor turned into complete anarchy.

Just as anarchy made it possible for Calvinism to spread rapidly, so the religious development intensified anarchy. Granvelle's departure was the signal for many militant emigrants to return from their refuges in Germany and England. Though the nobles did not issue toleration edicts (for obviously they could not do this without royal orders) many lawyers and judges and the public in general considered the old placaten to have lost validity and were not prepared to apply them any longer. Persecution was gradually stopped. At the same time Calvinism made its entry into the Netherlands, imported mainly by French ministers who took advantage of the circumstances to enter the French speaking areas in the south, and rapidly drew large audiences, especially in the industrial towns and countryside of Southern Flanders. This abruptly altered the religious situation and added immeasurably to the complexity of the problems. For here was a sect which, quite unlike Lutheranism which was adopted by German princes, was learning the hard way how to oppose princes. Here was a creed probably in principle not more revolutionary than any other sixteenth-century creed but, latecomer as it was, in almost all countries exposed to the systematic hatred of the rulers and thus obliged by dire necessity to develop means of resistance unknown to the ‘heresies’ which had emerged some decades before and could hope to achieve worldly success more easily. What none of the older sects in the Netherlands had aspired to achieve was for the Calvinists an obvious and immediate prerequisite: the organisation of a disciplined and

[p. 8]

militant community. For them this clearly represented their only hope of survival.

The expansion of Calvinism in the Southern Netherlands, particularly in Flanders, took place long before it achieved success in what were later to become its strongholds: Holland, Zeeland and Friesland. Perhaps the social and economic conditions in the more industrialised southern provinces contributed to the rapid spread of the new doctrine among the lower middle classes and the workmen in urban centres like Tournai, Valenciennes and, somewhat later, Antwerp. It is also possible that thanks to the poor relief organised by the reformed congregations a number of destitute people were led to join them but this did not substantially alter their social composition which remained predominantly lower middle and working class. This makes one somewhat sceptical about the hypothesis that in the events leading to the riots of 1566 the Calvinist ‘poor’ should have played the role of a revolutionary vanguard which wished to bring about social reform. In the Northern Netherlands, at any rate, where Calvinism did not firmly establish itself before 1572, this element was not of vital importance. In fact, the Calvinist congregations reflected the normal social composition of urban communities because big merchants and entrepreneurs also often exercised important influence. Although Calvinism in the Netherlands gradually adopted some original characteristics, both its confession and its organisation owed much to the French model with its presbyters, synods and local consistories uniting together into classes and church provinces. Thanks to this system the local congregations maintained a fairly large measure of autonomy. But as the consistories filled vacancies by co-option not by new elections it was not a democratic organisation.

By the end of 1565 the situation got out of control. Philip, who had kept silent for a long time, abruptly declared that he did not accept any of the proposals of the Council of State. He reaffirmed his decision to maintain the inquisition and refused to raise the Council of State above the other councils. When the king's letter (Document 1) was made known in the Netherlands the reaction was intense. It was this time not the office-holding nobility sitting on the Council of State that took the lead but the so-called ‘lower nobility’, some of them of the same families and rank as the councillors but without high offices. The aims of the ‘Compromise’ of the nobles were made clear in a declaration (Document 3) and in an important pamphlet (Document 2) by the French Calvinist François du Jon (Junius). The emphasis was now entirely on religion. Junius advocated religious freedom for the organised Protestant churches and warned

[p. 9]

against attempts to delay this any longer. Experience, he stated, showed that it would come anyhow as no authority is able to stop the process. But continued and in the long run in any case fruitless attacks on organised Protestantism would, he feared, further the spread of all sorts of unorganised, undisciplined, socially and politically disturbing opinions and sects. In this way Junius presented Calvinism as a politically and spiritually safe alternative to Catholicism that it would be wise to tolerate in order to prevent atheism, libertinism and anabaptism from developing further. A short while later William of Orange was to adopt the same attitude (Document 8). In the well-known Request (Document 4) the same problem was considered but without reference to the dangerous sects. The nobles asked for all persecution to be stopped until the States General were convened to study more appropriate means to deal with the question. This was a far from unexpected but still highly important proposal. The nobles who stated in ‘feudal’ fashion that it was their duty as vassals of the king to inform him of what was really happening, suggested at the same time that decisions on religious matters ought to be taken with the consent of the representative States General which Philip II had not called since the unpleasant experiences he had had with them in the late 1550s.

The proposals of the Request were only partly put into effect. The regent agreed to send them to Philip II and to order the inquisitors to proceed ‘discreetly and modestly in their office’ but this was not enough. In his interesting narrative of events in 1566 (Document 5) Wesenbeke emphasises the deep disappointment arising in the Netherlands when it became known that the States General was not to be consulted. Instead the local States and councils of the Walloon provinces - considered to be much less ‘accustomed to freedom’ than the others - were informed of the regent's decisions without being given the opportunity to discuss them. Only after they had been forced to approve did the government bring the matter before the States of Brabant and Flanders. This, the writer suggests, was a totally inadequate manner in which to consult the inhabitants and they were right to protest violently and not to heed government measures. Once again it was clear that broad sections of the population were now convinced that religious policies should be decided upon by the States General and not by the sovereign alone. Philip II objected that all this was unnecessary as he had in no way changed his father's religious legislation (Document 6). He was probably right. However, the debate had moved into new areas. The nobles and the opposition generally argued that because the traditional religious policy had failed - of course they were right in thinking that it had failed - it was the duty of the

[p. 10]

people's representatives to advise the sovereign about new policies. Although they were careful not to state bluntly that the sovereign's religious policy had always been subject to approval by the States General they vaguely hinted that there were ancient privileges and freedoms which seemed to suggest such a possibility and that anyhow the persecutions were bearing heavily on the country for the prosperity of which they were responsible to the inhabitants as well as to the king. In this way the religious problem was associated with the constitutional problem that confronted all sixteenth-century governments; for decades it had been left uncertain whether the sovereign, the ‘parliaments’ or both would eventually profit from the increase in state power which had been developing since the late fifteenth century.

In his letter of 31 July 1566 Philip II made some concessions; although limited - religious freedom was not granted - they still constituted a recognition of defeat. The recognition was half-hearted - on 9 August the king declared before a notary that his concessions were extorted by force - and the practical effect was nil. When the letter arrived in the Netherlands disturbances, radical to an unprecedented degree, were taking place that wrecked both the king's policy and that of the opposition. The ‘Iconoclastic Riots’ started on 10 August 1566 in the industrial areas of South-West Flanders; they spread rapidly through Antwerp northwards to various towns in Holland and reached Friesland and Groningen in the first half of September. Priceless Church treasures - from images, mass vestments, organs to unique manuscripts - were destroyed. When the storm had blown over it was impossible to estimate the losses. The central government was powerless; many local governments, dependent on Brussels, were unable to put up even a semblance of resistance. Perhaps more important still was the indifference of the majority of the population. What seems to characterise the situation in all places where the iconoclastic fury occurred, was the failure of the Roman Catholic clergy to muster effective help. The rapid success of the movement was proof not only of the relative popularity of Calvinism but most of all of the profound anti-clericalism rampant in all sections of society.

It is still impossible to explain the whole phenomenon satisfactorily. Of course economic factors must have contributed to the exasperation in a general way. All over Europe the economy ran into difficulties during the 1560s. However, in the summer of 1566 food prices in the Netherlands were not particularly high and there is no reason to assume that misery was more acute than previously. It was not misery, it was rather the fear of misery or reduced prosperity that made the lower and middle classes

[p. 11]

nervous. After a steep rise in wages in the early 1560s, due to the boom following upon the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559, the economy showed signs of slackening. With grain prices rising and unemployment spreading wages tended to diminish. The middle classes were afraid that the period of rapid and continual expansion that had characterised the early part of the sixteenth century was running out. Economic crisis was felt to be imminent. This may help to explain why the middle classes hardly tried to stop the iconoclastic movement. They felt no loyalty to a Church, a government and a social order so obviously unable to control development and so ignominiously helpless in the face of universal discontent. If anything the riots proved that broad sections of the lower and middle-class population of the Netherlands had become radically estranged from tradition.

It is impossible to generalise about the number of people involved in the act of image-breaking. When taken together the number must of course have been large but except perhaps at the very start in Flanders the disturbances did not take the form of a spontaneous rising of the masses. In some places it is even possible to detect efficiently organised action by fairly small groups of Protestants. However, the suspicion that the whole movement was methodically organised according to a masterplan designed either by the nobles or the Calvinist consistories on a nation-wide scale, has never been substantiated. Furthermore, it is illogical and improbable. Was the actual work of destruction carried out by the Calvinists exclusively? In this matter too it is hard to generalise. What is certain is that in some localities not Calvinist bourgeois but religiously fairly undecided members of the lower classes went to the churches or monasteries and pulled down the images. They did this only rarely for plunder. Of course one must assume that occasionally church property was simply taken away by individuals merely for profit. Essentially, however, the movement was inspired by religious motives which prompted people to destroy, not to steal, valuable pieces. Destruction however was not the ultimate and not the only purpose. After all, churches bared of treasures and images were fit as places of worship for the Calvinists who, in spring and summer perhaps content to gather in the open field, were desperately in need of cover for the coming winter.

The events were perplexing, even for the Calvinists. In 1567 Marnix of St Aldegonde, a young man in his late twenties, a versatile, cosmopolitan humanist converted to Calvinism, who left the Netherlands shortly before Alva's arrival, made an effort to justify them and to reconcile them with Calvinist political doctrine (Document 9). His complicated and revealing

[p. 12]

argumentation shows the frightening difficulty of the task. But one thing is certain: the movement entailed disastrous consequences both for the Calvinists and for the government of William of Orange. It wrecked the system of the status quo which was all the ruling nobles were capable of opposing to Philip's designs. The nobles themselves were aware of this and with few exceptions they joined the regent in hurriedly gathering forces to counter the disorder and social upheaval they feared. In the course of only a few months Margaret succeeded in reinforcing her prestige by carefully and patiently working towards a new understanding with the nobles who, discredited as they were by the events of the summer, she was eager to enlist as supporters of her anti-Protestant policies of law and order. She knew that the nobles had not organised the iconoclastic riots. She found that the majority of those who held government posts were shocked and dismayed by the disorders. She expected that they would be prepared to strengthen her power so as to render similar outbreaks impossible in the future. Document 10 gives a lively picture of the extent of the reaction that set in after the image-breaking.

However, Philip II and his advisers at Madrid interpreted the situation in an altogether different way. In their view the deplorable excesses were obviously planned, and ultimately the political opposition was held responsible for them. As the sovereign's goodwill and his numerous concessions had led to the events of August 1566 it was imperative radically to alter policies. In the autumn of 1566 it was decided to send experienced Spanish troops to the Netherlands where they would be joined by German and Netherlands soldiers; it was intended in this way to gather an army of no less than 60,000 men. The duke of Alva was invited to serve as commander and he agreed to punish mercilessly but justly all political and religious rebels. As usual, however, preparations were slow. In June 1567 Alva and his army left for the Netherlands. On 22 August he arrived at Brussels. Some modern historians tend to regard Philip's policy and Alva's methods of executing it as not only logical and inevitable in view of the circumstances but also legally perfectly correct within the generally accepted standards of that age. This is perhaps true. At any rate, sixteenth-century standards may well have been sufficiently pliable to allow also of the interpretation put upon them by Spanish jurists and soldiers. Yet there are at least three weaknesses in the argument. In the first place, the whole decision to treat the Netherlands in this way was based on a wrong assessment of what had happened. Secondly, large groups (and by no means only Protestant groups) in the Netherlands considered Alva's interpretation of sixteenth-century standards altogether unjusti-

[p. 13]

fied; to them his rule was a long nightmare of illegal despotism. And finally, whatever the theoretical basis of the new policies, the practical results show with all possible clarity that they were misguided. For in fact they utterly failed.

Ferdinand of Toledo, duke of Alva, soon superseded Margaret, who offered her resignation. He ruled the Netherlands arbitrarily. His principles were simple. Catholic orthodoxy and obedience to the natural sovereign constituted for him self-evident necessities, to depart from which amounted to rebellion. A rebellion having taken place, the sovereign who so far had heeded the privileges of his subjects, now disregarded them in his rightful anger. Of course, he was justified in doing so; privileges after all are not contracts between sovereign and people but gifts generously granted that may be withdrawn should the subjects' behaviour make that advisable. As native officials and judges were unlikely not to abide by what they wrongly considered their ancient rights, Spanish specialists were sent to assist Alva. They worked hard and not inefficiently. A new law court (the notorious Conseil des Troubles) was charged with examining all persons involved in the recent disturbances and all heretics. More than two hundred assistants were appointed to assemble material and prepare the lawsuits. At least 12,000 people were summoned; probably thousands were executed or banished; the property of many others was confiscated. But this was no summary jurisdiction. The interminable proceedings of the court which, acting quite fairly within its terms of reference and its prejudices, patiently went through masses of paper and carefully listened to witnesses and informers, added the torture of delay to the cruelty of what many were unable to regard as the law.

It was more difficult for Alva to suspend the traditional checks of consultation and procrastination in the sphere of government and politics than in the administration of law. Some great nobles were arrested and executed; some important towns were forced to have citadels built so as to make it easier for the government to subdue them; old local law was pruned of elements not in accordance with ‘the spirit of the time’ and an attempt was made to bring all these local laws together into a coherent system. The new episcopal hierarchy was at last established. But as long as taxation was impossible without the consent of the provincial States, the government remained vitally dependent on the goodwill of the subjects. Therefore Alva designed a system of permanent taxes which however he did not succeed in getting entirely accepted by the States. The most important new tax - a ten per cent levy on the sale of all goods - from which Alva expected enormous benefits, was so unpopular that the duke

[p. 14]

hesitated to force through its introduction. When in 1571 he did so, it not only produced nothing at all, for nobody paid, but contributed to the outbreak of open revolt. The fact is that Alva's system of government, so superficially simple, logical and ‘modern’, was impracticable and unrealistic because sixteenth-century statesmen did not possess the instruments to impose it. Moreover its implications were considered incompatible with the fundamental needs of the country. The new system isolated the Netherlands, and the effect of the new taxes on trade was greatly feared. It is not surprising that resistance to Alva's regime grew stronger and more effective in proportion as it became more complete and firmly established.

This resistance was essentially different from the opposition to Granvelle during the early 1560s. But it was led by the same man: William of Orange, who fled from the Netherlands to his native Dillenburg in Germany in 1567 and, keeping as closely in touch with the inhabitants of the Netherlands as was possible, tried to increase and organise the fairly widespread but largely latent hostility to Alva. He no longer acted as the greatest noble of the country, or as a man holding responsible posts and as the natural leader of the other noble office-holders. For none of his former colleagues shared his exile. The counts of Egmont and Hoorne who had been his most intimate helpers stayed in the Netherlands. They were immediately arrested and sentenced to death (June 1568), to their complete bewilderment for they had not fully understood the difference between Alva's attitude and that of Margaret. Others, less compromised, collaborated with the duke, although soon with reluctance. It was clear that nearly all the great office-holders were prepared to submit, unwilling to forgo position, wealth and ambitions for the sake of an opposition inevitably becoming more radical.

However, the large body of nobles, not all of them necessarily lower in rank, who held no offices and thus were emotionally as well as practically less closely linked to the government in power, provided William of Orange with many men eager to fight the king's despotic minister. They fled to Germany, to France or to the sea. They formed gangs in the woods. They undertook innumerable raids, robbed churches and monasteries, occasionally cruelly murdering priests and monks, and on the seas they came to be feared as redoubtable privateers (the Sea Beggars). Of course they were not all Calvinists or even Protestants. Neither were they all concerned with high politics or positive ideals. But whatever their motives (and they were doubtless extremely mixed), whatever their social status, whatever the means they used, they all claimed to fight Alva because he

[p. 15]

was a foreigner trampling upon ancient liberties whether social, political or religious. Although obviously constituting only a small minority of some thousands of men in a total population of two millions and by no means representative of the country's attitudes in general, they developed interesting forms of patriotism that went beyond narrow social pride and particularist conservatism. In the many ‘Beggars' Songs’ (Geuzenliederen) rhymed and sung by members of all creeds and classes in praise of resistance (among them the Wilhelmus which was to become the Dutch national hymn), the old, noble, dearly loved fatherland, now deprived of its ancient freedom, was bemoaned and glorified.

The Beggars were not popular. Nor at this time was William of Orange. Various endeavours made by him and his brothers to rouse the population dismally failed; his raids into the Netherlands supported by relatively large but undisciplined mercenary troops were unsuccessful, meeting with practically no response from the people. He was clearly a Protestant now, a sort of Lutheran but surrounded by Calvinist advisers and helpers. Although not yet a Calvinist himself he began to appreciate the vigour and tenacity of a sect that in easier days he had despised. Was he a revolutionary fighting his natural sovereign? He denied this. He did not fight his sovereign but the sovereign's evil adviser, Alva. He had not only the right but the duty to do this because as a loyal vassal of the king he was under an obligation to keep good order in the country for which in his capacity of great nobleman he was responsible and obviously there is nothing more disastrous for a sovereign than to see his dominions being ruined. Thus by fighting Alva, William of Orange did not sever his feudal tie with Philip II. On the contrary it was this feudal connection which justified his taking up arms against Alva whose government was unconstitutional and thus rebellious (Document 11).

Even if this is an acceptable argument it clearly did not serve as a means to justify armed resistance by the inhabitants generally and neither could the Joyeuse Entrée be used in that way. In that famous document of 1356 the duke of Brabant allowed his subjects to suspend obedience to him as long as he did not govern them according to the conditions they had mutually agreed upon. William of Orange referred to this document repeatedly but never to explain why he took up arms. When he left the Netherlands in 1567 he emphasised that he suspended obedience and responsibility - he gave up his offices provisionally - because Alva's system was a departure from traditional rule. But if the Joyeuse Entrée could not be used as propaganda for William of Orange's attempts to win the population of the Netherlands for his policy of armed resistance, what

[p. 16]

arguments were then thought relevant? A characteristic attempt to justify violence is found in Document 12 (1568) in which various contradictory arguments appear. After a hasty reference to the Joyeuse Entrée the author states that there are urban privileges which permit the towns to resist by force not only the servants of the sovereign but also the sovereign himself if he is waging war upon them. But the author then finds that it is the Spanish intruders who are waging war upon the benevolent sovereign and that the inhabitants of the Netherlands are obliged to interfere in this struggle and support him against Alva. This was a promising line of attack. If pushed somewhat further, or rather, if translated into abstract terms, the argument might run thus: the prince is the personification of sovereignty; sovereignty and constitution are not opposites, indeed they are identical. If a man acts contrary to the constitution, as Alva was obviously doing, he undermines the basis of sovereignty and attacks the sovereign. It is then the duty of the loyal subjects - subjects to the sovereign constitution personified by the king - to punish him for this and to prevent him by all possible means from perpetuating his crimes.

Geldorp, the author of the memorandum of 1571 entitled Belgicae liberandae ab Hispanis hypodeixis (Document 13) did not concern himself with such theoretical subtleties. Here Alva appears in the role of the godless tyrant sent by God to punish the people for their sins. But this is past history; tyranny is meant by God to be temporary and short-lived. After allowing the tyrant to perpetrate his misdeeds God helps the repentant people to overthrow him by debilitating his power. The prince of Orange is called by God to serve as deliverer of the Netherlands and all his acts, whether successful or unsuccessful from the limited viewpoint of human observers, may be trusted to be necessary steps towards the ultimate liberation. It is the people's duty to deliver the final blow and the moment has come. Geldorp developed a detailed plan of attack. For strategic and more general reasons he advised concentrating on Holland and with remarkable, almost prophetic lucidity but in desperately pedantic Latin, he foresaw the emergence of a free, independent and prosperous community that would lead the other provinces to throw off the yoke or to decline. Obviously his simplistic belief in God's support, his refusal to worry about constitutional complications, his firm conviction that God had already started wrecking Alva's and probably Spanish rule in general inspired Geldorp with a vivid sense of reality.

In 1572 Alva's régime collapsed, although the general attack on the Netherlands planned by William of Orange and his brothers in collaboration with the French Huguenots could not be carried out after the

[p. 17]

massacre on the eve of St Bartholomew's day at Paris (23-4 August 1572). Already well before that night a number of towns had, to use the expression of the time, gone over to the prince of Orange. The first was Brill in the province of Holland where on 1 April some hundreds of Sea Beggars established themselves, after being forced by Queen Elizabeth to leave the English ports. Soon they captured a number of neighbouring towns, and in the course of the following weeks and months towns in all the northern provinces; some in Flanders and Brabant also received rebel garrisons. North of the big rivers about fifty towns were at some stage involved in the movement. It would be rash to make generalisations about the way in which they decided upon their defection, for obviously there was a great variety of motives and methods, depending on the local situation as well as on the very rapidly and wildly changing circumstances in the country generally. Yet despite many local differences it seems possible to detect a sort of common pattern.

One major factor without which the whole movement would have been altogether impossible is just as manifest as it is difficult to describe with any precision. It is the general disillusionment with Alva's system of government. Not only Protestants, but Catholics also who had welcomed him as a vigorous statesman capable of bringing law and order after the excesses of the iconoclastic riots, were now eager to see him depart. Everywhere the Spanish troops were felt to be an unbearable burden, not merely because they were Spanish but simply because they were troops. The new taxes were thought to prove Alva's utter indifference to the welfare of the country. It was humiliating to see Spanish officials taking the crucial decisions, often overriding ancient customs. In many towns, especially in those where the iconoclastic riots had occurred late and only in a mild form so that Alva had not found it necessary to purge the urban administrations and appoint people dependent on him alone, there was no important group which felt itself really tied to his cause.

However, the urban rulers acted hardly anywhere as the initiators of the revolt. Frequently the stimulus setting the process in motion came from outside the towns, just as in 1566 when the iconoclastic epidemic was carried by enthusiasts from area to area. But apparently Sea Beggar bands appearing before the gates of the various towns commanded sufficient support within them to leave most administrations no choice but to open the gates or risk potentially dangerous disturbances. Although in many cases some force was needed to persuade the magistrates of the seriousness of the situation, their reluctance to fight and their willingness to compromise with the rebels gave the whole development the semblance of

[p. 18]

spontaneous revolt and prevented it from taking the form of outright civil war. This fact was of momentous importance. In this way the local patricians escaped the social revolution which might well have occurred had they shown greater determination to offer resistance to the Sea Beggars and the very mixed groups in the towns - Calvinists, petty bourgeois, fishermen, workmen, unemployed - who supported them. Unwittingly they thus prepared themselves for the preponderant rôle they were destined to play in the aristocratic Dutch Republic.

Alva's reaction to the revolts was fairly slow. From May to September he was busy reconquering Mons in the Southern Netherlands which William of Orange's brother Louis had taken. With the fall of Mons - a town which would have opened the way for the French if the St Bartholomew's eve disaster had not occurred - Louis's campaign was abruptly terminated. Meanwhile the prince himself, not yet informed of the massacre in Paris, crossed the river Maas on 27 August, was welcomed by some southern towns but had to retreat hastily when Alva turned to attack him. He dissolved his army, and the Spaniards had no difficulty in taking Mechlin which was punished for its defection in an ‘exemplary way’. The army then moved to the Northern Netherlands where it was left to Alva's son Frederick to restore order. In the beginning Frederick did not meet with greater obstacles than execrable autumn weather and impracticable roads. The towns of Overijssel and Gelderland which, willingly or unwillingly, had sided with William of Orange submitted at the approach of his formidable army. Zutphen was systematically plundered. From there Frederick led his troops to Holland. After taking Naarden and killing its inhabitants he reached Amsterdam at the beginning of December. Amsterdam was still loyal to the government and had not opened its gates to the Sea Beggars. Meanwhile the prince of Orange had decided to take refuge in Holland and Zeeland, a desperate decision, in his own view, for he expected to die defending his last stronghold. Going by ship from Kampen over the Zuyder Zee he arrived on 20 October in Enkhuizen.

By far the most remarkable element in this confusing series of events was the speed and the determination with which the opposition in Holland managed to set up a government of its own. This can only be explained by the long tradition of particularism and the old-fashioned pattern of the so-called Burgundian state which, while superimposing a federal structure upon the old institutions, had refrained from destroying or providing substitutes for them. The institutions, regulations, instruments and habits of mind needed for the provincial government to act

[p. 19]

independently were available and the rebels - to use a term wholly unacceptable to them - readily took them over. But it was to William of Orange, a tactful as well as a most obstinate man, to his pride as a great nobleman and his experience in government and in international affairs that they owed the knowledge of how to take advantage of the possibilities open to them.

In June 1572 William of Orange addressed himself to the inhabitants of Holland and Zeeland in a highly rhetorical pamphlet (Document 14) in which he claimed to be responsible for the fatherland generally and the patrimonial provinces in particular, and for Holland, Zeeland, and the bishopric of Utrecht in the first place. Alva was once again depicted as a foreign despot whose rule could not legally be regarded as emanating from Philip II's sovereign will. Moreover William had already hinted that he should still be considered stadholder of the three provinces since he had never received an official letter of dismissal after his departure in 1567. He promised freedom of religion in those areas where his troops were allowed to enter and a representative form of government under the king's direct guidance. Meanwhile he asked the inhabitants to swear allegiance to him not so much as stadholder but in the most general possible way as ‘patron of the fatherland and champion of freedom’. In July 1572 his position in Holland was more precisely defined. The States of the province met at Dordrecht and allowed Marnix of St Aldegonde to attend as William of Orange's deputy. Representatives of the nobility, the Sea Beggars, and no less than twelve towns - more than usual - were present, but the meeting was nonetheless necessarily incomplete: Amsterdam and other towns usually taking part in meetings of the States were absent. On behalf of William of Orange Marnix read a long and detailed paper (Document 15).

Both the meeting of the States and William of Orange's attitude to them have been differently interpreted: some historians consider the procedure revolutionary and praise it for that while others emphasise the legal basis on which the opposition to the government still sought to place itself. This discussion is somewhat unnecessary. Obviously the king, still recognised as sovereign, did not want the States to meet without his permission, but there were precedents for the States to refer to; and no States of any province had ever admitted being totally subject to the sovereign's will and command. William of Orange, on his part, confined himself to restating the position he had taken in previous years. As a grandee of the realm he was obliged to protect the Netherlands and even to act as its chief in the king's absence. Two new elements, however, appeared.

[p. 20]

William of Orange now explicitly asked to be recognised as governor of the provinces which he had ruled as the king's stadholder before 1567 and moreover he refused to admit the legality of what had happened since. But secondly he asked for a formal alliance between himself and the States of Holland as representatives of the people. This was a remarkable request and perhaps difficult to justify constitutionally. If in Holland he was only taking up his old office as the king's lieutenant or stadholder again, what then permitted him to enter into a kind of contract with the king's subjects?

There was another vital point upon which the States had to decide: religion. Marnix was instructed by the prince to make a proposal which had been left out of his written instruction. The States endorsed this and declared that both Protestants and Catholics should be allowed to hold private and public religious services in their houses and in churches allocated to them by the urban administrations and that the ecclesiastics should be left in their state and not molested unless they proved hostile. For this, of course, there was no constitutional precedent. The States may well have reasoned that toleration was somehow in accordance with the spirit of the constitution and that, as sovereignty and constitution were inseparable in the Netherlands, their edict was in accordance with sovereignty too. Thus in an abstract way it emanated from the sovereign, Philip II. In a document of 1573 (Document 17) in which William of Orange and the States of Holland write that they go down on their knees and pray the sovereign in all humility to listen to their supplication, they state explicitly that they are fighting for freedom of conscience. Obviously, humility, obedience, and some form of religious freedom ordained by the States were even then considered reconcilable. Moreover in July 1572 the States were careful to add that their toleration edict was provisional until - as was stated in a rather obscure phrase - matters might later be arranged differently on the advice of the States General of the country. This was in line with the policy of the nobles before 1567, when they had repeatedly asked for a meeting of the States General to discuss religion.

From 1572 to 1576 Holland and Zeeland fought an apparently hopeless war in almost complete isolation. They were extremely small. Holland's population is estimated at 260,000 inhabitants in 1514 and 700,000 a century later, but the most rapid increase occurred probably well after the 1570s; Zeeland was of course much smaller. How could such tiny states withstand the attacks of the Spanish Empire? Yet the Spanish troops which in December 1572 arrived at Amsterdam and were able to take Haarlem in 1573, thereby cutting Holland into two halves, failed even

[p. 21]

after long sieges to capture either Alkmaar or Leyden. The relief of Leyden in October 1574 was made the more remarkable by the decision of the stadholder and the States to establish in 1575 a university in that town as a reward for its courage. In various ways this was highly characteristic. The University Charter stated that the new institution was being founded by the only person legally entitled to do so, the sovereign, Philip II, whose stadholder William of Orange was merely acting on his behalf. The university was designed to compete with the two universities already existing in the Netherlands, Louvain and Douai, both of course Catholic. Naturally one of its main functions was to be the training of Protestant ministers and theologians but this was not its sole or even its primary task. It was explicitly stated that the institution would serve as a firm support of the liberty and legal government of the country not only in matters religious but in all matters of common interest to the population. Thus Holland created a School, truly humanist in character, which it was hoped would turn out the many-sided, broadly educated men who were needed to administer the emerging state. In the midst of a war, the nature of which remained uncertain as long as Holland and Zeeland refused to claim independence, Holland decided to train an élite by which it could be ruled competently. Calvinism and classicism, joined into a Calvinist humanism which was felt to constitute a harmonious unity of history and religion, made a small provincial university and the state that was gradually but almost unintentionally taking shape, characteristic products of the Northern Renaissance. Indeed the Northern Netherlands remained loyal to the Renaissance, its literary style and its language, well into the nineteenth century, long after other European nations had abandoned it. For centuries to come Humanism was to be the tissue of Dutch national existence.

Appallingly alone among men absorbed by local affairs and unwilling to look beyond the narrow boundaries of their towns or provinces, William's vision of future autonomy for the whole or the greater part of the Netherlands remained so broad that he was never really in danger of degenerating into a mere guerilla leader or condottiere. However, occasionally he seemed to identify himself completely with his environment, seemed so sceptical about the possibility of winning a foothold in the other provinces that he was prepared to abandon them to the French king if France helped secure Holland's and Zeeland's virtual independence and Protestantism (1573), and was so proud at Holland's perseverance that the tones in which he praised the nation sound truly patriotic (Document 19). But ultimately the obvious need to expand the revolt and to break Holland's isolation, as well

[p. 22]

as his status as Brabant nobleman and the whole nature of the federal Burgundian government (to the traditions of which he remained faithful throughout his life), made him an ardent anti-particularist, if this word, merely used to avoid the anachronistic term ‘nationalist’, is permitted.

During these years the war, initially fought by Holland against a Spanish general, often took the form of a struggle between Holland and the rest of the Netherlands. The term ‘domestic war’ actually appears in a document of 1573 (Document 16) which was addressed by the States of Holland to the States General of the ‘obedient’ provinces meeting at Brussels and in which the terrible effects of the situation were depicted in some detail. In 1573 the problem of civil war was also discussed in letters exchanged between William of Orange and Marnix. The latter had been taken prisoner by the Spaniards, that is, by troops commanded by the Walloon nobleman, Noircarmes, whom William of Orange knew very well before 1567 as a member of the Golden Fleece. Marnix was obviously totally discouraged and deeply impressed by the fact that he found himself among compatriots. He advised the prince to make peace and tried to prove with numerous historical examples assembled with great humanist scholarship that civil war has always led to material destruction and spiritual degeneration. William of Orange refused to consider capitulation (Document 18); moreover he refused to keep to himself this personal correspondence with one of his most intimate collaborators and declared that he would make his decision depend upon the advice of the States of Holland. Shortly afterwards he wrote to Noircarmes, who had offered to act as an intermediary between the rebels and the Brussels government, that he and his friends should have offered such virtuous services long ago. Meanwhile Philip II changed his tactics. He dismissed Alva and ordered his successor, Requesens, to bring about a reconciliation through moderation in all except religious matters. This was obviously intended as an attempt to enhance confidence in the ‘obedient’ provinces and to persuade them to fight the Hollanders or at any rate to provide financial and diplomatic means for such a war.

The Hollanders attacked Requesens in a pamphlet addressed to the States of the loyal provinces (Document 20). They praised William of Orange highly as a man much more dignified and of much nobler lineage than Requesens and thus more acceptable as a ruler. They depicted the king as totally dependent on the inquisitors who prevented him from carrying his personal plans into effect. In doing so the States made a clear distinction between the king as a person - a sovereign whose sovereignty was doubtful because he was not free - and the king as the sovereign

[p. 23]

guarantee of the ancient constitution. This was a brave attempt at clarification and could, if carried on consistently, have led to theoretically coherent conclusions. However, the author of the text did not need to go further. He did not ask the loyal provinces to start armed resistance but merely not to obey and not to support Requesens. And this he was entitled to justify by the usual reference to the Joyeuse Entrée. In the same year another author put forward an interesting theory about the ancient unity of the Netherlands and their right to hold meetings of the States General, emphasising both their common constitutional laws and their solidarity (Document 21).

Thus the supporters of William of Orange tried to prove that they were not fighting a civil war against the provinces loyal to the legitimate and conciliatory government of Requesens but were defending a constitution common to the whole of the Netherlands which notwithstanding its often disturbed history and its inner conflicts did form one country. All this served as a basis for negotiations with the Orangist party which were started by Requesens in February 1575 in Breda. He started them without the authorisation of Philip II but thought them necessary because the loyal provinces refused to support him effectively and Spanish finances were once again in a most terrible plight; in fact in September 1575 Philip II declared himself bankrupt and thus wrecked the little credit he might still have had in financial circles in the Netherlands. Requesens's desperate attempt failed; it could only have succeeded if Philip II had admitted defeat, sent away the Spanish troops and granted toleration. Of course the Orangists knew this well enough. For them the negotiations were a marvellous opportunity to make propaganda (cf. Document 22), especially as the emperor had sent an ambassador to attend the discussions and even to plead in favour of the so-called rebels.

In July 1575 the States of Holland considered for the first time a proposal ‘that one ought soon to abandon the king as a tyrant who sought to oppress and destroy his subjects, and to seek another protector’. On 13 October they decided unanimously ‘that one ought to forsake the king and seek foreign assistance, referring the choice to the prince who with regard to the form of government was previously to take the opinion of the States.’⁽¹⁾ In November the States appointed some deputies to go to England and offer Queen Elizabeth sovereignty over Holland and Zeeland under certain conditions later to be decided upon. It is most interesting to compare this first attempt to obtain foreign assistance by offering a form of ‘sovereignty’ with the various occasions later when this was done in a more sophisticated way. Of course Queen Elizabeth refused the offer

(1) Resolutions of the States of Holland quoted in [J. Wagenaar], Vaderlandsche Historie, vol. vii (2nd ed., Amsterdam, 1770), pp. 79-80.

[p. 24]

and soon circumstances changed so dramatically that it was unnecessary to repeat it.

On 5 March 1576 Requesens died suddenly. The position of the king's officials in the Netherlands, with no money to pay the army, no prestige and no prospect of rapid success in any sphere, was extremely weak. The Spanish troops, left unpaid for a long time, mutinied, ransacking Flanders and Brabant. By the end of July they had concentrated their forces in Alost, from where they threatened both Brussels and Ghent. Meanwhile William of Orange made the most effective possible use of his old connections. He carried on an extensive correspondence with leading personalities in the Southern Netherlands while his agents launched a veritable propaganda campaign for the defence of the common fatherland. In September the Orangists of Brussels, most of them Roman Catholics who were now prepared to oppose the king, forced the Council of State, which might be considered entitled to take up the government in the absence of a governor, to call the States General. In October representatives of this body went to Ghent to discuss with representatives of Holland and Zeeland ways and means of driving the dangerous Spanish troops away. Holland's position was very strong. Indeed the mainly Roman Catholic States General (to which Holland and Zeeland sent no delegates) badly needed the Calvinists' experienced troops to control the mutineers whose excesses, especially those perpetrated on 4 November at Antwerp, convinced even the most reluctant that something ought to be done. Thus on 8 November the so-called Pacification of Ghent was signed, a real peace between the two Protestant provinces and the rest.

The Ghent peace (Document 23) was a declaration by the majority that they would join Holland and Zeeland in their fight against the Spanish military. It brought to an end the civil war which had disrupted the Netherlands since 1572 and which it was too dangerous to continue in the catastrophic circumstances of 1576. Its weakness was that it neither could, nor did solve any of the fundamental problems. For it was left to a future meeting of the States General, to be called after the actual purpose of the Pacification had been achieved - that is, after the departure of the Spanish troops - to take decisions about how to organise the Netherlands and how definitely to settle the religious disputes. Provisionally all edicts against heresy were suspended. For the time being both groups of provinces remained essentially separate, Holland and Zeeland being allowed to keep the authorities and the form of government which had developed there since 1572 but not to spread either its religion or its political idiosyncrasies over the territory of the States General. William of

[p. 25]

Orange's success, immense though it was, remained dangerously restricted.

The next three years showed how fatal the restrictions were in fact. It turned out to be relatively easy to get rid of the Spanish troops; at any rate, Don John of Austria, the newly appointed governor who, though with reservations (see Documents 24 and 25), subscribed to the Peace of Ghent, was prepared to send them away. At the same time however the States General allowed him to interpret the religious paragraphs of the Pacification in a way wholly unacceptable to Holland and Zeeland. Not that they suffered from such an anti-Calvinist interpretation; Don John had no power to prevent them from perpetuating their own religious policy which had developed rapidly since 1572 in an anti-Catholic direction. The principle of toleration originally accepted in July 1572 was not put into effect and the Roman Catholic majority of the population had not been granted the freedom to hold public services. Thus Holland and Zeeland feared not so much that Don John would attack them but that the precarious compromise of Ghent would break down immediately after the departure of the Spanish troops and they would then be driven back into their isolation. Document 25 shows how cautiously they reacted to the unpleasant information from Brussels in February 1577; it also shows their disappointment when the States General failed to take advantage of the situation to follow ancestral examples and wring further constitutional concessions from the impotent sovereign. It is interesting to see how, after all the discussion of the previous years about armed resistance, toleration and other subjects, it was still possible in an official document written by, one would have thought, mature rebels, to adopt such a naïve, almost childishly innocent attitude towards constitutional issues.

It was humiliating for Don John to be recognised by the States General only after subscribing to their conditions; from his point of view moreover the whole procedure was probably unconstitutional. He soon found that his concessions served no worthwhile purpose and did not increase his prestige and power. He remained in Brussels for only a short time, then went to Mechlin, and on 24 July 1577 took the citadel of Namur by surprise with his bodyguard. Waiting for the return of troops he had sent away at the beginning of the year, he ordered the States General in Brussels to expel suspect people - that is, Protestants - from their meeting and to help him fight William of Orange. He justified this policy in a document of August 1577 (Document 26) which, although by no means unrealistic, was much too simple to increase the number of his supporters. Of course he was right in stating that ultimately, to oppose him was tantamount to

[p. 26]

opposing the sovereign and the maintenance of Roman Catholicism as the only tolerated religion, but if that was true, what then was the significance of the treaties and accords which he had concluded with the States General and repeated that he was willing to stand by? In Document 27 Marnix of Saint Aldegonde refuted Don John's arguments. Not only had the governor broken the treaties he referred to, he was also shown to have misunderstood the position of the States General. They appear in Marnix's text - as they do in the important and elaborate pamphlet of 1579 printed here as Document 41 - as the lower magistrates of French Calvinist theory, representatives of the three estates and thus of the body of the common people and called not only by men but also by God to protect the constitution. This emphasis on the divine origin of the States General as well as on its representative character on the French pattern is interesting. In fact of course the States General of the Netherlands formed a meeting of representatives not of the estates but of the provinces; and in some provinces all three of the estates were not represented. Long before 1572 the clergy had ceased to attend the States of Holland; in Flanders the nobility did not send deputies to the States. Marnix simplified matters considerably in order to inflate the importance of the States General and to justify the thesis that even in matters of war and peace the sovereign was dependent on their decision. Finally Marnix drew from the Joyeuse Entrée the conclusion that it was the duty of the States General to take arms against a stadholder of the sovereign who attacked the country. This adventurous conclusion was not this time accompanied by the assurance that of course royal sovereignty and the royal person was left out of all discussion. Political theory was slowly abandoning the old positions.

So did political practice. Don John's display of determination had the effect of increasing William's popularity in the provinces taking part in the States General. In September 1577 the prince left Holland; he was rapturously welcomed in Antwerp on 18 September and five days later in Brussels. But he was not without enemies. For more than ten years the high nobility had been divided into groups either loyal to the royal government, indifferent to it, or openly hostile. William of Orange did find far more support among men of his own rank in 1577 than he had in 1567 but the majority still refused to go as far as he did. The noble families which had traditionally been supported by the Burgundian central government and owed to this their position in the state, now found that the eclipse of Burgundian power symbolised by the Pacification brought their own decline. The Walloon nobility in particular, used to

[p. 27]

playing a preponderant rôle in the Burgundian state, was alarmed to see how after 1576 power reverted to the towns of Flanders and Brabant and to the ‘rebels’ in Holland, that is, to what they called ‘democracies’ and Calvinists, both of them Dutch-speaking. William of Orange was obviously the leader of that ‘democratic’ party and he was profoundly suspected even by those nobles who did not dare to side with what remained of the Spanish government. They tried to solve their dilemma by calling Archduke Matthias to the Netherlands. Matthias, a rather incompetent boy of twenty, but a brother of the emperor and a cousin of Philip II, was persuaded to come and preserve the Netherlands for the Habsburg dynasty and for the Roman Catholic faith. Although this was intended as a move against William of Orange, the prince arranged for the archduke to be officially installed by the States General as governor of the Netherlands after Don John had been declared an enemy of the country. Politically this was ingenious but fundamentally it was unsatisfactory manoeuvring on a small scale; the constitutional consequences and implications however were of decisive importance.

On 8 December 1577 the States General voted the resolution by which they recognised Matthias as governor general - although only provisionally until the king's consent was received - if he subscribed to a number of conditions (Document 28). The list of conditions was formidable. Matthias was made much more dependent on the States General than any governor before him. All his initiatives, political, fiscal, legislative, needed the approval of the States General or the provinces which sent delegates to the States General. The States appeared in the treaty as a truly independent body provided with extensive rights not only of control but of government. It was they who appointed and dismissed the governor's council; it was they to whom the ultimate decision on all matters of any importance reverted. Of course much of what was achieved here on paper was part of the whole set of traditional claims put forward by late medieval and sixteenth-century parliaments; but on the other hand it is quite clear that the States went much further than sixteenth-century practice in the Netherlands allowed. The new system was obviously incompatible with the form of government inaugurated by Charles V. In this respect it is significant that Marnix, who used to write down what he actually thought, told one of his correspondents in February 1577 that as far as he was concerned the reign of Charles V was far from satisfactory, and was on the contrary, the origin of most evil. How great indeed had the distance between the late and the early sixteenth century become was shown by the resolution voted by the States General on 10 December 1577 (Document

[p. 28]

29). This pertained to the religious issue that had been carefully omitted from the proposed treaty with Matthias. If he wanted to be accepted as governor he would also have to approve of the new resolution even though it was highly favourable to the Protestants. In effect the Catholic members of the States General agreed to interpret the Pacification of Ghent in the widest possible sense as implying that the Catholic provinces would not allow anyone - and of course Don John was meant more specifically - to attack Holland and Zeeland on religious grounds; in other words they promised to help the Protestant provinces with armed force, if necessary, to maintain their Protestantism. Even if this was a logical consequence of the Pacification of Ghent it was nevertheless rather an improbable one.

Meanwhile Don John waited impatiently for the Spanish soldiery; as soon as a few thousands had returned he marched from Luxemburg, where he had taken refuge, in the direction of Brussels. At Gembloux he met a much larger army raised by the States General, but thanks to the genius of his commander, Alexander Farnese, prince of Parma, the only son of the former regent Margaret of Parma, and the dismal incompetence of his enemies, he had no difficulty in crushing it (31 January 1578). On 13 February Louvain allowed Spanish troops to enter its gates; on 14 February the States General and Matthias were persuaded by William of Orange to follow him to Antwerp. Parma marched into the Walloon provinces and achieved success after success. In Artois the States started considering ways to secede from the States General and make peace with the king. On the other hand the opposition was also hardening its attitude in the field of theory. In March 1578 Marnix answered one of Don John's declarations with a furious pamphlet in which he emphasised the absurdity of trying to maintain Roman Catholicism by force (Document 30). Marnix was probably also responsible for a declaration of the States General published on the same day by Plantin's (Document 31). This was a diatribe of unusual violence not because its rhetoric or argument differed from innumerable previous declarations and pamphlets but because the traditional clear distinction between king and evil ministers was omitted. Apparently the king had taken the wrong side in the conflict between his loyal subjects and his bad advisers. Facts showed that contrary to all that had been said previously he was actually capable of doing wrong. This was further developed in a booklet so daring that it was thought safer to pretend that it was written by a German nobleman (Document 32). Loyal Netherlanders, it seems, were not yet supposed to be so radical; they confined themselves to printing, circulating and pondering such ideas. The author stated implicitly what the States General

[p. 29]

suggested discreetly: Philip II was a tyrant who was in the process of being deposed by public authority. The logical consequence was to look no longer for a governor agreeable to the States General - that is Matthias - but for a new sovereign - that is the duke of Anjou with whom William of Orange and the States General were indeed negotiating at that time. The author asked whether this was rebellion and naturally answered that it was not. Rebellion is anarchy, it is the negation of sovereignty. The inhabitants of the Netherlands could not be accused of attacking the principle of sovereignty for they were merely trying to get the right sovereign.

The fundamental infirmity in such an argument is of course that it fails to indicate the content of sovereignty. Anjou was represented as a particularly suitable candidate because his weakness and his lack of knowledge would prevent him from giving his government a personal character. On such a low level of abstraction it was clearly impossible to reach firm conclusions of a more general nature. Here the question arises why indeed the problem of sovereignty was dealt with so indifferently in the Netherlands whereas in France it was in similar circumstances discussed with clarity and perspicacity. Perhaps one among many reasons needs some emphasis. For French jurists, particularly Bodin, the reinterpretation of sovereignty as a dynamic concept was essential in justifying the enactment of toleration edicts. If the sovereign were to be allowed to introduce toleration, by definition a departure from tradition, it was imperative to enquire in what capacity he exercised such a novel right. Judicial sovereignty in the old sense with its implied conservatism obliged the sovereign to preserve religion in its ancient form; however, the French sovereign was obviously doing more than this. Here the concept of legislative sovereignty was extremely useful. If the main characteristic of sovereignty is the right to make new law, it is not difficult to see why the king has the right to enjoin toleration. However, for obvious reasons, in the Netherlands the problem never presented itself in this manner as the sovereign persisted in opposing any form of toleration. This prevented his subjects from studying the matter in the French way. For them toleration, rationalised in political terms, was supposed to flow from the ancient constitution and to be one of the manifold traditional rights and liberties enjoyed by the inhabitants and guaranteed in contracts with the sovereign. In Documents 33, 41, 43, 48, 53 etc. toleration is defended as an old privilege, as a practical solution to a difficult problem, as a fundamental right given by God to all men, but it was not seen as a legal issue needing profound analysis in political theory.

[p. 30]

In practice the religious problem grew to unmanageable proportions; the tortuous interpretations of the Pacification of Ghent - there are various striking instances in the texts - indicate the complexity of the situation. Document 34 makes the confusion, intellectual as well as material, into which matters were falling almost palpable. It comes from Ghent where the Calvinists succeeded in 1578 in establishing a Protestant administration with semi-dictatorial power. They gradually conquered the major part of Flanders. Such a development was not foreseen in the Pacification of 1576. According to that treaty the Calvinists of Holland were forbidden to propagate their religion outside their province; apparently this was then considered a sufficient guarantee for the preservation of Roman Catholicism in the other provinces. But everywhere the edicts against heresy were suspended. Both articles now proved inadequate. Ghent Calvinism was of a radicalism politically and spiritually more intransigent than that of Holland. Document 34 shows how deeply the rulers of Ghent distrusted even William of Orange and his association with the Catholic Frenchman, the duke of Anjou. In Document 35 one of the Ghent Calvinists objects to the interpretation of the Pacification as implying the exclusive maintenance of Roman Catholicism outside Holland and Zeeland. But in doing so he went a long way towards ruining the principle of toleration itself. Meanwhile William of Orange desperately sought to establish what was called a Religions-vrede or Religions-Frid, a half or wholly German word meaning religious peace (cf. Document 36).

Possibly the reason why this technical term was derived from the German was simply that the concept was not yet familiar in the Netherlands where no federal authority had until then made any positive pronouncement on the religious issue. In the summer of 1578 William of Orange tried in vain to make the States General promulgate an edict allowing the public exercise of both religions in all villages if the majority of the population wanted this and in all towns if it was desired by a hundred families. It was - as appears clearly from Documents 38 and 40 - far from certain that this was reconcilable with the Pacification of Ghent. But undoubtedly it was an interesting compromise between imposing toleration by the States General (which William of Orange endeavoured to transform into a parliament overruling the legal and political autonomy of the provinces), and making it dependent on the will of the inhabitants themselves: those who wanted toleration had to ask for it and to prove that they were numerous enough to come within the terms of the law. But the States General categorically refused to play the rôle William of Orange tried to prescribe for them. They had no ambition to act as a

[p. 31]

federal legislative and confined themselves to inviting Governor Matthias to lay William of Orange's proposal before the various provincial States. This was virtually the end of the initiative. Neither the Protestant nor most of the Roman Catholic provinces were prepared to forsake their preference for religious uniformity.

Not only religious disputes, but also social forces, old political idiosyncrasies, antagonism between Walloons and Flemings, feuds between rival noble families were potent factors that ruined William of Orange's vision of the Netherlands as a sort of federal state ruled by the States General under the guidance of a benevolent and virtually powerless sovereign. It was a generous vision but impossible to realise in the circumstances. Its essential weakness was that the state to which William of Orange was seeking to give substance was not at all intended by him as a peaceful ‘liberal’ society but as an instrument of bitter war. The unity upon which he laid so much emphasis was a means to carry on hostilities with greater determination and effect (cf. Document 39); but in that very respect it was totally inadequate. At the beginning of 1579 the well-known Unions of Arras and Utrecht formalised the process of separatism which had set in earlier. On 6 January 1579 the provincial States of Artois and Hainault and the city of Douai signed a solemn declaration known as the Union of Arras, in which they swore allegiance to the Pacification of Ghent interpreted in the strictly Roman Catholic sense Don John had also given it; in May they negotiated peace with the duke of Parma who had acted as governor of the Netherlands since the death of Don John in October 1578. Of course this was a capitulation but on terms highly favourable for people who had after all taken part in what the Spanish court doubtless still considered a rebellion. Parma was willing to exclude all ‘foreign’ interference in local business; posts and responsibilities were reserved for native people; it was even explicitly stated that the system of government prevailing under Charles V and highly idealised in the early stages of the Revolt would be restored. This was a re-enactment of the success of 1564 when Philip II had given in to the noble opposition and sent Granvelle away but with the decisive difference that there was no question of dismissing Parma. On the contrary, the peace greatly strengthened the power of that remarkable man. The attempt to return completely to the situation of 1564 and to reappoint Alexander of Parma's mother, Margaret, as regent was thwarted by her son who refused to abandon power. Document 46, inspired by this plan which was, ironically enough, strongly supported by Granvelle who was again in favour at the Madrid Court, is an example of the sort of pro-

[p. 32]

paganda forthcoming from the loyalist camp and it is characteristic in that it shows that polemics and argumentation of that party were much lower in quality than those of the ‘revolutionary’ party. (Compare Document 56.)

The Union signed at Utrecht on 29 January 1579 (Document 37) was a totally different affair although it also purported to be an extension of the Pacification of Ghent. It was joined by all the northern provinces with Flanders and Brabant as associate members. It was a formal alliance of provinces acting as if they were independent states, and deciding to integrate their foreign policies and war efforts through a fairly loose federation in order to defend their individual independence and traditional customs. It is noteworthy that the first article according to which the provinces should hold together as if they were only one province goes on to state that the purpose of this is to preserve their separate identity. Even the ancient rights and customs were recognised as essentially local and were not supposed to be parts of one general abstract constitution as had been done in the period when William of Orange's propaganda endeavoured to sustain the unity of the country. On the other hand, this restricted number of provinces, associated in a union freely entered upon, sought ways to establish a more coherent form of federal government than the States General had achieved. The most striking innovations, however - majority decisions, full powers of delegates to the assembly, federal taxation etc. - were in fact not put into effect. What did indeed happen soon after 1579 was that Parma succeeded in occupying most of the Southern Netherlands with the result that the provinces which remained members of the general Union were virtually the same as those associated in the Union of Utrecht. As early as the summer of 1580 the States General recognised the Treaty of Utrecht as binding upon them. Gradually the Union of Utrecht was merged into the general Union, and in the process the attempt to revise and simplify the method of reaching binding decisions was largely abandoned. It was the traditional methods of the States General rather than the innovations of the Union of Utrecht that were consecrated as constitutional dogma in the state of the Northern Netherlands although, to complicate matters, the Utrecht Treaty was often later regarded as fundamental Dutch law.

Meanwhile it had become almost impossible to maintain that the States General, the Union of Utrecht, their officials and army were still acting as loyal subjects of the king. In 1579 it was stated in an authoritative pamphlet (Document 38) that it was unnecessary to respect the king's opinions in matters relating to the Low Countries. At the same time

[p. 33]

negotiations with the duke of Anjou were going on (cf. Document 42) and they explicitly concerned the appointment not of a new governor as in the case of Matthias but of a new ‘sovereign’. Obviously in 1579 the prevailing view was that Philip II had lost, or was rapidly losing, his sovereignty because as a tyrant he had become an enemy of the state. As a result the sovereignty in the Netherlands was somehow vacant. It is not altogether clear what actually happened then. Probably the States General argued that they, allegedly elected by the people to guard the constitution, were entitled to hold in trust a sovereignty which, as it was inseparable from and possibly identical with the constitution, was something permanent that did not evaporate with the person who lost it. In no way did they suggest that Philip II's lost sovereignty reverted to the people and their representatives, the States General. This would have implied a concept of sovereignty still alien to this generation not so much because it approached the idea of popular sovereignty - after all, a sufficiently traditional theory - but because it was too precise and definitive. Even popular sovereignty in this sense and form can be more coherent and creative than what the States General were looking for at this time. In fact they merely wanted a French protector who would provide them with military, financial and political means to carry on their war. Characteristically the practical reorganisation of government on which William of Orange and his advisers repeatedly insisted (see especially Document 45) was not immediately connected with the discussion about the new sovereign. Sovereignty and government were apparently seen as distinct matters in distinct spheres of life. Whether the Netherlands had a sovereign or not mattered enormously from a legal and diplomatic point of view, but it did not materially interfere with the working of the government and the independence of the ruling institutions and persons.

After long negotiations and morose hesitations on the part of the individual provinces Anjou was at last offered a treaty (August 1580) which would promote him to the quality of ‘prince and seignior of the Netherlands’ - not to that of sovereign. When Anjou asked why he was not to be called ‘sovereign’ - Jean Bodin was Anjou's councillor - Marnix, who explained the proposal in a personal conversation with Anjou in Tours, answered that the French word had no equivalent in Dutch. This was, though in a sense true (in Dutch the French word is used), a sophisticated diplomatic reply but at the same time much more than this. Very interesting from a constitutional point of view was article xxvi:

His Highness and his successors will not only swear a general oath

[p. 34]

to the States that they will keep to this treaty but also swear the usual solemn oath in each pravince. In case His Highness or his successors infringe any point of this treaty the States will de facto be relieved of their duty to obey him and of their allegiance to him and will be allowed to take another Prince or arrange matters differently as they think best.⁽²⁾

This represented a considerable extension of the Joyeuse Entrée which only allowed suspension of obedience for a certain length of time (as was clearly and objectively stated in 1580: Document 44). Nevertheless the delegates whose task it was to persuade Anjou of the reasonableness of this article declared with somewhat exaggerated optimism that ‘the princes of the Netherlands have never been reluctant to have themselves restrained by similar clauses, even sometimes by clauses still more stringent than the present one, as might be substantiated by innumerable old charters’.⁽³⁾ Notwithstanding Anjou's strong protests the article was maintained because, according to the delegates, ‘it was an ancient privilege, indeed the basis and foundation of all our liberties and privileges’. However, when Anjou proposed that ‘as this was an ancient privilege of the country and His Highness intended to maintain the privileges in all respects and at all times...the clause “according to their old privileges” should be added’,⁽⁴⁾ the delegates refused this too. Possibly they suspected that examination of the old charters would not bear out the interpretation put by them on articles of this kind - there was some doubt among pamphleteers in 1581 about the value of privileges (Documents 50 and 51) - although we may perhaps assume that they considered it the only one which was fundamentally correct.

In September 1580 Anjou signed the document without intending to respect it, for in return for the large amounts of money and soldiers he was made to promise, he received little effective power. Formal ratification on his part took place in January 1581 at Bordeaux (Treaty of Bordeaux). When after much delay and a visit to Queen Elizabeth he arrived in the Netherlands (February 1582) and swore the required oath to the States General at Antwerp, he rapidly managed to make himself unpopular by his preposterous manners and his male harem. In January 1583 he tried to perpetrate a coup d'État and to overthrow both the States General and William of Orange by force. However, in a determined and efficient manner the people of Antwerp drove away the French soldiers Anjou had introduced into the city. Although in spite of all this William of Orange remained loyal to the French alliance (Document 53) and pre-

(2) G. Griffiths, Representative Government in Western Europe in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford, 1968), pp. 495-6.

(3) Ibid. p. 502.

(4) Ibid. p. 503.

[p. 35]

vented Anjou's formal dismissal it was obvious that the problem of sovereignty remained unsolved.

Document 47, which must be read in the context of these events - it was published in spring 1581 - gives an interesting impression of the sort of theoretical and practical problems then visualised, the sort of argumentation then used in an attempt to solve them and the quandary into which people were led by circumstances. What strikes the modern reader is the mixture of abstract schematisation and pragmatic realism. Acute awareness of the fact that the States General did not rise to the intellectual level required for governing the country instead of merely mitigating the government of the king and withstanding his orders - the same point was emphatically made in William of Orange's eloquent speech to the States General of 1 December 1581: Document 52 - was coupled with the inadequate and rather pedantic hypothesis that aristocratic government was necessarily a government exercised by nobles and doomed to failure in the Netherlands because of the glaring deficiencies in the character of the nobility. In fact of course the States General were not dominated by the nobility. Moreover it is difficult to see how the benefits of monarchical government, described in the traditional way as bringing order and unity into the divided and corrupt state and praised here in defence of Anjou's candidature for the sovereignty, can be derived from the system the author obviously had in mind. Undoubtedly his interpretation of popular sovereignty deprived the monarch of the very power he would need for doing that for which the author was hoping.

In the eyes of the Spanish court, especially Granvelle, the negotiations with Anjou proved that William of Orange was committing high treason. In an edict dated 15 March 1580 and rather reluctantly published by Parma in June, William of Orange was held responsible for all the unrest in the Netherlands and declared to be the only cause of the troubles, the man who with his cunning and brutality forced people in the Netherlands to abandon Roman Catholicism, who ruined the Church, perturbed the whole state, the ‘public plague of the Christian republic’, a traitor and enemy of king, country and humanity; thus he was outlawed and a price was put on his head. In December 1580 William of Orange sent a remonstrance to the States General in which he refuted the king's accusation (Document 48). In the accompanying letter he told the States that he addressed his Apology to them because he ‘acknowledged only them for his superiors’ - a remarkable statement intended of course as an answer to the imputation of the Spanish court that he was the sole originator and leader of the whole movement. The States naturally

[p. 36]

accepted a share of the responsibility for what had been done and emphasised in their reply to William that he was indeed ‘lawfully elected and chosen’ to his offices both of lieutenant-general of the Union and stadholder. This too was an interesting statement. The States however were not prepared to print the Apology under their own authority; apparently they were careful not to identify themselves completely with William's plight. It was therefore on his personal initiative that the prince finally published his Apology in January 1581; soon after copies were sent to kings and princes all over Europe with a covering letter which contains the following passage:

But further the king of Spain, having all the world through published, that I am a public plague, an enemy of the world, unthankful, unfaithful, a traitor and a wicked person, these are such injuries that no gentleman, no though he were of the basest of the king of Spain's natural subjects, can or ought to endure, in so much that though I were one of his simple and absolute vassals...yet so it is that by such a sentence, so unjust in all and every part thereof - I also having been by him spoiled of my lands and lordships in respect of which I should heretofore have taken an oath to him - I might have held myself absolved and free from all my bands towards him, and have essayed also (which thing even nature has taught every one) by all the means I could to maintain my honour, which ought to be to me and to all noblemen more dear than life and goods. Notwithstanding, seeing it has pleased God to show me this great grace that I am born a free Lord, not holding of any other but of the Empire, as do the princes and other free lords of Germany and Italy, and further seeing that I bear the title and have the name of an absolute and free Prince, though indeed my Princedom be not very great, yea whatsoever it be, I not being his natural subject neither having held anything of him but by reason of my seigniories and lordships of which notwithstanding he has wholly dispossessed me, it has seemed unto me that I could not defend my honour and satisfy or content my near kinsfolk, sundry princes (to whom this is my honour that I am linked) and my whole posterity but in answering by public writing to this accusation which in the presence of all Christendom is published and set out against me.⁽⁵⁾

Apparently therefore the argument of William of Orange was two-sided. On the one hand he was a servant of the States General, responsible to them and dependent on them, and in that capacity the executive of

(5) Contemporary English translation reprinted in H. Wansink ed., The Apologie of Prince William of Orange against the Proclamation of the King of Spaine (Leyden, 1969), pp. 3-4.

[p. 37]

constitutional government. On the other hand he was a sovereign prince in his own right. The feudal connection with the king on which the justification of his policies had previously been based was broken by the king himself when he took away William's possessions. The first argument was used to prove that William's acts were justifiable from a purely legal point of view, the second to establish the nature of William's new attitude towards Philip II. As he was no longer a vassal bound by oath to him it was necessary to emphasise that he was more than just an individual deprived of the link with a feudal lord but that he was in fact an independent sovereign himself making war against another foreign sovereign.

The famous edict of the States General of 26 July 1581 (Document 49) in which they confirmed that Philip II had forfeited the sovereignty of the Netherlands adds nothing new to what had already been said many times before. The document contains no exclusively Protestant views and the religious question was not emphasised. There is an intentional flatness in the resolution, there are occasional obscurities - particularly in the theoretical passages at the beginning where the author refers to positive and natural law, to popular sovereignty and the appointment of kings by God without making clear that he is using contradictory, or at any rate totally different, concepts that need further development before they would add up to a coherent doctrine; but it is all the same an extremely efficient piece of work with its judicious mixture of fact and fancy. It was not bitter propaganda in the sense in which the Apology was; it was a relatively calm explanation of what had happened and why these events had for a considerable time made it illegitimate for the inhabitants to regard Philip II as their sovereign any longer. Of course Philip II did not forfeit his sovereignty on 26 July 1581; he had clearly lost it well before that date. On 26 July the States General confined themselves to stating this as a fact; they did not proclaim independence, they did not decide on any revolutionary innovation, they passed the resolution as a routine matter, by way of a mere formality and without drawing special attention to it.

Was the constitutional puzzle now solved? Matthias had left the Netherlands just before July 1581; Anjou was expected to take up government soon; Philip had lost the sovereignty. It would seem that in theory matters had become clear enough although, because of practical circumstances, in reality they still remained terribly confused. But even in theory the situtation was less satisfactory than it looked on the surface. From 1572 Holland and Zeeland had been the most important agents of resistance to Philip II; even in 1580 and 1581, before Parma completed his

[p. 38]

reconquest of the Southern Netherlands, it was obvious that for any ruler in the Netherlands the character and size of his power depended to a large extent on the position he acquired in Holland and Zeeland. Anjou received no authority in these provinces. Article xiii of his treaty with the States General was phrased thus: ‘Holland and Zeeland will remain as they are now, especially in religious but also in other matters. However in matters concerning the coinage, war, taxes and privileges which involve various provinces or towns, they are subjected to His Highness and the Generality’.⁽⁶⁾ William of Orange thus retained his very special position in the two provinces and this constituted a vital qualification of the authority with which Anjou was charged. In 1572 William of Orange had been recognised as stadholder but soon it turned out to be necessary to define somewhat more precisely what power he was supposed to hold not so much as locum tenens or stadholder of the king but in his own right.

In the course of the years this was attempted at various times. In 1574 the States of Holland declared that thanks to their benevolent ‘collation’ William of Orange was entitled to act as governor and regent and they granted him ‘absolute power, authority and sovereign command’ for the duration of the war. In 1575 they formalised this further, recognising him as ‘principal person of these Netherlands and as a principal and the first person in the States of the country’ with the title ‘Lord and highest authority’. In 1576 Zeeland did the same. But throughout the negotiations it was carefully added that the States elected and chose him to that quality ‘as far as was in them’. This probably meant that as far as they were concerned William was entitled to this office but that the king ought to ratify such a decision. It was a far from elegant solution; for what is the constitutional position of States that claim to be capable of granting absolute power to the king's locum tenens in some provinces provided the king allows this? Moreover in practice such words as ‘absolute’ and ‘sovereign’ turned out to mean virtually nothing. The States did not dream of creating a new form of absolute power and William of Orange had no ambition to possess it. Possibly this reckless terminology was used to increase William's prestige; it also served as a sort of incantation to ward off imminent anarchy without changing anything fundamentally.

In 1580 it was evident that the negotiations with Anjou would oblige the States General formally to declare Philip II an enemy of the country. It therefore became necessary to examine what was going to happen to William of Orange's offices. In any event his function of stadholder of Philip II lost the little constitutional significance it still had. Theoretically

(6) Griffiths, Representative Government, p. 494.

[p. 39]

it would have been neat to perpetuate the office and to recognise William of Orange as Anjou's stadholder but this was unacceptable to the States of Holland and Zeeland. Some members of the States considered the possibility of appointing William as ‘absolute overlord and protector’ of the two provinces and having him in that capacity make an alliance with Anjou, the overlord of the Netherlands. The discussion about this and similar ideas however dragged on without leading anywhere. In July 1581 the States finally confined themselves to emphasising that circumstances had in no way impaired the power granted to William in 1575 and 1576. Once again he was given ‘high authority and government’ over Holland and Zeeland and the right to exercise ‘full authority and power as sovereign and overlord’ for the duration of the war. On the other hand Anjou was obviously considered to have succeeded Philip II in the latter's capacity as count of Holland and Zeeland. This makes the construction embarrassing. Whereas William's elevation to such high functions was in 1575 and 1576 logical at least from a practical point of view because the legitimate sovereign, the count of Holland, was waging war on the country, it was not particularly elegant to adopt the same attitude in relation to Anjou who was supposed to be their friend and protector.

Notwithstanding the pompous and inaccurate terms used it is not difficult to see what Holland and Zeeland wanted the Prince to do and to be. He was to be a war-time leader with a narrowly defined authority, just sufficient to give him confidence that the financial and political means needed for carrying on the war would be forthcoming with some regularity. But the course of events which in 1577 made William leave Holland to take up residence first in Brussels and then in Antwerp was detrimental to his influence in Holland, where the towns increasingly sought to act independently and where republican sentiments and ideas were being broached by responsible and weighty men. At the same time, however, William was needed to serve as a counter-weight to Anjou; his authority in the two provinces was to be emphasised to prevent Anjou's influence penetrating there. In 1582 or 1583, so it seems, Holland dropped the time limit - for the duration of the war - attached to the prince's authority. In August 1582 a delegation of the States of Holland went to Bruges, where William then was, to ask whether he would be prepared to accept the dignity of count of Holland, and he answered that he was willing to do so. In September Zeeland made a similar offer. Soon however opposition to this initiative, both in the two provinces and outside them, slowed down proceedings considerably. Amsterdam above all was reluctant to subject itself to such a form of sovereignty. In June 1584 C.P. Hooft, one of the

[p. 40]

members of the Town Council - he had an important career as burgomaster - made a speech in which he said characteristic things:

If you talk about this with the citizens you find how difficult it is for many of them to approve of it; I think that many prominent citizens will choose rather to go away than stay with us under such circumstances and this will cause great unrest in the lower strata of the population. If His Excellency had shown at the start of this war that he intended to become count he would, I think, not have achieved much and the people who everywhere opened the town gates for him would not have been willing to do this. But at the time everyone was repeating pro Lege, Rege et Grege (for the law, the king and the people), nice words surely, and telling the people that it was the liberty of the countries which one was striving for without ever mentioning, as far as I know, the idea of making His Excellency hereditary lord of the countries.⁽⁷⁾

Both the bitter tone of this speech and its contents show clearly that in Amsterdam the problem was taken seriously and that the haphazard improvisations leading up to the offer of sovereignty were resented. Or did this display of republican pride disguise more worldly and therefore more immediately important motives? Amsterdam was said to fear the elevation of William of Orange to the dignity held by Philip II because it expected the king in his wrath at being offended in the crudest possible way to impede all trade between Holland and Spain and thus to wreck Amsterdam's profitable trade with the enemy.

But in spite of Amsterdam's attitude negotiations went on, and in December 1583 the States of Holland and Zeeland agreed on terms of a treaty with William of Orange which were acceptable to him. In reality the quality of count of Holland did not add substantial authority to the limited power he possessed according to the arrangements of 1576 and 1581. The vital point was that what had been provisional was now made permanent. But this did not increase his power; in a sense it actually reduced it. In 1576 and 1581 William was appointed with the purpose of protecting the constitution in conjunction with the States, and he derived his authority from this task. Now, however, the States became the protectors of the constitution against William of Orange who as count ought to be prevented from encroaching upon ancient rights and privileges. The result was that the treaty of Holland with William of Orange did not essentially differ in character and content from that of the States General with Anjou to which explicit reference was indeed made: William of

(7) H.A. Enno van Gelder ed., Memoriën en Adviezen van Cornelis Pieterszoon Hooft, vol. ii (Utrecht, 1925), p. 7.

[p. 41]

Orange granted the States of Holland and Zeeland, it was said, all rights conceded in the Joyeuse Entrée of the duke of Brabant and the treaty with the duke of Anjou. Even clause xxvi of the Anjou treaty was taken over. All this however was fruitless. In July 1584 before he could be inaugurated as count, William of Orange was murdered.

What remained obscure in all these proceedings was their legal or constitutional basis. Nobody ventured to ask whether the States of an individual province were entitled to appoint a sovereign. Moreover it would have been logical for people who offered the dignity of count to William of Orange to take the trouble of dismissing Anjou (cf. Marnix's ingenious but unsatisfactory argumentation in Document 54). Circumstances however were not such that much attention could be spared for constitutional subtleties. No coherent constitutional plan had been worked out. The treaty with Anjou was just as much an improvisation as that with William of Orange. If these treaties or contracts look like modern constitutions, this is in a sense accidental and moreover only partially true. For what was still lacking was a definition of sovereignty. Clarity about its contents had not been provided nor was it ever decided where sovereignty was ultimately to reside.

Discussion about the best form of government became general in 1583. The selected fragments (Documents 55, 57, 58, 59) give an impression of its size and style and show at the same time the disarray to which events had led. In 1584 the total collapse of the rebels' front was far from unlikely. Not only did Parma's offensive in the Southern Netherlands achieve success after success with the fall of the major cities of Flanders (cf. Document 60), the death of Anjou in June and the assassination of William of Orange in July undermined both the theoretical and the practical basis of the governmental system. Attempts to strengthen government by creating yet another Council of State which it was suggested should be given ‘all power and sovereign authority’ (Document 61), were only half-successful. A man like Marnix who had been appointed burgomaster of Antwerp by William of Orange and in that capacity was defending the city against Parma's troops, repeated in a pathetic pamphlet (Document 62) the rhetorical arguments and the unsuccessful solutions of the past. With the death of his great friend and leader he lost his self-confidence and nerve and in August 1585 he surrendered Antwerp without, perhaps, exhausting all means to perpetuate resistance.

Meanwhile the States General were trying to re-define their position in an effort both to obtain foreign help and to clarify the governmental

[p. 42]

situation. Circumstances were singularly complicated. Just before his death on 10 June 1584 Anjou had agreed to the principles of a new treaty with the States General as the value of the original Treaty of Bordeaux had become doubtful after the events of January 1583. Although the States General were rightly considered the offended party after Anjou's failed coup d'État they nevertheless sought to win Anjou's favour again and it was the dramatic development of the war that made them willing in 1583 to concede to Anjou substantially more power than in 1580. In the new draft treaty, article xxvi of the Bordeaux Treaty was not taken over. The States General no longer appeared as they did in 1580 as the high and mighty power benevolently granting some restricted authority to the French duke. Their desperate need for foreign help was so dominating that they were prepared to declare that in case Anjou died without legitimate offspring the Netherlands would be ‘perpetually united with and annexed to the crown of France on the conditions which the States agreed with the duke of Anjou in the Treaty of Bordeaux and with the understanding that the laws, customs, usages, contracts and ancient privileges of the countries remain valid’.⁽⁸⁾ This was more than mere phraseology. The States gave Henri III permission to take two cities by way of a guarantee whereas Anjou was allowed to put his troops in all towns where he took up residence except in Antwerp and Ghent.

The draft which naturally needed ratification on the part of both Anjou and Henri III was not yet sealed and sworn to when Anjou died. Nevertheless the States decided to act as if the treaty were valid and they thus informed the French king that the provinces had now gone to him and that they would like to swear an oath of loyalty to him and obey him ‘so as it suits good vassals and subjects to do in relation to their sovereign seignior’. However, Henri III would not dream of accepting a form of sovereignty as narrowly defined as that of the Bordeaux Treaty. Not unreasonably he considered the help he was expected to give the Netherlands, implying open war with Spain, poorly rewarded by the distinction of calling himself prince and seignior - or even in spite of the Bordeaux Treaty: sovereign seignior-! of the Netherlands without power to act as such. The Netherlanders on their part did not understand the nature of his refusal to regard the draft treaty as binding. They failed to realise that the French king would not be satisfied with a position reached in long negotiations between virtually equal partners and based on a set of constitutional limitations. Notwithstanding the desperately critical circumstances they started once again in provinces and towns to deliberate about possible alterations in the Bordeaux Treaty and new concessions to the

(8) P.L. Muller and Alph. Diegerick eds., Documents concernant les relations entre le Duc d'Anjou et les Pays-Bas (1576-1584), vol. v (Amsterdam, 1899), p. 698. This draft dates from 25 April 1584.

[p. 43]

king with the result that it was not until January 1585 that a deputation of the States General arrived at last in France to offer the sovereignty to Henri III. They used interesting terminology. They no longer referred to the draft treaty with Anjou but stated:

As by the death of His Highness, prince and seignior of the Provinces, these are vacant and again at the disposal of the States (‘sont vaccantes et retournées en la disposition desdictz Estatz’), and because the king of Spain and his adherents continue the war and invade and oppress them cruelly, they have found it appropriate and in accordance with justice and natural law to take refuge in, and to throw themselves into, the arms of His Majesty so that they be joined to the kingdom of France from which they, or most of them, were separated in the past, and be ruled and defended as his very humble vassals and subjects on certain reasonable conditions...⁽⁹⁾

It is not easy to define what theory was behind the idea that at the death of Anjou the provinces were again at the disposal of the States, but the terminology does not, it seems, indicate that the States considered themselves to be sovereigns in the period between the disappearance of one sovereign and the arrival of the next. The idea was rather that as guardians of the constitution they held in trust the authority needed for protecting it as long as there was no one else to perform that task (cf. also Document 63 for a somewhat ambiguous or incomplete exposé of what happens in such a situation). When they were considering the instruction to be given to the deputies to Henri III they anticipated that the king might well ask them what power the States had to hand over the provinces to him and decided to answer that the law of nature and history as well as ancient privileges allowed oppressed nations to seek the help of generous princes whose royal duty it is to defend the weak and poor against the mighty and rich. This of course was no answer at all but it had the limited merit of carefully eliminating the conception of popular sovereignty or sovereignty of the States. Although tactful it was all the same dangerous and naïve. If Henri III had accepted sovereignty on such a basis he would certainly have interpreted it in the modern French fashion the significance of which the Netherlanders had not grasped or did not wish to grasp. But Henri III did not accept the proposal. In March 1585 he refused to support the Netherlands in an open war with Spain and put an end to the negotiations.

A few days later the States General decided to approach Queen Elizabeth with a similar proposal but it was three months before all prepara-

(9) N. Japikse ed., Resolutiën der Staten-Generaal van 1576 tot 1609, vol. iv (The Hague, 1919), p. 495.

[p. 44]

tions were completed and a fully authorised deputation could set sail for England. Made wiser by Henri III's attitude, the States had provided three sets of instructions. The deputies were first to offer the sovereignty of the Netherlands to the queen, on ‘reasonable conditions’, in fact almost the same as those proposed to the French king; if the queen declined this, they were to ask her to become ‘protector’ of the countries and if this too was refused, they would make a request for military assistance only. It is well-known that the queen did not want to be sovereign or protector of the Netherlands but felt obliged under the circumstances to provide military aid. From the very start she made it quite clear that she refused the ‘principality and property’ of the Netherlands. But the Dutch envoys insisted. On 11 July they presented the English with a remonstrance in which they stated:

The Netherlands are all duchies, counties and separate seigniories, governed by their own magistrates, laws and ordinances, each so independent that no province possesses authority over the other. This is the reason why they need the supreme power of a prince or sovereign seignior who commands all of them. Such a prince will care for the public well-being of the generality and not for the private profit of an individual province; he will oblige all of them to execute and obey readily and generally the commands and ordinances made for carrying on the war and reducing society to order according to the circumstances, the available opportunities and the season... If each province retains the sovereignty and supreme command over the population, it will be impossible to ensure that the orders of Her Majesty's lieutenant general or his Council will be obeyed so promptly and completely...⁽¹⁰⁾

When the English asked the envoys what securities they were prepared to give for the restitution of the advance money which the queen was expected to spend before Dutch taxes yielded enough to finance the war effort, they were told that ‘if Her Majesty accepted the sovereignty or perpetual protectorship such restitution would not take place for Her Majesty would then possess the whole country’.⁽¹¹⁾

It is remarkable that ‘perpetual protectorship’ was considered to be in practice equivalent to sovereignty. That this was indeed more than a manoeuvre during the negotiations in order to obtain financial advantages appears from the resolution of the States General on 6 June 1585 in which they defined at length what was to be understood by protection. If the queen refused sovereignty

(10) ‘Rapport van de Nederlandsche gezanten, in 1585 naar Engeland gezonden’, Kronijk van het Historisch Genootschap, 5th series, vol. ii (Utrecht, 1866), p. 221.

(11) Ibid. p. 232.

[p. 45]

Her Majesty will be asked by the States General of the United Provinces, that is, by Gelderland, Flanders, Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht and Friesland, to accept and receive for herself and the legitimate successors to the kingdom of England, protectors of the reformed religion, the said United Provinces under her perpetual protection and to maintain and defend them against the king of Spain..., under good and reasonable conditions, to wit: that Her Majesty will be declared protector of the United Provinces and of all their privileges, rights, freedoms and laudable customs and usages, both general and particular, and that in that capacity she will be respected, honoured and obeyed...The said provinces, their members and towns, will remain united in one body and association as far as this protection and their common defence are concerned...⁽¹²⁾

It is not surprising that according to the Dutch with their traditional conception of the relation between sovereignty and constitution, protecting the constitution amounts to being sovereign. The difference was one of form and title, not of substance.⁽¹³⁾

On the level of practical government the States General proposed that Queen Elizabeth, agreeing to protect the Netherlands, would send a lieutenant general who was to rule the country together with a Council of State appointed by the States General, and according to an instruction drafted by the States General. It was explicitly stated that neither the lieutenant general nor his Council could ever make any changes in the religion or the privileges of States General and provinces. Obviously the States tried thus to sketch what they thought the ideal arrangement in a situation they had known well in the recent past. The idea of making the protector delegate a lieutenant general was evidently taken from the model of the governors general sent by Charles V and Philip II with the result that in this respect too the difference between sovereignty and protectorship was very slight.

The queen remained adamantly opposed to such suggestions. When this was realised some important men at the Court, among them the earl of Leicester, advised the Dutch deputies to go beyond their instruction and to ask for an English governor with military and political functions even though the queen did not want to be either sovereign or protector. Even though what they were doing was illogical the Dutch envoys politely asked the queen ‘to grant (verleenen) the countries some lord of quality to become leader and director in the Netherlands because matters had run into disorder since the death of His Excellency [William of Orange]’.⁽¹⁴⁾

(12) Japikse ed., Resolutiën, vol. v (The Hague, 1921), p. 59.

(13) In 1575 the queen had already been asked to act as protectress; this was thought to be legally possible on condition that the States abandoned Philip II. That, at any rate, is the impression left by the documents. In relation to the duke of Anjou, however, the term protector meant something quite different from sovereign. When Anjou was declared to be ‘protector of the liberty of the Netherlands against the tyranny of the Spaniards and their adherents’ (1578), this did not, according to the theory of the States General, reduce the sovereign rights of Philip II. It may have been easier to make the distinction in the case of Anjou who was not in possession of a sovereign title, than in that of Queen Elizabeth, who was.

(14) ‘Rapport’, p. 252.

[p. 46]

It must be emphasised that this campromise solution was not proposed by the Dutch who had originally been consistent enough to connect the request for an English governor with the request to be accepted as the Queen's subjects or protégés.

In the definitive treaty of October 1585 the position of lieutenant general was left largely undefined although he clearly received more authority than the ‘prince and seignior’ Anjou some years previously. His duties were extensive; he was commissioned to restore public authority, reform the financial and military situation and generally to serve the Netherlands as well as he could. Apparently the intention was that more precise arrangements about the governor's competence and power would be made by him in direct negotiations with the States General. This at any rate was the opinion of both the queen's Privy Council and the States General. The queen herself however either disagreed from the start or changed her mind afterwards for shortly before his departure she forbade the earl of Leicester, who was appointed to the post, to accept further commissions by the States General. Officially he was merely to be the general of the English army; if he helped to restore order in Dutch affairs that would be nice and even necessary according to the treaty but he should not do so in the capacity of governor sent by the queen. Constitutionally this was a correct point of view. Elizabeth was giving military assistance; she was neither sovereign nor protectress. The States however did not know of this secret order to Leicester. Obviously they thought - and this was far from unreasonable - that if she sent a governor, she wished him to do business and accepted responsibility for this, in fact, acted as if she were protectress sine titulo. Thus they literally showered honours and powers upon the earl on his arrival in the Netherlands in December 1585. They did this in a manner that had implications which were probably not clearly realised. In February 1586 they resolved

that His Excellency (in addition to the title, charge and commission given him by Her Majesty, and in addition to the authority which he possesses by virtue of the Treaty concluded between Her Majesty and the above-named States General, which His Excellency will keep and have kept in all its points and articles, which shall retain their original force, each in its respective regard) shall be commissioned Governor and Captain General of the aforesaid United Provinces...; and that His Excellency...shall have full power and absolute command in the matter of the war and all matters concerned with it...; Item. His Excellency shall have full and absolute power in the afore-

[p. 47]

said Provinces and associated regions, in the matter of civil government and justice, such as the Governors General of the Netherlands have in all times legally possessed, and particularly in the time of Charles V of beloved memory...And his Excellency shall be empowered to summon the States General of the said Provinces at any time and place within the said Provinces, or wherever he wishes; and on the summons of His Excellency they shall be bound to appear at the designated time and place. In addition, the said States, both general and particular, shall assemble when they wish and act as they deem proper for the welfare and service of the country: All this without prejudice to the rights, freedoms, preeminences, privileges, treaties, contracts, statutes, ordinances, decrees and customs of the above-mentioned provinces in general, or of each province, city and member of each in particular, which, notwithstanding anything above, shall remain in their full vigour.⁽¹⁵⁾

This is an extraordinary document. Did the States really accept that the governors general had always possessed ‘full and absolute power’ and if so, what might they have thought this meant? Obviously such power was not allowed to encroach upon the existing constitution, which was interpreted in the widest possible way as including total freedom on the part of the general and provincial States to meet and act as they wished. But even so the commission granted to Leicester by the States implied much more than the queen had granted him. She was furious. This was exactly what she had not wanted to happen. To the outside world Leicester would probably appear as her governor, and this would involve her in the affairs of the Netherlands to a much greater extent than she thought wise. The States did not understand this. They had been very careful to state with so much precision that it was they and they alone who were responsible for the appointment. Leicester was becoming not the queen's but their own governor. It was caution which prompted them to do so, not presumption. But nevertheless, in doing it they at last openly accepted that they possessed sovereignty. They had not done so before. In their dealings with Anjou, William of Orange and Henri III they had refrained from claiming sovereignty. Now inevitably they had to. It was not what they had wished. They would have preferred having a governor general appointed by Queen Elizabeth in her capacity as their sovereign or protectress. But she had refused such honours. Leicester himself had then suggested the illogical compromise which led to his mission to the Netherlands. In the absence of a sovereign to perform the task of appointing him

(15) The translation is by Griffiths who prints the document in full, pp. 528-31.

[p. 48]

as governor general the States took this upon themselves. During the States General's negotiations with Leicester in January 1586 this attitude was clearly formulated. On one occasion the provincial States were mentioned as institutions ‘with which the sovereignty of the country is now residing’ (‘bij denwelcken nu de souveraineté van den lande was’). This was the extraordinarily paradoxical beginning of Dutch independence.

A wiser man even than Leicester would probably have been unable to cope with his task. His position was ambiguous in the extreme. Though only a delegate of the English queen and an official of the States General he was asked to rule the Netherlands more arbitrarily even than William of Orange was ever allowed to. No wonder he failed. His military, economic, financial and religious policies were unsuccessful and rapidly made him lose the support of the province of Holland. An extremely complicated process of polarisation led to the formation of what was regarded as Leicester's political party. Its opponents suspected this party of having a set of political aims that amounted to a real programme. It was considered to be centralist, democratic, Calvinist and eager to expand the war with the purpose of reconquering the Southern Netherlands for Calvinism. There was undoubtedly some truth in this although these political objectives formed in reality less of a consistent whole than was suggested. But even if for example the democratic tendencies of the party were not as strong as was suspected, there was no doubt that Leicester's adherents were in favour of governmental reforms detrimental to the superiority and autonomy of the provincial States, particularly those of Holland. Their policies were directed against those elements in the system of government which ensured the provincial States a firm hold on the reformed churches and the unchallenged power of the urban oligarchies. Instead of this Leicester hoped to establish centralised government under his own undisputed leadership.

It was thought that he would be in a better position to achieve his aim if the queen were induced to accept the sovereignty in spite of her previous refusal. Document 64 gives an impression of the arguments and implications. Here indeed a new definition of sovereignty was considered that differed substantially from the traditional one. Prouninck (Document 64 and cf. Document 47) obviously visualised a Calvinist monarchy that was no longer based on the ancient constitution but formed a dynamic, charismatic sort of government which had no precedent in the Netherlands. He was apparently convinced that the queen might be persuaded to assume the sovereignty if it was offered without conditions. But the States of Holland could not dream of defining sovereignty in such a way. At the

[p. 49]

beginning of 1587 they and the States General reluctantly consented to ask the queen once again to take up sovereignty but it was, as in 1585, a conditional and limited sovereignty in which little room for the ‘absolute’ royal prerogative was left. Meanwhile the whole matter was irritating the States and causing them serious anxiety. When Leicester was temporarily called back to England in November 1586 they immediately started to undermine the power of the Council of State to which he had delegated his authority. This inspired one of its English members, Thomas Wilkes, to write a remonstrance of real importance although of a highly paradoxical nature (Document 65 and cf. Document 67).

The paradox was that Wilkes referred to the doctrine of popular sovereignty in order to refute the sovereignty of the States. This was a clever move, especially as he introduced Bodin's new definition of sovereignty in a country still unprepared for it. But fundamentally it made little sense. In the first place it must be repeated that if the States had learned to claim sovereignty, this was because they needed such sovereignty when obliged to take the responsibility for Leicester's appointment as governor general. In the second place it was far from clear that the sixteenth-century concept of popular sovereignty was opposed to that of States sovereignty. One of the things the States of Holland, answering Wilkes in a long Deduction written by Francis Vranck (Document 66), tried to show was that there was no conflict between the two doctrines. What mattered more to them, however, was to demonstrate in a long and scholarly though highly selective historical analysis that the urban administrations, together with the nobles, had for the last eight centuries been in possession of sovereignty which they had often entrusted to counts and countesses. Wilkes's theory was therefore meaningless.

Vranck's Deduction not only gave a realistic picture of the form of government that had emerged - in a letter of 22 July 1587 to the queen Wilkes recognised Vranck's view to be perfectly accurate - it also became a major source of Dutch constitutional thought. It may indeed be interpreted as the logical conclusion to the development of Dutch political thought during the Revolt. But there are qualifications. Vranck did not really define the nature of sovereignty. There is in his prose no echo of Bodin's phrase quoted by Wilkes. Sovereignty in his sense was not isolated or separated from the constitution and from constitutional rights as it was later by Dutch seventeenth-century theorists who raised the sovereignty of the States to the level of that of absolute kings. In the second place it was still not clear whether sovereignty resided with the States of the individual provinces or collectively with the States General.

[p. 50]

If eventually it was monopolised by the provincial States this was caused by political events; it was not implied in Vranck's theory.

Looking back on the history of Dutch political thought during the Revolt what strikes one is its unadventurous character and its precision. The Netherlanders apparently felt compelled to justify all their acts and decisions as based on law. Of course they strained law and precedent to the point of misrepresenting them perhaps wilfully; and of course they failed to put forward a consistent theory of constitutional government. But notwithstanding that, there was something moving and impressive in their sometimes desperate and sometimes extraordinarily pedantic attempts to prove that all they did was legitimate. Ultimately their ideas and their actions form a link in the development of European constitutional thought and practice that was in danger of being broken by the hard innovations of modern absolutism.