The Founding of the Dutch Republic: War, Finance, and Politics in Holland, 1572-1588

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T H E F O U N D I N G O F T H E D U TC H R E P U B L I C

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The Founding of the Dutch Republic War, Finance, and Politics in Holland, 1572–1588 J A M E S D . T R AC Y

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford   Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With ofﬁces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York  James D. Tracy 2008

The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–920911–8 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Acknowledgements This book could not have been written without the help and encouragement, over three decades, of friends and colleagues in the Netherlands. When I ﬁrst began working on archival materials relating to Holland, Hugo de Schepper, emeritus at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, showed me the ropes at the Algemeen Rijksarchief in Brussels. Juliaan Woltjer, emeritus at the Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden, was kind enough to read a good deal of my earlier work in manuscript, with copious comment. A good deal of what I know about the region and its history comes from working with Henk van Nierop, professor of modern history at Amsterdam, and Jan de Jongste, emeritus at Leiden; they, along with Folkert Postma at Groningen, have read and made useful criticisms of parts of this work in earlier stages. The errors are of course my own, but for me the following pages represent my end of a long and pleasurable conversation. Because of what proved for me a fortunate decision by an acquisitions librarian, some 50 years ago, the University of Minnesota Library is one of only two in North America to hold a set of the Resolutions of the States of Holland (Resolutiën van de Staten van Holland, or RSH), to which copious reference is made here. I am indebted to my doctoral student, Troy Osborne, currently at Gustavus Adolphus College, for checking my citations of RSH, and for helping to ﬁnd appropriate illustrations; and to my friend and colleague, David Kieft, emeritus at Minnesota, for reading the entire manuscript for sense and coherence. Finally, I am happy to express my gratitude as well to the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Wassenaar, for a Fellowship (1993–4) that allowed me to do the archival research for this project. Like others before and after me at NIAS, I found the cameraderie and the intellectual exchange among the Fellows a stimulus for my own work. I also learned, on the volleyball court, that receiving serve from a Dutch professor, male or female, is a character-building experience. J.D.T. St Paul, Minnesota 25 June 2007

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Contents List of Maps List of Illustrations List of Tables List of Abbreviations Introduction

ix x xi xii 1

I . T H E H A B S BU RG N E T H E R L A N D S , 1 54 9 –1 56 7 Prologue: Prince Philip’s Tour of the Low Countries, 1549

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1. The Habsburg–Valois School of War

24

2. War Finance and Fiscal Devolution

37

3. Holland as a Body Politic, I: The Habsburg Era, to 1567

52

I I . WA R I N H O L L A N D , O C TO B E R 1 5 7 2 – J U LY 1 5 7 6 Prologue: Repression, Rebellion, and Revolt, 1567–1572 4. Toward a Workable Strategy for Defensive Warfare

77 88

5. The New Fiscal Regime

101

6. Holland’s Rulers: The Urban Oligarchies

116

I I I . H O L L A N D A N D T H E ‘ C LO S E R U N I O N ’ , J U LY 1576–DECEMBER 1582 Prologue: The States General at War with Spain

135

7. Holland’s Garden

148

8. Paying for an Ever More Expensive War

171

9. Holland as a Body Politic, II: Seeds of Discord

194

I V. A N EW R E P U B L I C , 1 5 8 3 – 1 5 8 8 Prologue: Parma’s Offensive, 1583–1588

215

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Contents

10. The Securing of Holland’s Forward Frontier, 1583–1588

225

11. Holland’s Pyramid of Credit

242

12. Partisan Strife, 1583–1588: Holland and its Critics

269

Epilogue: The Dutch Republic in Europe’s Republican Tradition, c.1590–1650 Bibliography Index

297 315 333

List of Maps 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

The Habsburg Netherlands, 1555 Holland’s waterways Holland divided by civil war, 1576 The Union of Utrecht, 1579–1582 The Eastern Frontier, 1585–1588 The Union of Utrecht at the end of 1588

12 58 94 166 237 296

List of Illustrations 1. 2. 3. 4.

Mary of Hungary, regent of the Netherlands, 1531–1555 Obligatie of the States of Holland for 500,000 pounds, August 1572 The Relief of Leiden, October 1574 William, Prince of Orange (1533–1584), stadtholder of Holland and Zeeland, 1558–1568, 1572–1584 5. Holland’s Garden 6. Willem Bardesius (1526–1601), Amsterdam burgomaster after 1578 7. Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, pensionary of the States of Holland, 1586–1618

41 85 98 129 154 199 278

List of Tables 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

The core provinces, 1550: cities over 5,000 with reliable population ﬁgures Rural property values in Holland by revenue district, 1542 Repartitiën levied on Holland’s towns, August 1579–December 1582 Payments from Cornelis van Mierop’s ﬁrst account as receiver–general, September 1581–[end 1582] Monthly gemene middelen income, as reported in different sources Extraordinary levies, 1583–1588 Repartiti¨en in Holland, 1583–1588 Lenders in the capitale impositie for 125,000 pounds, 1584 Half-year verponding assessments, as redressed (revised), 1584

53 54 184 190 248 249 251 254 257

List of Abbreviations AGN (I) AGN (II) AJ Aud. BMGN CSPFSRE Gachard GRK Groen INGWVO RANH RAZH RSG RSH Sandelijn SH

Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden (I), ed. J. A. Van Houtte, 12 vols. (Utrecht: W de Haan, 1949–58). Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden (II), ed. Dirk Peter Blok, 15 vols. (Haarlem: Fibula van Dishoek, 1977–83). Andries Jacobszoon, ‘Prothocolle van alle die reysen . . . bij mij gedaen’ [1523–38], 2 vols., Amsterdam Gemeentearchief. ‘Papiers d’Etate et de l’Audience’, Algemeen Rijksarchief / Archives G´en´eraux du Royaume, Brussels Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden. Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, Reign of Elizabeth (London: Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1861–1950). Louis-Prosper Gachard, ed., Correspondance de Guillaume le Taciturne, Prince d’Orange (8 vols., Brussels: C. Muquardt, 1850–5). Graafelijkheidsrekenkamer, Rijksarchief van Zuid-Holland (now Nationaal Archief ), The Hague. Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, ed., Archives ou correspondance inédite de la Maison Orange Nassau (14 vols., Utrecht: Kemink & Zoon, 1835–47). Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, ‘De Correspondentie van Willem van Oranje’, calendar of Orange’s unpublished letters, accessible on-line at www.inghist.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/WVO. Rijksarchief van Noord-Holland, Haarlem, ‘Resolutiën der Staten van Noord-Holland’. Rijksarchief van Zuid-Holland (now Nationaal Archief ), The Hague. Resolutiën der Staten-Generaal, 1576–1619, ed. N. Japikse ( The Hague: Nijhoff, 1915–70). Resolutiën van de Staten van Holland en West Vriesland (278 vols., The Hague: 1524/43–1793). Adriaan Sandelijn, ‘Memoriaelboek’, 4 vols., Gemeentearchief van Amsterdam. ‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, Rijksarchief van Zuid-Holland.

Introduction This book tells the story of a province that gave birth to a country. The then county of Holland was (with Zeeland and Utrecht) one of three original signatories to the 1579 Union of Utrecht, the constitutional cornerstone of the Dutch Republic. By the time the Republic gained international recognition in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) as the United Provinces of the Netherlands, it also included Friesland, Gelderland, Overijssel, and Groningen. All seven provinces lay to the north of the great rivers that divided the Low Countries from east to west. South of the rivers ten other Low Countries provinces remained loyal to the Habsburgs, and were henceforth known as the Spanish (later Austrian) Netherlands. Prior to the Revolt against Spain, the large provinces of Flanders and Brabant, south of the rivers, had by far the biggest concentrations of wealth and population. During the long war against Spain (1572–1648), however, the small province of Holland¹ eclipsed its larger southern neighbours. Holland’s wealth in fact paid for the war, contributing more than 60 per cent of the Republic’s military budget. For its crucial role in the Revolt Holland gained international recognition of an informal sort: in every language except Dutch Holland is the common name for the whole country. By contrast, Dutch people in speaking among themselves refer to their country as Nederland, never as Holland. The Dutch sense of nationhood dates from the transition between two north Netherlands states, the Dutch Republic and the kingdom of the Netherlands.² In 1795 invading French armies brought the proud history of the Republic to an end. Some Dutch citizens—soon to be citizens of France’s empire—identiﬁed with the ideals of the French Revolution, and blamed their country’s downfall on an antiquated federalism that allowed the States or parliament of a single province (often Holland) to block the will of the majority in the States General. In the so-called Batavian Republic (1797–1815), under one or another of Napoleon I’s brothers, the administration of the country was centralized to a degree never seen before. As in ¹ Holland covers an area of about 2,000 square miles, roughly the size of the American state of Delaware. ² For what follows, see the relevant sections of J. C. H. Blom and E. Lambert, eds., History of the Low Countries, trans. James C. Kennedy (New York: Berghahn, 1999).

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Introduction

France itself, boundaries were drawn for new administrative districts having no connection to the historic provinces. With Napoleon’s ﬁnal defeat imperial rule in the Netherlands disappeared, but the principles of administrative centralization remained. Europe’s powers, at the Congress of Vienna, erected at France’s northern border a new and larger state, encompassing the former Austrian³ Netherlands as well as the former Dutch Republic, which they entrusted to William of Nassau, prince of Orange. From the earliest days of the Dutch Republic Prince William’s ancestors functioned as stadtholders,⁴ in effect commanders in chief. The stadtholders seemed to foreigners like ruling princes, but in fact they served at the pleasure of the States of the leading provinces, especially Holland. Only rarely was a prince of the House of Orange strong enough to override determined opposition from Holland.⁵ But in 1815 Europe’s powers were keen on staunching the embers of revolution; hence the prince of Orange was enthroned as king of the Netherlands. King William I (1815–40) governed with minimal interference from a docile States General. Not everyone appreciated his high-handed methods, for the former Austrian Netherlands broke away in 1830 to form the kingdom of the Belgians. In the wake of the Revolutions of 1848 the Netherlands monarchy was brought under parliamentary control; the constitution of 1848 made the king’s ministers for the ﬁrst time responsible to the States General. It also re-established the States of the historic provinces, if only for the purpose of choosing deputies to the States General. Proud of their new nation, Dutch historians of this era had little sympathy for any reading of the past that smacked of ‘Hollandocentrism’.⁶ The common view was that in a centuries-long struggle between two competing principles of government, the House of Orange had consistently championed the unity ³ When a Bourbon prince was recognized as king of Spain by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), the former Spanish Netherlands passed to the Austrian branch of the Habsburg dynadsty. ⁴ ‘Stadtholder’ is the conventional (if peculiar) English spelling for Stadhouder, meaning a ‘place-holder’ for the ‘natural prince’, e.g. King Philip II, in his capacity as count of Holland. From 1556 William of Orange was stadtholder of Holland by appointment of the king; from 1572, he and his successors were stadtholders of Holland by vote of the States. ⁵ In the latter years of Maurits of Nassau (1618–25); in the brief reign of Williem II (1650); and under Williem III (1672–1702). See the relevant sections of Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). ⁶ This point is developed further in the English version of my University of Amsterdam lecture, For Holland’s Garden: The War Aims of the States of Holland, 1572–1588 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam Centre for the Study of the Golden Age, 2005). For the idea of ‘Hollandocentrism’, see Anton van der Lem, Het eeuwige verbeeld in en afgehaald bed: Huizinga en de Nederlandse beschaving (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 1997), 138, 151, 188–9, 235: in lectures abroad, Johan Huizinga explained that in the Dutch Republic’s federalist system, with its weak central government, wealthy Holland had exercised a ‘salutary’ pre-eminence. As developments in Hitler’s Germany portended an ominous future, he judged that Hollandocentrism was not what audiences at home needed to hear: he now stressed that the other provinces had provided a ‘salutary counterweight’ to Holland.

Introduction

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of the nation, while the provincial States, especially in Holland, stood for a fragmentation of power that led in the end to the Republic’s downfall. The national state of the nineteenth century, strongly governed from the centre, was thus a historic triumph over ‘particularism’,⁷ a short-hand expression for the selﬁsh interests of town ‘regents’, that is, the self-perpetuating oligarchies represented in the provincial States. For much of the twentieth century Dutch historians continued to view the early years of the Revolt from the perspective of William of Orange and his vision of national unity. For example, a work popular during the inter-war years notes that because Orange was frustrated by the inability of the States General to make good its claim to govern the country, he originated the idea of a ‘closer union’ limited to the provinces north of the great rivers; but even at this level his hopes for a genuine union were blocked by (among other things) ‘the particularism of the provinces’.⁸ Nowadays, the tendency to see the national state as the triumphant endpoint of a long historical development has gone out of fashion, after a century in which the states of Europe fought two world wars and then formed a new union among themselves. Yet the case for centralized government does not depend on nationalist passions. Orange’s most recent Dutch biographer describes how the prince sought to enhance his authority by asking the States to name him hereditary count of Holland.⁹ The gentlemen-deputies accepted His Excellency’s proposal, but only within the framework of a debilitating ‘Instruction’ that would have hemmed in his authority at every point.¹⁰ Scholars writing in languages other than Dutch have also tended to view the Revolt through ‘Orangist’ lenses.¹¹ Thus towns and provinces are described as ‘unwilling to make sacriﬁces for the common good’, even though William of Orange ‘worked hard ⁷ For the history of the word, see the relevant entries in The Oxford English Dictionary, Trésor de la langue française, Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal, and Grande dizionario della lengua italiana. The sixteenth-century French ‘mon particulier’ referred to one’s personal or private interest. In the seventeenth century, particularisme referred either to the doctrine that God’s predestination applied only to the chosen few, or a habit of preferring one’s own interest to the general good. From about 1850 the German Partikularismus took on a political connotation, meaning (depending on one’s point of view) either a defence of legitimate regional autonomy, or an unwillingness to allow the good of the nation to override local interests. ⁸ Jan Romein et al. De Lage Landen bij de Zee (5th edn, Utrecht: W. de Haan, 1934), 266, in reference to Orange’s plan (1578) for an effective union among the northern provinces. Romein mentions also in this connection ‘a Calvinism that insisted on being the only religion’. ⁹ Habsburg sovereigns ruled by separate titles in each of their Low Countries possessions. Had Orange been named count he would have replaced King Philip II, whose authority had not yet been renounced by the States. ¹⁰ K. W. Swart, Willem van Oranje en de Nederlandse Opstand, 1572–1584, ed. R. P. Fagel, M. E. H. N. Mout, and H. F. K. van Nierop, with an introduction by Alastair Duke and Jonathan Israel ( The Hague: SDU, 1994), 246. ¹¹ The seventeenth century was marked by recurring partisan conﬂict between supporters of the provincial States (Staatsgezinden) and supporters of the House of Orange (Prinsgezinden, or Oranjetrouwen).

4

Introduction

to overcome particularism’.¹² In 1581 Orange and the States General proposed offering sovereignty over the rebel provinces to the duke of Anjou, younger brother of France’s King Henry III—but Holland and Zeeland stubbornly refused. This was but ‘an extreme example’ of a larger problem, for ‘provincial particularism was by no means conﬁned to Holland and Zeeland. All provinces grudged every penny they voted unless the money was earmarked for local purposes’.¹³ That historians should organize their narratives from the viewpoint of central authority is hardly surprising. In the decades following the Second World War the idea of modernization seemed to offer the key to questions arising from the past as well as the present, and a modern state is nothing if not a centralized state. Thus if the rebel provinces of the Netherlands failed to create a strong government—that is, a centralized or modern government—it was not for want of effort or foresight on the part of William of Orange and his successors. But scholars are now beginning to doubt whether modernization is really so crucial in the history of the state; it seems, for example, more and more difﬁcult to draw a convincing chronological boundary in European history between ‘pre-modern’ and ‘modern’ states.¹⁴ If this be so, one may wonder as well whether a state in which power and authority are concentrated at the centre is, in all historical circumstances, necessarily stronger or more effective than one in which power is decentralized—as in a federal state where a single province can indeed block the will of the majority in the States General. The most recent studies of the Dutch Revolt are even-handed in their assessment of this de facto division of sovereignty. Rather than describing the constitution of the 1579 Union of Utrecht in pejorative terms, A. T. van Deursen presents this ‘closer union’ among the northern provinces as deeply ambiguous:¹⁵ The Union bound participating provinces together as if they were but one province. But it promised also to maintain the rights and privileges of each province. Between these two starting points there was an irreconcilable tension. Because each province was too weak to stand by itself, unity was a necessary condition of their existence. Yet the war had begun over the right of each province to decide things for itself, free of outside interference. Hence the strong provinces in particular were not sincerely willing to transfer their powers to a central government.

Jonathan Israel goes a step further, suggesting that the only polity capable of continuing the war against Spain was one governed in Holland’s interests. The ¹² Martin van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 53. ¹³ Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 201. ¹⁴ J. C. D. Clark, Our Shadowed Present: Modernism, Postmodernism and History (London: Atlantic, 2003). ¹⁵ A. T. Van Deursen, Maurits van Nassau: De winnaar die faalde (Amsterdam: B. Bakker, 2000), 25–6 (my translation). The strongest province was of course Holland.

Introduction

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Union of Utrecht was in his view intended ‘purely and simply to create a northern defensive structure dominated by Holland and excluding the States General’ based in Antwerp (Brabant). That Holland arranged things to suit itself did not go down well in (for instance) Gelderland, where the new Union was at ﬁrst dismissed as a ‘Hollandish Union’. But the more inclusive polity represented by the States General was not viable: ‘In the end, the [provincial] States had no alternative but opting for either Spain or Holland’.¹⁶ If the Union of Utrecht was indeed a ‘Hollandish Union’, it is perhaps time to turn the historical spy-glass around and look at the Revolt from Holland’s vantage point, rather than looking at Holland from the vantage point of a ‘centre’ that never quite had things under control. This book makes three arguments. First, the provincial States articulated and pursued a clear vision of Holland’s aims in the war against Spain. The primary objective was to ‘close’ the borders of what Hollanders called their ‘Garden’.¹⁷ Once the frontiers were well guarded by fortresses and garrisons, the next step was to fortify key towns beyond the border, on rivers along which Holland might be (and had been) penetrated by enemy forces. The strategic aim of the Union of Utrecht was thus to secure the provinces that formed Holland’s historic hinterland, north of the great rivers. Leaders in Utrecht and Gelderland knew they were pieces in a chess game played from The Hague, but they knew as well that without Holland’s continuing support their only choice was to come to terms with the king of Spain. What of the provinces south of the rivers, the greater part of that comprehensive Low Countries ‘fatherland’ to which William of Orange gave his allegiance? Holland could not shirk its responsibilities to the States General, but it could and did allocate resources according to its own priorities: Holland’s Garden came ﬁrst. Second, only Holland had the resources to keep troops in the ﬁeld, especially during the vulnerable early years of the new Republic (1572–88). Fighting off the Spanish army required steadily rising expenditures, to keep pace with greater infusions of specie from Spain. This meant not just an ever-growing ﬁscal burden, mainly in the form of excise and land taxes, but also an ever-growing demand for loans from Holland’s burghers. Since most of the loans were voluntary, still more revenue had to be found, to give burgher-lenders some assurance of eventual repayment. There was of course never enough money, so that cash and credits had to be shifted from one pot to another, as the direst necessity dictated. This task the budgetary committees of the States managed with great skill. But ¹⁶ Israel, The Dutch Republic, 199–205. Cf. Pieter Geyl, The Revolt of the Netherlands (1555–1559) (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1958), 213: as led by Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the States of Holland ‘were undoubtedly the only purposeful force in the Union at present, the only one able to save the country from complete anarchy in the face of the enemy’. ¹⁷ Tuin in modern Dutch means a garden or backyard, but the ancient meaning of the word was a fence or fenced-in enclosure (cf. German Zaun): a garden has by deﬁnition a fence. For the then familiar image of the ‘Hollandse Tuin’, see Chapter 5.

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Introduction

their achievement was possible only because of a larger development. Just in these war-torn years, trades and industries yielded more revenue, and burghers had more cash to lend, because Holland was experiencing one of the greatest economic booms in recorded history. Even as neighbouring provinces languished amid the havoc of war—indeed, partly because these potential rivals languished amid the havoc of war—Holland prospered as never before. Finally, Holland had indeed a vantage point of its own; the fact that war aims and budget plans could be worked out in the States was part of a larger process of consensus-building. In addition to the college of nobles, eighteen cities had voting rights in the States,¹⁸ each resolved on defending its own interests. But regent families of the leading towns were accustomed to working together toward policies that might satisfy as many local interests as possible.¹⁹ The task of formulating Holland’s collective goals fell to a comparatively small group of these men—those who regularly attended sessions of the States as deputies for their towns, and served on important committees.²⁰ For example, a solid majority in the States resolutely opposed embargoes on trade to the provinces under Spanish rule, despite strong popular support for such embargoes in other provinces, and in parts of Holland itself. The gentlemen-deputies understood, if others did not, that prohibitions of this kind could not prevent needed supplies from reaching the enemy, but would give a boost to Holland’s trading rivals—an assessment with which historians have tended to agree. There was also the volatile issue of religion. Should the Reformed Church be left to govern its own affairs? Or should town magistrates, sensitive to the fact that members of the ‘ofﬁcial’ Church were a small minority, keep overzealous dominees in check? And must freedom to worship in the privacy of one’s home be extended not just to Mennonites and Lutherans, but also to Catholics? On these and other points defenders of the States consensus faced continual challenge, not only from the States General, where proposals by the Hollanders were always taken for schemes to advance Holland’s own well-being, but also from individual towns and important groups within Holland. Continuity in Holland’s military and ﬁscal policies thus depended on the vicissitudes of politics; the oligarchic town regents struggled to maintain their consensus in the States, and (sometimes) their authority in their own towns as well. They had to convince people who were their constituents—in an informal if not a formal sense—that there was indeed ¹⁸ That is, there were nineteen votes in all. Prior to the Revolt only the six so-called ‘great cities’ had voting rights, meaning there were seven votes in all. ¹⁹ This is the argument of my Holland under Habsburg Rule, 1506–1566: The Formation of a Body Politic (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990). ²⁰ J. W. Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand: De ontwikkeling van hun funkties en organisatie in de periode 1544–1588 ( The Hague: Stichting Hollands Historische Reeks, 1990), Bijlage 1, ‘De belangrijkste edelen en stedelijke gedeputeerden ter dagvaart’ (‘The most important nobles and urban deputies at the meetings of the States’), 241–72, gives brief sketches of ﬁfteen noblemen and sixty-eight burgher deputies who were particularly active between 1572 and 1588.

Introduction

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what may be called an ‘interest of Holland’,²¹ and that they themselves were its natural spokesmen. These three arguments ﬁt together to make a new picture of the early Revolt. Because the States of Holland concentrated its resources on defending the frontier, and securing neighbouring provinces north of the rivers, Holland became a Garden indeed, an island of peace and security surrounded by war. Because Holland’s interior was (after 1576) spared from the ﬁghting, it also became a land of refuge, not just for Protestants ﬂeeing Spanish persecution in the southern provinces, but for merchants and craftsmen in search of better opportunities. The fact that Amsterdam, from about 1585, replaced Antwerp as the leading entrepôt of northern Europe, reﬂected the vicissitudes of war: rebel troops controlled the Scheldt below Antwerp, even after the city was recaptured by Spain; sooner or later, merchants from the southern Low Countries resettled in Amsterdam, bringing with them valuable international connections. Amsterdam’s growing trade network was in turn the major stimulus for a great economic boom, which made it possible for Holland’s burghers to keep pace with the growing demand for war taxes and war loans. Finally, so long as Holland was shielded from the war, and thus prospered, the town regents had enough credit to maintain themselves against their domestic opposition. The complexity of the story will require treating each strand of the argument in its own terms. Accordingly, each of the four Parts of the book will have the same structure. Following a brief prologue, providing the larger Low Countries canvas for developments in Holland, there will be separate sections on (i) the war aims of the States of Holland, (ii) the means by which the States raised needed funds, and (iii) political conﬂict between the regent oligarchy and their domestic critics. Part I (1549–66) reviews Holland’s place within the Habsburg Netherlands, as a province having its own objectives, though not the same weight as Flanders or Brabant. Part II concentrates on the years 1572–6, when Holland’s rebel towns faced repeated invasion by larger and better-disciplined Spanish forces, and also the ﬁerce opposition of loyalists within Holland. Part III (1576–82) focuses on how Holland made use of a temporary collapse of Spain’s military position to build up a defensive perimeter, extending some distance beyond Holland’s borders. Part IV examines how this redoubt of the Revolt, in effect governed from Holland, was tested in the years 1583–8: militarily, by the victories of Spain’s governor-general, Alexander of Parma; ﬁnancially, by a huge increase in the costs of war; and politically, by partisans of a stronger central government. The year 1588 hardly marks the end of the ﬁghting; the war against Spain would continue without interruption until the Twelve Years Truce of 1609–21, thereafter to resume once more, until the Peace of Westphalia in ²¹ To my knowledge this term was not current until the seventeenth century. Cf. Pieter de la Court, The True Interest and Political Maxims of the Republic of Holland (London, 1746; repr. New York: Arno Press, 1972), of which the ﬁrst Dutch edition appeared in 1664.

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1648. Nonetheless, by 1588 the foundations were in place for a self-governing state that was capable of managing the war. Within a few years, the stadtholder, Maurits of Nassau—a better general than his father—would launch from this platform the ﬁrst successful Dutch offensive.²² Finally, the Epilogue will explore how the Dutch understood what they had wrought—a new and strong republic, in an age when monarchy held sway across most of Europe. ²² The most recent biography is Van Deursen, Maurits van Nassau.

PART I T H E H A B S BU RG NETHERL ANDS,1549–1567

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Prologue: Prince Philip’s Tour of the Low Countries, 1549 In sixteenth-century Europe politics was the dance of authority with privilege. Emperor Charles V was ruler in so many lands that he seldom exercised authority in his own person. In the Holy Roman Empire, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria represented his elder brother, as king of the Romans or heir apparent to the imperial throne. When absent from Spain, Charles entrusted the realms of Castile and Aragón to his wife Isabella (d. 1538), or his son, the future King Philip II (1527–98). The crown of Aragón included the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, where viceroys acted in Charles’s name. In the Low Countries Charles ruled the provinces inherited from his Burgundian ancestors¹ under separate titles, as duke of Brabant, count of Flanders, count of Holland and Zeeland, etc. Two strong-minded Habsburg women functioned as regents of the Netherlands: Charles’s aunt, Margaret of Austria, from 1517 to 1530, and his sister, Mary of Hungary, from 1531 to 1555. Both Charles and those who governed in his name had a clear conception of his hauteur —what theorists would soon be calling sovereignty.² Mary of Hungary, faced by Holland’s adamant refusal to accept a 1 per cent export fee to which the other provinces had agreed, imposed the tax in Holland by virtue of ‘the emperor’s absolute authority’; she knew that this principle, because seldom invoked, brooked no opposition.³ Yet it was equally true in each of Charles’s lands that subjects enjoyed privileges resting on grants ¹ Between 1364 and 1477, the dukes of Burgundy, a cadet branch of the French royal house, collected through a series of fortunate marriages the provinces that later made up the Habsburg Netherlands. The daughter of the last duke of the male line, Charles the Bold (d. 1477), Mary of Burgundy (d. 1482), found a protector in Maximilian of Habsburg, archduke of Austria, and, from 1495 until his death in 1519, Holy Roman Emperor. Their son, Archduke Philip the Handsome (d. 1506), married Juana, a daughter of the Catholic Kings, Isabella of Castile (d. 1504) and Ferdinand of Aragón (d. 1516). Their ﬁrst child, the future Charles V, was born in Ghent (Flanders) in 1500. Because Juana’s siblings predeceased her, and because ‘Juana the Mad’ (d. 1534) was deemed mentally incompetent, the Iberian kingdoms passed at Ferdinand’s death to young Archduke Charles, who was subsequently chosen by the Holy Roman Empire’s electoral princes as emperor (1519), in succession to his grandfather Maximilian I. ² See Antony Black, Monarchy and Communities: Political Ideas in the Later Conciliar Controversies, 1430–1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). ³ RSH 7 March 1543, ‘ex potestate absoluta imperatoris’. For background, see Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 55.

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The Habsburg Netherlands,1549–1567

Map. 1 The Habsburg Netherlands, 1555

by his predecessors; these could not lightly be set aside. The privileged convened in parliamentary assemblies: nobles and (often) clergy, exempt from most forms of taxation; and deputies from the cities with voting rights, jealous of their power to decide where the burden of taxation fell. The sovereign and his elites enacted their mutual respect to the music of ceremony. As regent in Spain during his father’s long absence (from 1543),

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Prince Philip knew that the art of ruling consisted of co-opting the inﬂuence of the great men of the realm, without offending their amour propre. As Philip was to succeed in all of his father’s lands, save for the Holy Roman Empire,⁴ it was deemed prudent for him to make the acquaintance of the great men among his future subjects. Philip began his grand tour (late December 1548) with three weeks of feasting in Milan, where the dynasty’s rule was least secure, the duchy having been claimed by Charles V only in 1535.⁵ From there he proceeded overland, arriving by March in Luxembourg, the common point of entry from southern Germany to the Low Countries. Here and in each of the other provinces he was fˆeted by tournaments, grand entry processions into major towns, skits, and tableaux on civic and religious themes. These festivities were lovingly chronicled by Juan Cristoforo Calvete de Estrella:⁶ the grander the ceremony, the greater the ruler so honoured. Civic ceremonies also enabled local worthies to demonstrate loyalty to the dynasty, and their own importance. On his circuit of the Low Countries provinces (July to October)⁷ Philip was accompanied by senior imperial advisers, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, third duke of Alba (1506–82), and Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, bishop of Arras (1517–84). They will have made sure the prince spent time with the men most important to the maintaining of his dynasty’s authority. WA R Since Philip had no experience of war, he had to get to know the men who would lead his armies. Men from the great noble families, with lands in various provinces and palaces in Brussels, traditionally served as provincial governors and military commanders. Only men of the highest pedigree, trained for war, had both the combat experience and the social authority to command the respect of seasoned captains.⁸ In the 1530s, Mary of Hungary’s senior commander had been Count Henry of Nassau (1483–1538). The Low Countries branch of this German family had extensive holdings in Brabant and Holland; Henry was also prince of ⁴ By agreement between the brothers, Ferdinand, the king of the Romans, was to succeed Charles as emperor, followed by his eldest son, Maximilian. ⁵ Mia Rodriguez-Salgado, The Changing Face of Empire: Charles V, Philip II, and Habsburg Authority, 1551–1559 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 36–7. ⁶ Calvete de Estrella, El felicísimo viaje del muy alto y muy poderoso príncipe Don Felipe, ed. Miguel Artigas, Sociedad de Biblióﬁlos Espa˜noles, 2nd series, vols. vii. viii (Madrid, 1930). For a good assessment, Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez, De Tachtigjarige Oorlog in Spaanse Ogen: De Nederlanden in Spaanse Historische en Literaire Texten (circa 1568–1673) ([Nijmegen]: Vantilt, 2003), 36–42. ⁷ After completing the circuit he remained in the Low Countries nine months longer, November 1549–July 1550: Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 36–49. ⁸ Alba was Charles’s senior military commander. William Maltby, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Third Duke of Alba (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), gives a good overall account; Henry Kamen, The Duke of Alba (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), focuses on Alba’s career as governor-general of the rebellious Low Countries (1566–73).

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Orange (an independent enclave in southern France), as son-in-law and heir of René de Chˆalons (d. 1530), prince of Orange, who died while commanding an imperial army.⁹ Count Henry’s son and heir, Reynier van Nassau, died during the emperor’s campaign in France in France (1544).¹⁰ This second Nassau prince of Orange having left no heir, his titles passed to a distant cousin: young Wilhelm von Nassau (1533–84) was summoned from Germany to be groomed for his family’s position in the military and civil hierarchy of the Low Countries. During his months at the court in Brussels (April–June 1549) and again in August, during nine days of festivities staged by Mary of Hungary at her summer palace in Binche (Hainaut), Philip whiled away the hours in masked balls, hunting, and jousting at the side of his new companions: William of Orange; Lamoral d’Egmont, the count of Buren; Philippe de Montmorency, count of Hornes; and Emmanuel-Philibert, duke of Savoy, whose father had been ousted from his lands by the French (1536).¹¹ In 1556, when it fell to Philip to guide the Netherlands during a continuing war with France, these were the men to whom he turned. Emmanuel-Philibert, appointed as commander in chief during Charles’s last years, continued to serve in this capacity. His lieutenant, also appointed by Charles, was the 23-year-old William of Orange. FINANCE Though the Low Countries and Valois France were at peace in 1549, bankers of both dynasties were still collecting debts from the Habsburg–Valois war of 1542–4. Philip had a very good grasp of state ﬁnance.¹² He understood, better than Charles, that continued borrowing at wartime levels would ruin Castile’s treasury.¹³ Through their agents in Spain, he was familiar as well with the operations of Charles’s principal banker-lenders, like the Fugger of Augsburg and the Grimaldi of Genoa. These and other ﬁrms also had branches in Antwerp (Brabant), the ﬁnancial centre of northern Europe. Here, where each of the ‘nations’ of resident foreign merchants and bankers erected lavish triumphal arches to welcome Philip,¹⁴ he will surely have made the acquaintance of Mary ⁹ The prince of Orange commanded the army that subdued Florence, in keeping with Charles’s promises to the Medici pope, Clement VII: Tracy, Emperor Charles V, Impresario of War: Campaign Strategy, International Finance, and Domestic Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 119-29. ¹⁰ For Charles’s letters to Reynier van Nassau, a piecemeal treatise in the arts of war and governance, Aud. 1660/1/c. ¹¹ Kamen, Philip, 41–42; Estrella Viaje del Príncipe Felipe, i. 175–216; ii. 169. ¹² Tracy, Emperor Charles V, chapters 4, 14. ¹³ Philip II’s 1557 suspension of payments (forcing the bankers holding high-interest short-term loans to accept instead long-term low-interest bonds) was a necessary step his father had refused to take: Rodriguez-Salgado, Changing Face of Empire, 71–2, 231–42. ¹⁴ Estrella, viaje del Príncipe Felipe, vol. ii, on the arches of the Spaniards (123–32), the Genoese (132–47), the Florentines (149–54), the English (170–6), and the [High] Germans (186–9).

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of Hungary’s trusted loan-brokers on the Antwerp exchange: Erasmus Schetz (d. 1550) and his son Gaspar (d. 1580).¹⁵ Loans contracts typically assigned repayment on stated revenues in one or another Habsburg territory. Unlike Castile, where bankers had a rich array of crown revenues from which to choose,¹⁶ about 75 percent of the dynasty’s incomes in the Low Countries came from ordinary and extraordinary subsidies granted by the provincial States (not by the States General).¹⁷ Of this total, about 75 percent came from the subsidies of three Netherlandish-speaking¹⁸ core provinces:¹⁹ Flanders, Brabant, and Holland.²⁰ For the bankers, subsidy revenues were not ideal as securities for debt; the provincial States often draged out negotiations for months, and attached to their grants stipulations forbidding use of the money to repay old debts.²¹ But if loans were to be repaid in the Low Countries—not just in Castile²²—bankers had to deal with the provincial parliaments.²³ Philip too presented himself to the provincial assemblies, to collect the ‘gifts’ to which a future sovereign was entitled; in Holland, the States collected 67,500 pounds (two-thirds of the ordinary subsidy) in what was now a common way, by issuing long-term bonds (renten), and levying new taxes to pay off the debt.²⁴ By meeting with his provincial States Philip followed a Low Countries tradition. A ruler-to-be met with the deputies of each province, ﬁrst to swear ¹⁵ For the Schetz family, see the references in Rodriguez-Salgado, Changing Face of Empire. ¹⁶ For Castile’s various revenues and their relative weight, Tracy, Emperor Charles V, table 5:2, p. 102, based on information from Ramón Carande [Thobar], Carlos V y sus banqueros (3 vols., Madrid, 1943 (new edn. 1967), 1949, 1967, all three volumes reissued Madrid: Sociedad de Estudios y Publicaciones, 2000). ¹⁷ Subsidies were known as beden (requests) in Dutch, aides in French. The States General was summoned ﬁrst, but only to hear a general request for support (known as the proposition générale), presented by the regent or her spokesmen. Then the States of each province were summoned to hear a proposition particulière, giving the quota for that province, as presented by another government spokesman. See Chapter 2. ¹⁸ Not ‘Dutch-speaking’, because this word more properly designates the literary language that emerged in the early Dutch Republic. In the southernmost sector of Brabant, centred on Nivelles, people spoke a dialect of French. ¹⁹ Juliaan Woltjer ﬁrst suggested that these three provinces, with Zeeland (whose subsidy quota was a fraction of Holland’s), formed the ‘core provinces’ of the Netherlands; the usage has since been adopted by (among others) Henk van Nierop and Jonathan Israel. ²⁰ e.g. Aud. 873, 1–51, a summary of Low Countries government income for the years 1520–30: of the total of 13,691,554 pounds of twenty silver stuivers, parliamentary subsidies accounted for 10,130,757 (73%), including 7,549,892 (74% of the 73%) from the three core provinces. See Tracy, Emperor Charles V, chapters 3, 12: for an ordinary subsidy in 1550, the nominal grants (not counting ‘graces’ or rebates claimed by cities with voting rights) were 250,000 pounds for Flanders, 200,000 for Brabant, and 100,000 for Holland. ²¹ e.g. Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 82–3. ²² For subsequent efforts by Philip to block claims on Castile’s revenues by the Schetz ﬁrm—not successful, so long as Mary of Hungary was regent—Rodriguez-Salgado, Changing Face of Empire, 71, 236, 240. ²³ Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 183–4. ²⁴ Tracy, A Financial Revolution in the Habsburg Netherlands: Renten and Renteniers in the County of Holland, 1515–1565 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), 89.

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to uphold its privileges, then to be acclaimed as duke of Brabant, or count of Flanders, or count of Holland and Zeeland, etc. Charles V had made this peregrination thirty-ﬁve years earlier, and he now accompanied Philip on his round of the southern provinces (July and August 1549), then of the northern provinces (September and October). In Brabant, Philip swore to uphold the Blijde Inkomst (‘Joyous Entry’), as Brabant’s charter of privileges was known, not just in Brussels (the capital) but also in Antwerp.²⁵ The noble estate in Brabant (with William of Orange as speaker) usually cooperated with Mary of Hungary’s government, but the clerical estate, made up of the abbots of twelve great monasteries, sometimes thwarted her requests for subsidies.²⁶ Just as troublesome was the urban estate, with deputies from Brabant’s four ‘great cities’: Antwerp, Brussels, Leuven (Louvain), and ’s-Hertogenbosch (Bois-leDuc); in each city the craft guilds, notoriously suspicious of new taxes, had a voice in town government.²⁷ Flanders was represented by the Four Members, an assembly made up of deputies from three main towns - Ghent, Bruges, and Ieper - and from a federation known as the Franc of Bruges, representing castleries and smaller towns west of Bruges.²⁸ Even more than in Brabant, the guild ‘members’ of Flemish town governments were notorious for resisting the government’s ﬁscal demands. In 1537, with a French army on the march, Ghent’s guildsmen refused to accept a war subsidy to which to the other Three Members of Flanders had agreed. With pressure from Ghent’s civic militia, the tax revolt spread to some other districts in Flanders, ending only when Charles V brought 3,000 German mercenaries to the gates of Ghent (1540). Following the trial and execution of sixteen ring leaders, Charles issued a new urban charter for Ghent, stripping the guilds of their right to representation in the city government.²⁹ In Brabant and Flanders the ‘great cities’—notably Antwerp, with c.90,000 people in 1550, and Ghent with 50,000³⁰—could dominate a substantial hinterland. In Holland, Amsterdam had 30,000 people in the 1560s—nearly as many as the next largest four cities combined³¹—but its political weight in the realm as a whole was not to be compared with Antwerp or Ghent. Holland stood out as a land of many small cities. In the space of approximately 2,000 ²⁵ Estrella, Viaje del Príncipe Felipe, i. 211, ii. 208. ²⁶ Pieter Gorissen, ‘De Prelaten van Brabant onder Karel V (1515–1544) en hun Confederatie (1534–1544)’, Standen en Landen/Anciéns pays et assemblées d’état, 6 (1953), 1–127. ²⁷ Tracy, Financial Revolution, 36 n. 29. ²⁸ W. P. Blockmans, De Volksvertegenwoordiging in Vlaanderen in de Overgang van de Middeleeuwen naar de Nieuwe Tijd (1384–1506) (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1978). ²⁹ Tracy, Emperor Charles V, 167–8; N. Maddens, ‘De opstandige houding van Gent tijdens de regeering van Keizer Karel’, Appeltjes uit het Meetjesland, 28 (1977), 203–29. ³⁰ Jan de Vries, European Urbanization, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), appendix I, p. 271. ³¹ Jan de Vries, The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 90–1: 30,000 for Amsterdam, 39,000 for Rotterdam, Leiden, Haarlem, and The Hague combined.

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square miles, thirty-six communities counted as cities in one sense or another, including the capital, The Hague (technically a village, since it had neither walls nor an urban charter from the medieval counts of Holland).³² Based on a survey of taxable wealth dating from 1514, Jan de Vries has estimated the province’s population at about 275,000, with slightly over half living in cities. In the Northern Quarter (Noorderkwartier), to the north of the Zuider Zee inlet known as the IJ, the population (about 82,000) was only about 37 per cent urban. Towns were more densely concentrated in south Holland, between the IJ and the Maas estuary, where approximately 96,000 of 152,000 people lived in cities (63 per cent),³³ including all of the six ‘great cities’ with voting rights in the States, representing about 20 per cent of Holland’s total population. In the order of precedence, in which their deputies spoke at sessions of the States, these were Dordrecht, Delft, Haarlem, Leiden, Amsterdam, and Gouda. The States had a seventh voting member, the college of nobles, thought to represent the interests of the countryside and the small towns.³⁴ The States usually met in The Hague, but because Dordrecht insisted on its privileges as the oldest chartered town, it was here that Prince Philip came to be acclaimed as count of Holland.³⁵ Because the patrician oligarchies of Holland’s cities allowed the guilds no voice in civic affairs (save in Dordrecht), the ﬁerce local patriotism of guildsmen was not so politically potent in Holland as in Flanders and Brabant. But Holland presented the Habsburg regime with a different kind of problem, because its town governments had developed a habit of cooperating on behalf of perceived common interests. This was particularly so in relation to the so-called ‘mother trade’ on which the prosperity of the whole province was thought to depend: Holland ships carried North Sea herring (caught by Holland ﬁshermen) and woollen cloth (some from Holland) to Baltic ports, in exchange for the grain that ³² See RSH, April 1557, an estimate of expected beer and wine excise receipts for twenty-ﬁve walled cities: Amsterdam, 8,940 pounds of twenty silver stuivers; Delft, 5,440; Leiden, 4,300; Dordrecht, 4,005; The Hague, 3,700; Haarlem, 2,900; Rotterdam, 2,200; Gouda, 2,120; Alkmaar, 1,372; Gorcum, 1,300; Enkhuizen, 1,100; Hoorn, 950; Edam, 670; Schiedam, 575; Geertruidenberg, 450; Woerden, 429; Heusden, 410; Monnikendam, 400; Naarden, 395; Medemblik, 250; Oudewater, 215; Zevenberg, 200; Weesp, 158; Muyden, 115; Heukelom, 30. Lodovico Guicciardini, Description of the Low Countreys (London, 1593, a translation of the 1560 Italian edn.), 62–3, notes that two of these cities, Medemblik and Muyden, no longer had walls. The excise was also collected in three walled cities not listed above (Brill, Schoonhoven, and Worcum), while four other walled cities ruled by direct vassals of the count of Holland (i.e. Charles V) refused to pay (Asperen, IJsselstein, Leerdam, and Vianen). Finally, Guicciardini also mentions that the unwalled communities of Beverwijk, Gravesande, Nieuwpoort, and Vlaardingen had urban charters; and that Purmermend (not counted as a city until after 1572) was walled. ³³ De Vries, Dutch Rural Economy, 90. ³⁴ H. F. K. van Nierop, Van ridders tot regenten: De Hollandse adel in de zestiende en de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw ( The Hague: Stichting Hollands Historische Reeks, 1984). ³⁵ RSH 17 September 1549: Holland’s gift of 50,000 Philippus gulden (67,500 pounds of twenty stuivers) is to be paid on the day Philip is acclaimed as count.

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was brought back to be stored in Amsterdam for resale and reshipment.³⁶ That Holland’s resistance to a tax on exports had caused Mary of Hungary to invoke the emperor’s ‘absolute authority’ was not an accident.³⁷ This kind of stubbornness about taxes was not familiar to Philip, for Castile had no provinces. In Castilian law, any village not directly subject to the crown, or to a noble or ecclesiastical lord, was deemed subject to a nearby town.³⁸ By and large, the most important towns were the eighteen cities that had the privilege of sending procuradores to the Cortes of Castile. From negotiations with the Cortes Philip knew all about the amour propre of privileged cities, but nothing in his experience prepared him for a territory whose spokesmen claimed to represent not just the interests of their towns, but also the collective interest of a province. How did one deal with provincial amour propre? The old rule of governing, ‘divide and conquer’, was still the best, at least in the short run. Mary of Hungary kept Holland’s great cities divided by offering individual towns ‘graces’ or rebates that lowered their subsidy quotas. But this method of gaining consent for subsidies created problems for the future, because towns insisted on keeping rebates once given. By 1536 Holland’s ordinary subsidy yielded only about 74 per cent of its nominal value of 80,000 pounds. When Mary of Hungary insisted on having the full amount, the States responded by boosting the nominal value of a subsidy—making Holland’s small towns and villages pay more to make up for continuing rebates enjoyed by the great cities.³⁹ In 1549, in connection with the gift for Prince Philip, four of the great cities—Delft, Haarlem, Gouda, and Leiden—demanded ‘rebates on rebates’; they calculated the rebates due to them as a percentage of the nominal value of the levy, not as a percentage of the sum that was actually expected to be raised.⁴⁰ No wonder that when Philip took responsibility for the Netherlands, in 1556, he and his governor-general, Emmanuel-Philibert of Savoy, refused to do business in the usual way. They launched a grand experiment by challenging all the provinces to work together, through the States General, to raise revenues for the continuing war against France. POLITICS A government was expected to promote the well-being of its subjects, but efforts to promote the general well-being often involved clashes with local interests. The ³⁶ The classic work is Aksel E. Christensen, Dutch Trade to the Baltic around 1600 (Copenhagen: E. Munksgaard, 1941). See also H. de Haan, Moedernegotiatie en grote vaart (Amsterdam: SUA, 1977). ³⁷ Above, n. 3. ³⁸ Helen Nader, Liberty in Absolutist Spain: The Habsburg Sale of Towns, 1516–1700 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). ³⁹ Tracy, Financial Revolution, 35–8, 55–7; Holland under Habsburg Rule, 141–2. ⁴⁰ RSH 17 August, 17 September, 24 September 1549, 4, 5 January 1550.

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huge quantities of Baltic grain warehoused in Amsterdam⁴¹ provided material for a classic conﬂict of this kind. To the government in Brussels, a duty on the grain re-exported from Amsterdam to other parts of Europe seemed an appropriate source of revenue, but the Hollanders resisted at every turn, generally with success. In a stream of memoranda to Brussels, they argued, plausibly, that a tax on exports from Amsterdam would cause price-sensitive Baltic merchants to ﬁnd another market for their wares; for example, Emden (East Friesland) might have served just as well as an entrepˆot for the grain trade.⁴² Mary of Hungary did, as noted, override Holland’s opposition to a general tax on exports in 1541, but the results were disappointing: even though the tax was prolonged for two years, the Antwerp banker who had lent the government money against the proceeds failed to recoup his investment.⁴³ The grain trade was vital to the well-being of the Low Countries, because most of the grain consumed in these provinces came from the Baltic. As Europe’s population grew during the middle decades of the sixteenth century, and with it the demand for Baltic grain, Mary of Hungary’s government was understandably concerned to have accurate information about shipments from the Baltic, with a view toward price regulation and other measures to forestall shortage. She found a reliable ally in Willem Dirkszoon Baerdes, who was sheriff of Amsterdam from 1542 to 1566. Through his friends among Amsterdam’s Baltic traders Baerdes had a good grasp of market conditions in the east, and he was also willing to use his authority as sheriff to pry information about supplies on hand from Amsterdammers who might not have been eager to provide it. His correspondence with the regent shows Baerdes to have been just the kind of locally important man the government needed to carry out its policies.⁴⁴ In turn, Baerdes gained credit in Brussels to help fend off those in Amsterdam who criticized him for lax enforcement of the government’s heresy laws. No Christian ruler could fail to look after the spiritual well-being of his subjects. In this age of religious division, Charles V took seriously his duty before God to defend the Catholic faith.⁴⁵ In the Holy Roman Empire, more a ⁴¹ To minimize infestation from rodents, grain was stored in attics—the topmost ﬂoors of patrician houses, often on Warmoes Straat, where an outdoor grain exchange brought Baltic merchants together with traders from Amsterdam and farther aﬁeld. ⁴² P. A. Meillink, ‘Rapporten en Betoogen nopens het Congiegeld op Granen, 1539–1541’, Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap te Utrecht, 44 (1923), 1–124. See also Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 94–105. ⁴³ Tracy, Financial Revolution, 83 n. 26. ⁴⁴ Tracy, ‘Habsburg Grain Policy and Amsterdam Politics: The Career of Sheriff Willem Dirkszoon Baerdes, 1542–1566’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 18 (1983), 293–319. ⁴⁵ e.g. in 1552 Charles refused to sign a treaty that Ferdinand had negotiated with Moritz of Saxony, leader of a revived Schmalkaldic League, because he thought he would imperil his immortal soul if he accepted the treaty’s cardinal point, stipulating not just a temporary but a permanent toleration for Lutheranism within the Holy Roman Empire. Moritz agreed to rewrite the offending clause as Charles demanded, but permanent toleration for Lutheranism became a part of imperial law with the Peace of Augsburg in 1555.

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federation of autonomous territories than a uniﬁed polity, his effort to ban the teachings of Martin Luther through the Edict of Worms (1521) had proven a dismal failure. Hence in his hereditary Netherlands provinces he put in place a draconian regime of anti-heresy laws.⁴⁶ Religion was uppermost in the ‘moral instruction’ Charles left for Philip on his departure from Spain (1543): ‘Have God always before your eyes, to offer to Him all the labours and cares you must endure, sacriﬁcing yourself and being vigilant in your duty.’⁴⁷ As ruler of the Low Countries, Philip would prove to be his father’s son in this respect more than any other. In Philip’s native Castile, his grandmother Isabella had achieved important reforms among the clergy. But the clergy of the Low Countries, shepherds of a restive ﬂock, were themselves a cause for concern.⁴⁸ On parts of his Low Countries tour Philip was accompanied by Joris van Egmond, bishop of Utrecht from 1534 to 1553, a pious man and a patron of reform-minded humanist clerics.⁴⁹ But what could even a conscientious bishop do against the entrenched privileges of ecclesiastical corporations like Utrecht’s ﬁve collegiate chapters, many of whose canons, sons of the local aristocracy, openly scorned the rule of clerical celibacy?⁵⁰ Moreover, the bishopric of Utrecht was one of only three episcopal sees located within the boundaries of the Habsburg Netherlands—the archbishopric of Cambrai and the bishopric of Tournai, far to the south, were the others. The region’s populous cities were thus altogether free of episcopal oversight, and their churches were in many cases under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of foreign prelates, like the prince-bishop of Liège and the prince-archbishop of Cologne. Philip would give his attention to this problem, but only after the war with France was settled by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559). At the time of his grand tour, it might have seemed that Protestantism was no longer a grave threat to Catholic orthodoxy in the Netherlands. Lutheran preachers of the 1520s had been either forced into exile or, in the case of three Augustinian friars in Brussels (1523), burned at the stake.⁵¹ The revolutionary Melchiorite Anabaptists - famous for the kingdom they proclaimed in the German city of Münster (1534–6)—scarcely existed any longer as an organized movement. Their peaceful Mennonite successors, often led by men of humble ⁴⁶ Tracy, ‘Heresy Law and Centralization under Mary of Hungary: Conﬂict between the Council of Holland and the Central Government over the Enforcement of Charles V’s Placards’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 73 (1982), 284–307. ⁴⁷ Charles to Philip, 4 May 1543, Corpus Documental de Carlos V, ed. Manuel Fernández Alvárez (Salamanca: Universided de Salamanca, 1973–81), Letter CLII, ii. 93. ⁴⁸ Philip’s reorganization of the Netherlands Church, with fourteen new dioceses, is discussed in Chapter 3. ⁴⁹ Peter Bietenholz, ‘Joris and Filips van Egmond’, Contemporaries of Erasmus ed. P, Bietenholz ( Toronto: Universaly of Toranto Press, 1985-7), i. 422–3. ⁵⁰ R. R. Post, Kerkelijke Verhoudingen in Nederland vóór de Reformatie van 1500 tot 1580 (Utrecht: Het Spectrum, 1954). ⁵¹ Hans Wiersma, ‘The Recantation, Rehabilitation and Reformation of Jacob Probst’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Luther-Northwestern Seminary, St Paul, Minn., 2005).

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background, knew how to lie low and avoid detection.⁵² To be sure, Calvinism was now making inroads, but this tougher variant of Protestantism was as yet barely detectable.⁵³ Perhaps the clearest sign of danger to Catholic orthodoxy lay in the popular plays staged by urban ‘Chambers of Rhetoric’, patronized especially by guildsmen. Mary of Hungary’s government in Brussels constantly warned its administrative organs in the provinces—like the Council of Holland in The Hague—to have texts of the plays scrutinized by reliable theologians before they could be performed. In fact, surviving scripts show a pervasive anticlericalism, often spiced with explicit references to key Protestant doctrines, like justiﬁcation by faith.⁵⁴ When Calvinist preachers came, they would ﬁnd a hearing. Some Holland towns invoked religious themes in their displays for Philip. Rotterdam unveiled a life-sized wooden statue of Erasmus (d. 1536), the great humanist New Testament scholar, known also for his defence of the Catholic doctrine of free will against Luther’s doctrine of predestination. Rotterdammers doubtless assumed the prince would be pleased by this tribute to the city’s most famous son, who had also been an honorary councillor to Charles V. But, as Holland’s burghers could not have appreciated, the Spanish court now represented a very different kind of Catholicism, in which Erasmus’ vision of Catholic reform was seen as slipshod theology, encouraging heresy.⁵⁵ Philip, a product of this court, was the very embodiment of a stern and unyielding Catholic orthodoxy. The display in Amsterdam was perhaps more to Philip’s taste, for here was a tableau showing orthodox faith delivered from criminous heretical plots by the power of Habsburg arms. Amsterdam had been the scene of such a plot in May 1534, when Melchiorite Anabaptists stormed and held the town hall until expelled by the civic militia. In the 1520s and early 1530s, Amsterdam had been conspicuous among the Holland towns that showed minimal interest in enforcing the anti-heresy placards against their own burghers. The ruling faction of these years, with its laxity towards heresy, had critics among the burghers, and they gained credibility when the assault on city hall seemed to show the bankruptcy of a live-and-let-live policy. By 1538 Amsterdam had a new ruling faction, led by Meester Hendrik Dirkszoon, which was to remain ⁵² Cornelius Krahn, Dutch Anabaptism ( The Hague: Nijhoff, 1968). ⁵³ For an overview, with a focus on Flanders, Johan Decavele, De dagraad van de Reformatie in Vlaanderen (Brussels: Akademie van Wetternschappen, Letteren en Schoone Kunsten van België, 1975). ⁵⁴ Gary Waite, Reformers on Stage : Popular Drama and Religious Propaganda in the Low Countries of Charles V, 1515–1556 ( Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). ⁵⁵ Marcel Bataillon, Érasme et l’Espagne (new edn., 3 vols., Geneva: Droz, 1991). Cf. Pérez, De Tachtigjarige Oorlog in Spaanse Ogen, 39–41: Calvete praises the memory of Erasmus, but also makes no mention of religious dissent in the Low Countries.

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in power until 1578.⁵⁶ In 1549, they signalled through the anti-heresy tableau their ﬁrm support of Habsburg religious policy. They were precisely the kind of allies that the government needed in its ongoing struggle to preserve Catholic orthodoxy. But if a message was being sent in 1549, neither Philip nor the Brussels government seems to have received it. Mary of Hungary’s key collaborator in Amsterdam, Sheriff Baerdes, happened to be a bitter foe of the Dirkist magistrates. A few years prior to Philip’s grand tour the magistrates became embroiled in a quarrel with property owners in the Lastage, a district just outside the city walls. Some Lastagiers were associated with the shipbuilding trades, and had their shops and ropewalks here; others had ties to Amsterdam’s Baltic merchants. The magistrates wanted buildings in the Lastage razed, to create a free-ﬁre zone for cannon mounted on the city walls, and prevent a potential foe from taking shelter close to the walls. The Lastagiers claimed that the real issue was that the magistrates owned substantial plots within the walls, and wanted this land used to accommodate the demand for new housing, not the Lastage or other parcels outside the walls. The Lastagiers found a key ally in Sheriff Baerdes, who backed their complaints to the central government. Mary of Hungary’s government could work with Sheriff Baerdes on the supervision of the grain trade, or it could work with the Dirkist magistrates toward the supression of heresy, but it could not do both at the same time. It seems the government identiﬁed grain policy as the more important issue. While Brussels showed some sympathy for the position of the Lastagiers, possibly because of Baerdes, charges that Sheriff Baerdes was lax in the enforcement of the anti-heresy placards were not taken seriously.⁵⁷ Philip’s subjects-to-be also conveyed messages to him between the lines of ﬂowery orations by town pensionaries,⁵⁸ and in the elegant couplets, mostly in Latin, that decorated the triumphal arches. In Holland, Dordrecht reminded Philip that ‘a heart muniﬁcent to the people wins love for the prince’. Leiden and Haarlem invoked the wise example of King Solomon, while Amsterdam boasted of how trade had within a few centuries transformed a rustic settlement into a port famed for its wares as far away as Lisbon’s Tagus estuary. Perhaps it was Dordrecht again that came closest to expressing a common aspiration: ‘Under your rule, may liberty and peace enrich us.’⁵⁹ Burghers ⁵⁶ On the Dirkist ruling faction, named after its leading member, Meester Hendrik Dirszoon, Tracy, ‘A Premature Counter-Reformation: The Dirkist Government of Amsterdam, 1538–1578,’ Journal of Religious History, 13 (1984), 150–67, and Henk van Nierop, Het Foute Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Vossinspers, 2000). ⁵⁷ For the fullest account, Johannes Ter Gouw, Geschiedenis van Amsterdam (8 vols., Amsterdam: Scheltema & Holtema, 1879–93), vol. vi. ⁵⁸ The pensionaris was the city attorney, who often represented the magistrates at meetings of the provincial States and in discussions with government ofﬁcials. ⁵⁹ Estrella, Viaje del Príncipe Felipe, ii. 265, 272, 283, 285, 292, 297–8.

Prologue

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in Holland, as in towns everywhere, mainly wanted to pursue their business without interference from outside forces beyond their control. This was, alas, an impossible dream. No province or town could isolate itself from the great conﬂicts of the era. The next three chapters will show how the Habsburg–Valois wars and the Protestant Reformation roiled the waters of Holland’s small pond.

1 The Habsburg–Valois School of War In the forty years between 1520 and 1559, Valois and Habsburg were at war for twenty years.¹ Not since Charlemagne had any dynasty ruled over so much of Europe as the House of Austria.² France, the continent’s largest kingdom, with a population of between ﬁfteen and twenty million, was a natural rival. In Italy, Kings Louis XII (1498–1515) and Francis I (1515–47)³ battled the Habsburgs for the duchy of Milan, heart of the rich and populous Lombard plain: Milan changed hands ﬁve times between 1498 and 1535.⁴ In Germany, Francis I and Henry II (1547–59) encouraged the aspirations of the Schmalkaldic League, the federation of Protestant princes and towns that challenged Charles’s authority as Holy Roman Emperor.⁵ Finally, as the Ottoman Empire reached its zenith under Sultan Suleyman the Lawgiver (1520–66), Francis I and Henry II allied with the Turks, to forestall what they saw as Charles V’s ambition to dominate Europe. Charles made it his highest priority to break the power of a kingdom whose perﬁdy, in his view, prevented Christendom from uniting against the inﬁdel.⁶ What matters here is that this struggle for hegemony in Europe entailed recurring warfare along the Franco-Netherlandish frontier. ¹ 1521/4, 1527/9, 1536/7, 1542/4, and 1551/9, not counting a one-year truce in 1556/7. ² Charles V was Holy Roman Emperor, ‘natural prince’ of the Low Countries provinces, king of Castile and Aragón, king of Naples and Sicily, and duke of Milan (from 1535). His brother Ferdinand ruled the family’s Austrian lands; from 1526 he was also king of Bohemia, and claimed the crown of Hungary, though ruling only parts of it. These lands contained c.70,000,000 people, in a European population of c.160,000,000. ³ Robert J. Knecht, Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of King Francis I, 1515–1547 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). ⁴ The so-called Wars of Italy (1494–1559) began when France’s Charles VIII conquered and brieﬂy held the kingdom of Naples, then ruled by an illegitimate branch of the royal house of Aragón. In short order, Naples was occupied by Ferdinand of Aragón (Charles V’s maternal grandfather), while Louis XII of France conquered the duchy of Milan, which Emperor Maximilian I (Charles’s paternal grandfather) claimed as a ﬁef of the Holy Roman Empire. ⁵ See Tracy, Emperor Charles V, chapters 10 and 11. ⁶ In 1517, Suleyman’s father Sultan Selim I (1512–20) defeated and subjugated the Cairo-based Mamluk Empire, previously a rival to the Ottomans. For Charles’s campaigns against the sultan and in Ottoman North Africa, Tracy, Emperor Charles V, chapters 7 and 8.

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S T R AT E G Y A N D TAC T I C S Military historians see Habsburg–Valois rivalry as a principal dynamic in the inter-state competition that stimulated major improvements in the art of waging war. In the late ﬁfteenth century, Italy’s princes saw the proud walls of towns and fortresses collapse under the bombardment of French siege cannon. In response, Italian military engineers devised fortiﬁcations to withstand artillery, the so-called trace italienne or bastion trace. The high curtain walls of the past gave way to low ramparts that occupied a much larger circuit; ﬁlled with mud, the new walls could absorb the shock of incoming ﬁre. Triangular projections (bastions) built at regular intervals provided ﬂanking ﬁre along the walls, and served as platforms for artillery to keep an attacker at bay. Though the trace italienne was far too expensive for most towns to undertake on their own, Italian engineers also had a rough-and-ready alternative: behind a spot where curtain walls were under bombardment, they built a retirata, a mound of dirt and rubble, so that the besieger, having breached the wall, faced an improvised rampart bristling with guns and impervious to cannon-shot.⁷ In keeping with Roman military doctrine—as in the De Re Militari of Vegetius, or the History of Polybius⁸—planners distinguished between ﬁeld armies and garrison forces. For defence, fortresses were especially needed along the Franco-Netherlandish frontier, not marked by natural barriers of any kind. Thus Francis I had an imposing fortress of the new style built at Hesdin, where French Picardy could be threatened from the Low Countries or from Calais, still an English enclave. Charles V followed suit by reﬁtting the citadel of Cateau-Cambrésis in the new style. In the south-east corner of Hainaut, where the Meuse formed a border with the episcopal principality of Liège, he built a seemingly impregnable new fortress called Marienbourg, after Mary of Hungary. When Henry II captured Marienbourg, Charles built an even bigger fortress nearby, called Philippeville, after his son, the future Philip II.⁹ But fortresses, no ⁷ Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). For critique, Clifford Rogers, ed., The Military Revolution Debate: Readings in the Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995). For a model study of fortiﬁcation and siege warfare at the end of Charles V’s reign, Simon Pepper and Nicholas Adams, Firearms and Fortiﬁcations: Military Architecture and Siege Warfare in Sixteenth-Century Siena (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). ⁸ On Vegetius, Reginald Schrader, ‘The Ownership and Distribution of Manuscripts of the De Re Militari of Flavius Vegetius Renatus before the year 1300’ (Ph.D. dissertation Columbia University, 1976); on Polybius, Arnaldo Momigliano, ‘Polybius’s Reappearance in Western Europe’, in his Sesto contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico (2 vols., Rome: Edizioni di Storia e della Letteratura, 1980) vol. I. 103–23. ⁹ For a good overview, Heinz Stoob, ‘Die Stadtbefestigung: Vergleichende Überlegungen zur bürgerlichen Siedlungs- und Baugeschichte, besonders in der frühen Neuzeit’, in Kersten Krüger,

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matter how strong, were never enough. As along the limes of the late Roman Empire, there was need as well for mobile units posted between the fortresses. Finally, there had to be garrisons in key towns, not just as a protection against the enemy, but to keep faint-hearted citizens mindful of their duty. But no military frontier was proof against determined attack. Moreover, in an era when the engines of war ran on tax revenues wrung from reluctant subjects, a purely defensive war carried political risks. As Margaret of Austria wrote to Charles V, following campaigns into Holland by a French ally, the duke of Gelderland, ‘What the Hollanders most complain about is that they always pay [subsidies] under colour of war, but one does not make war on their behalf.’¹⁰ The purpose of war was to make the enemy rethink his plans. For a punitive campaign, meant only to make a point, it might sufﬁce to burn his ﬁelds. Full-scale war, intended to force the other side to terms, involved either ﬁnding and defeating the foe’s main force, or conquering his fortiﬁed towns, one by one if need be. The latter strategy was more costly, because a well-supplied and well-garrisoned town, even if fortiﬁed in the old style, might hold out for months. But the alternative—the terrible hazard of a major battle in open country—was not the ﬁrst choice for a sensible commander. The prince who launched a major offensive—even a Charles V—also needed an ally to attack at the same time, preferably as far away as possible from his own chosen point of invasion. For example, when Charles marched on Paris from his base in Luxembourg (1544), he persuaded Henry VIII to cross the Channel with a large army; Henry was supposed to march on Paris from the opposite direction, but chose instead to besiege and subdue Boulogne, thus adding (albeit temporarily) to England’s Calais enclave.¹¹ The legions of ancient Rome were paid regularly, four times a year; the Byzantines preserved this proud imperial tradition, and so did the Ottomans. But no European power of the sixteenth century had more than a token standing army, like the roughly 3,000 men of the mounted compagnies d’ordonnance in the Low Countries. Instead, mercenary units were recruited as needed.¹² Garrison soldiers had to be kept on the payroll year-round, as did ofﬁcer cadres for the companies of mercenaries. But ﬁeld armies were hired only for the six-month campaign season, from April or May to September or October. Men contracted to serve by the month, and demanded the ﬁrst month’s wages in cash, at the ed., Europäische Städte im Zeitalter des Barock: Gestalt—Kultur—Soizialgefüge (Vienna: Böhlau, 1988), 25–54. ¹⁰ Margaret to Charles, 21 February 1524, in Karl Lanz, Correspondenz des Kaisers Karl V (3 vols., reprint of 1843–6 edn., Frankfurt: Minerva, 1966), Letter 90, i. 89–90. ¹¹ Tracy, Emperor Charles V, chapter 9. ¹² For this and the next three paragraphs: Réné Quatrefages, ‘L’Organisation militaire de l’Espagne, 1492–1592’ (thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris IV, 1989); Fritz Redlich, The German Military Enterpriser and his Work Force (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1964); references to Charles V’s campaigns in Tracy, Emperor Charles V ; and Erik Swart, Krijgsvolk: Militaire professionalisering en het ontstaan van het Staatse leger (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2006).

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time of muster. A Charles V or a Francis I might have money on hand for the ﬁrst month, but the next month’s pay, and the next, depended on bankers having enough conﬁdence in crown revenues to send instalments of their loans to the right place, at the right time. This system of warfare-on-credit, dating to the fourteenth century, would expand to new dimensions during the sixteenth century. Building a mercenary army required units of different kinds: light horse to scout ahead, heavy cavalry to break an infantry formation, pikemen to withstand enemy charges, and arquebusiers at their ﬂanks to rake the foe’s ranks with ﬁre. Over time, the ﬁghting men of different nations had cultivated special skills. For heavy calvary, Charles V had access to the standing mounted companies of the Low Countries, the compagnies d’ordonnance, but he preferred the more costly German heavy cavalry, commanded by Rittmeister who were often the younger sons of princely families. For infantry, the emperor and his commanders reposed greatest conﬁdence in the Spaniards. Organized in companies of about 150 men (with special detachments of arcabuceros or arquebusiers), and tercios of about 3,000, Spanish infantrymen developed an espirit de corps from common service on garrison duty in Italy, or in Spain’s North African outposts. The Swiss were considered the best pikemen; their esprit de corps came from ﬁghting alongside compatriots from the same canton. But, owing to French pensions paid to the leading men of individual cantons, the Swiss regularly marched under the ﬂeur-de-lis. For Charles V, pikemen from the nearby south German countryside were the next-best choice; landsknechte (as they were called) were organized into ‘banners’ of 400 men, with ten banners forming a regiment recruited and commanded by a colonel. Finally, every army on the march needed a long baggage train, for grain and drink for the troops and their camp followers, fodder for the horses, and utensils of war, like siege ladders, and boats for making bridges across rivers. For sieges one needed as well a massive artillery train, with as many as forty heavy guns, each requiring a carriage drawn by four horses; for the work of entrenching, often scorned by professional soldiers, one either recruited thousands of pionniers paid a low wage, or impressed them from the local population. Landsknechte did not always obey their commanders; until the practice was abolished by Charles V (1554), a banner or company of men elected underofﬁcers of their own, in addition to those appointed by the company commander. Unlike the better-disciplined Spanish or Swiss, landsknechte could not be counted on if monthly arrears began to accumulate. In 1524, Charles’s commanders in Italy watched an army of landsknechte melt away for want of pay; in 1527, his unpaid German and Spanish troops went on a rampage, culminating in the terrible Sack of Rome. On the other hand, when a commander feared he could not hold his men together, a pitched battle—normally to be avoided—might be the only hope of victory. In 1525 Habsburg commanders threw their smaller force against a well-entrenched French siege army before Pavia (1525), and in so

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doing achieved the greatest imperialist triumph of the Italian wars, resulting in the capture of King Francis I.¹³ Against an army operating in one’s own country, nothing worked better than a scorched-earth policy. Charles V’s invasion of Provence (1536) was completely stymied by sound defence: Constable Anne de Montmorency had not only garrisoned the towns and fortiﬁed the river crossings, he had also burned the ﬁelds, and brought within town walls all the mills that the imperial army might use to grind its own grain. Victory or defeat often hinged on the outcome of siege warfare. The standard siege plan called for digging a trench of encirclement (what the Romans called a vallatio). Correct procedure, as applied (for example) by the French at their siege of Pavia (1524/5), called for guarding against a relief force with a second, wider circuit of trenches facing outward (contravallatio). But this dictum of the Roman manuals was not always observed. During the summer of 1530, Charles V’s army at Florence, commanded by René de Chˆalons, prince of Orange, forced the surrender of this great city after completing a vallatio, and beating off two relief armies. Since even a successful siege might take months, commanders preferred, if possible, to take a town by storm: one planted one’s artillery, and knocked a breach in the walls wide enough for the bolder infantry units to charge through. This Charles was able to do at Goletta, the island fortress guarding Tunis (1535), and again at Düren, in the duchy of Cleves (1542). But in Metz (December 1552), burghers and garrison soldiers, working furiously under the duke of Guise, threw up a retirata ﬁrst at one section of the wall that was collapsing under imperial bombardment, then at another. With a hard winter at hand, and his men deserting, Charles had to withdraw, accepting his worst defeat.

T H E L A S T H A B S BU RG – VA LO I S WA R ( 1 5 5 2 – 1 5 5 9 ) A N D I TS C O N S E QU E N C E S Henry II had more experience of combat than any of his immediate predecessors, and he also chafed at the memory of three years spent as a hostage in Madrid, standing in for his father, who had been captured at Pavia. Shortly after his accession to the throne (1547), Henry summoned Charles to appear before him in Paris to do homage for the county of Flanders—despite the fact that the French crown had renounced all claims to this former French province in the Treaty of Cambrai (1529). Charles wrote back that if he did come to Paris, it would be at the head of an army of 50,000.¹⁴ Henry’s immediate concern was to recover the strategic port of Boulogne. By 1550, when the French and English ¹³ Fausto Gianini, Mirabello di Pavia: il parco, la battaglia, la parochia (Pavia: EMI, 1984). ¹⁴ Frederic Baumgartner, Henri II, King of France, 1547–1559 (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 133. Three paragraphs are based on Baumgartner; Tracy, Emperor

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monarchs agreed on terms for the transfer of Boulogne, some of France’s erstwhile allies showed interest in reviving the Schmalkaldic League, and with it a new antiHabsburg coalition.¹⁵ In the spring of 1552, following a secret treaty between the two, Elector Moritz of Saxony mobilized an army to threaten Innsbruck, where the emperor was residing, while Henry II marched into Lorraine, a French-speaking territory of the Holy Roman Empire. As Charles ﬂed across the Alps, to Villach in Styria, whence he sent out mobilization orders to his colonels, Henry’s commanders occupied three bishoprics whose territories formed enclaves within Lorraine—Metz, Toul, and Verdun—and proceeded down the Moselle to occupy key citadels in Habsburg Luxembourg. Meanwhile, Charles’s brother Archduke Ferdinand of Austria concluded a mutually satisfactory peace with Moritz of Saxony—a treaty Charles was not able to break. Hence when his army had assembled—the largest ever, some 80,000 men—the emperor ﬁxed his eye on Metz, the most important of France’s recent conquests. To create a diversion, Adrian de Croy, Mary’s captain-general, invaded Picardy and surprised the new fortress at Hesdin. But at Metz, as noted above, a stubborn French defence and a bitter winter forced Charles to withdraw to Brussels. Meanwhile there was a new problem in Italy: rebels against a Habsburg ally, Grand Duke Cosimo I of Tuscany, seized the important city of Siena, with the aid of French troops from a nearby fortress.¹⁶ Following Croy’s death (1553), Charles’s next captain-general for the Low Countries was a long-time ally and a nephew of his late wife: Emmanuel-Philibert of Savoy-Piedmont, heir apparent of a duchy conquered by France in 1536. As lieutenant-general, second in command to Savoy, Charles named the 20year-old William of Nassau, the fourth prince of Orange to serve under his banner.¹⁷ Savoy pushed toward Picardy: after recapturing by storm the town of Thérouanne, which his men razed to the ground on Charles’s orders, they took Hesdin for a second time.¹⁸ In response, Henry II led 50,000 men into Artois,

Charles V, chapter 11; Henri Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique (7 vols., Brussels: Maurice Lamertia, 1907), 132–42; J. Craeybeckx, ‘Maria van Hongarije, Landvoogdes. De Oorlogen tegen Frankrijk’, in J. A. van Houtte, ed., Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden (11 vols., Utrecht W. De Haan, 1949–58), 97–122; and Noel Williams, Henry II, his Court and Times (New York: Methuen, 1910). ¹⁵ In Italy, the duke of Parma, Ottavio Farnese, sought French protection after Ferrante Gonzaga, Charles V’s governor of Milan, had arranged the murder of Pierluigi Farnese, Ottavio’s father. As a result, Charles, then in Innsbruck, was drawn into an ultimately vain effort to help his ally, Pope Julius III, expel Farnese and claim Parma for the Papal States. ¹⁶ Pepper and Adams, Firearms and Fortiﬁcations, 58–78. ¹⁷ Philibert de Chˆalons (d. 1530), his son-in-law Henry of Nassau (d. 1538), his son and heir Reynier van Nassau (d. 1544), and then a distant cousin, 11-year-old Wilhelm von Nassau, eldest son in the German branch of the family ¹⁸ Rodriguez-Salgado, Changing Face of Empire, 92, citing Emmanuel-Philibert’s campaign diary: E. Brunnelli, ed., Emmanuele Filiberto, duca di Savoia: i diarii della campagna di Fiandra, Biblioteca della Storia Subalpina 112 ( Turin: Storia Subalpina, 1929).

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Hainaut, and the Cambrésis that summer, wreaking havoc, but not capturing any towns. The next year, Prince Philip sailed from Castile to marry England’s Queen Mary Tudor (25 July 1554); even before the ceremony, England declared war on France, and sent 7,000 men across the Channel. Henry II planned to strike directly at Brussels, before English intervention could make a difference. Three armies converged on the Low Countries; the one commanded by the king himself captured the new citadel of Marienbourg, then the town of Bouvines. To block Henry’s advance on Brussels, Savoy positioned his army in Namur; Charles V, lamed with gout, had himself carried along on a litter to encourage the troops. Prevented from pushing north, Henry turned toward the west; moving across Hainaut, he stormed Binche and burned Mary of Hungary’s summer palace. Savoy and the emperor set off in pursuit as the French army continued its ravages into Artois, pausing to besiege the town of Renty. Following skirmishes described rather differently by chroniclers on both sides, Henry broke off and retired to France. To solidify his gains, Henry had a new trace italienne fortress built at Rocroi, across the Meuse from Marienbourg. At the same time, fearing that continuation of the war would mean broader English participation, he accepted an English proposal for Habsburg–Valois peace talks, which got under way in the English enclave of Calais (May–June 1555). But when Cardinal Gianpietro Carafa, a strong foe of Habsburg rule in his native Naples, was elected as Pope Paul IV, France’s representatives ended the discussions. In Rome, Paul IV and Henry II concluded an alliance aimed at ousting the Habsburgs from the kingdom of Naples in favour of a younger son of the French king. Meanwhile, however, continuing discussions about the exchange of prisoners led to a reopening of peace talks, this time at the abbey of Vaucelles in Hainaut. Philip’s ﬁrst act as ‘natural prince’ of the Low Countries, following his father’s abdication, was to give impetus to the discussions at Vaucelles, where a ﬁve-year truce with France was duly proclaimed on 5 February 1556. When war broke out again in Italy—the duke of Alba, as viceroy of Naples, invaded the Papal States in August—Henry agreed to follow up on his treaty with Paul IV by sending a 6,000-man French expeditionary force to Italy, under the duke of Guise. In France’s view, this did not mean a rupture of the Truce of Vaucelles, and indeed hostilities along the northern frontier need not have followed. But the truce was nonetheless broken when, for reasons that remain obscure,¹⁹ the admiral of France, Gaspard de Coligny, attempted a night attack on the citadel of Douai (6 January 1557).²⁰ For the coming campaign season, Henry II did not expect a major effort from the Low Countries, still recovering from the ravages of previous campaigns, and ¹⁹ Baumgartner, Henri II, appendix C, 267–9. ²⁰ The towns of Lille, Douai, and Orchies, with their rural dependencies, had at one time made up a French-speaking portion of the county of Flanders. In the sixteenth century, they formed a separate province of the Low Countries.

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from a bad harvest in 1556. Yet Philip raised a force estimated by contemporaries at between 40,000 and 60,000, while Henry managed only 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry. Savoy, Philip’s commander, feigned an attack toward Marienbourg and Rocroi, along the Meuse, then marched toward the fortiﬁed town of Saint-Quentin in Picardy, a scant 75 miles north-east of Paris. In his rush to break through the hostile force now enveloping Saint-Quentin, Constable Montmorency made a poorly timed attack, resulting in disaster; 2,500 French soldiers were killed, 7,000 taken captive, along with Montmorency himself (10 August 1557).²¹ Savoy wanted to push on toward Paris, but Philip held him back, anticipating that his decree suspending payments by the treasury of Castile (forwarded to Madrid in June)²² would soon have evil consequences on the battleﬁeld. To reverse this humiliation, Henry decreed a winter assault on Calais: French forces appeared before England’s last stronghold in France on 1 January 1558, and entered the city a week later.²³ Keeping his army together for the winter, in the spring Henry sent one force to take Thionville in Luxembourg (June 1558), and another to advance along the Flemish coast. Having taken Dunkirk, this second army was turned back at Gravelines by a force hastily assembled by Lamoral d’Egmont, stadtholder of Flanders. As Philip and Savoy crossed into Picardy from the north, Henry joined his forces and moved toward still-besieged Saint-Quentin. In August 1558 the two sovereigns and their armies faced each other across the wide Somme, but neither had the stomach for a decisive confrontation. Instead, they opened the negotiations that eventually concluded with the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (3 April 1559). France ceded Savoy to Emmanuel-Philibert, retaining only ﬁve fortresses in Piedmont; but France kept the three bishoprics in Lorraine, and was to hold Calais for eight years while England paid an indemnity.²⁴ On his Low Countries frontier, Philip accepted the loss of Marienbourg, but kept Hesdin and Saint-Quentin. The campaigns of 1552, 1553, 1554, 1557, and 1558 placed extraordinary demands on the Low Countries. In the wars of Francis I’s reign, France expended its greatest efforts across the Alps—in Milan, Naples, or Savoy-Piedmont. The Low Countries faced the full might of France only in 1542, when simultaneous invasion from France and the Rhineland forced Mary of Hungary to put over 30,000 men into the ﬁeld. By contrast, Henry II invested little in Italy (apart from the 6,000 men sent in support of Pope Paul IV), and concentrated on strikes to the north.²⁵ He thus mobilized the wealth and resources of a kingdom of sixteen to eighteen million against a complex of territories having less than 2,000,000.²⁶ One ²¹ On Philip’s plans for this campaign, Rodriguez-Salgado, Changing Face of Empire, 169–78. ²² Ibid. 232–42: Philip signed the decree on 10 June 1557. ²³ Ibid. 179. ²⁴ Elizabeth I’s temporary occupation of Le Havre during the ﬁrst of France’s Wars of Religion (1563) gave France an excuse to treat its obligation to return Calais as nulliﬁed. ²⁵ A contrast made by Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique v. 132–42. ²⁶ For population estimates, Knecht, Renaissance Warrior and Patron, 23; J. A. van Houtte, ‘Maatschappelijke Toestanden’, in AGN v. 224–30.

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The Habsburg Netherlands, 1549–1567

can see what this meant for the Low Countries by comparing budget estimates by Low Countries ofﬁcials for the campaigns of 1542–4 and 1557–8. In November 1542, it was reckoned that 2,400,000 pounds of twenty stuivers—roughly two and a half times annual income in peacetime—would be needed for the coming year, to pay for a ﬁeld army, as well as garrisons and fortiﬁcations during the winter season. A subsequent calculation of actual war expenses for the period of active ﬁghting (July 1542–31 October 1544) gives a grand total of 7,142,073 pounds, or a bit less than 2,400,000 a year.²⁷ Fourteen years later, the cost for a six-month campaign season, not counting wages for the Spanish infantry (paid from Spain), or garrison expenses for the winter, was estimated at 6,187,001 pounds.²⁸ Another estimate for the campaign season of 1559 (‘next summer’), including such costs as ‘retainer fees’ and ‘arrival money’ for the highly valued German cavalry, gives a ﬁgure only slightly lower: 5,871,308 pounds.²⁹ In August 1559, the cost of garrison wages for the six months of winter, plus fortiﬁcation expenses at frontier fortresses like Hesdin and Gravelines, was ﬁgured at 1,309,177 pounds.³⁰ Adding this last estimate to the average of the previous two, it seems the annual military budget of the Low Countries for 1558/9 had reached something like 7,311,331 pounds—roughly three times as much as the comparable ﬁgure for the years 1542–4. The declining purchasing power of money accounts for some of the increase, but not much; adjusting for an assumed inﬂation rate of 2 per cent per annum over a period of ﬁfteen years, military expenditures in 1558 were still approximately 235 per cent higher than in 1542–4. What did military expenditures at this level do to a sixteenth-century state? Historians of France have debated possible connections between this ﬁnal phase of the Habsburg–Valois wars and a subsequent period of turmoil (the Wars of Religion, 1562–98). To be sure, some of the circumstances that helped make France’s Wars of Religion possible had no connection to the Habsburg–Valois struggle. In particular, the sudden and premature death of Henry II (in a joust, 10 June 1559)³¹ left leaders of the kingdom’s great noble clans to battle one other for control of the regency for a young and sickly royal heir. It mattered too that the already-feuding clan chieftains happened to be divided along religious lines, just as a militant Reformed Protestantism was sweeping across the realm. But the rival factions would not have found so many battle-hardened men to ²⁷ Aud. 650, 484–93 (a proposal for a ‘proposition to the States General’), and 533–4 (summary for period July 1542–31 October 1544, in the distinctive hand of Lodewijk van Schoer, president of the Council of State, 1540–8); see also Aud. 650, 398–400, a summary of payments totaling 6,829,405 by the various treasurers of war (25 January 1542–31 December 1544), with a note that there are no ﬁgures for interest costs, or money spent on warships. ²⁸ Aud. 650, 529–30; the document is not dated, but it refers to a garrison serving during the campaign at Saint-Quentin, captured by Savoy in 1558. ²⁹ Aud. 650, 159–62; the terms I translate are ‘waartegeld’ (waiting money, paid to keep German cavalry units from hiring on with another employer) and ‘aanrijt’. ³⁰ Aud. 650, 141–8. ³¹ The split lance of his adversary, Gabriel de Montgommery, penetrated the king’s brain.

The Habsburg–Valois School of War

33

rally to their standards if the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis had not returned to France thousands of soldiers, nobles, and commoners.³² Moreover, Henry II’s suspension of payments on his consolidated war debt (November 1557)³³ deprived the succeeding regime of credit just when credit was most needed by the crown; because those who governed for Kings Francis II (1559–60) and Charles IX (1560–74) could not borrow on the Lyon exchange, they were all the more dependent on the cooperation of one great faction or another. Were there connections between this last of the Habsburg–Valois wars and the ensuing turmoil in the Low Countries, that is, the great rebellion against Philip II’s government? The question has seldom been posed,³⁴ because the Dutch Revolt marks a caesura in the historiography of the Low Countries: scholars usually work on one side or the other of a chronological divide around the years 1566–72. Moreover, as in the French case, there were key issues in the rebellion that had nothing to do with the war against France, such as Philip II’s creation of new bishoprics, and his unrelenting campaign to suppress heresy. But there are nonetheless linkages between the war of 1552–9 and later developments, most obviously in regard to ﬁnance. Had the Netherlands government’s credit on the Antwerp exchange not been ruined by the war, Margaret of Parma (regent from 1559) would not have been so utterly dependent on the great men of the realm, who, from about 1562, ranged themselves in opposition to the king’s religious policies. This issue will be addressed in the following chapter. One further point, best discussed here, relates to Henry II’s sustained assault on the maritime wealth of the Netherlands. Not counting smaller merchant ﬂeets based in Flanders and Zeeland, Holland alone had, by 1477, 230 or 240 ocean-going caravels, with an estimated capacity of 38,000 tons, as compared with 30,000 for Venice’s merchant ﬂeet, or 20,000 for Genoa. According to a 1540 petition from the States of Holland, the province then had a merchant ﬂeet of 400 sail, larger, it was asserted, than the combined ﬂeets of the major maritime nations, that is, England, France, and Brittany.³⁵ Though the ships were based in Holland or Zeeland, Antwerp was the ﬁnancial hub for overseas trade.³⁶ In what Netherlanders called the ‘westward trade’, ships ³² Baumgartner, Henri II, 227–8. ³³ Ibid. 86–7, and Robert J. Knecht, French Renaissance Monarchy: Francis I and Henry II (London: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 58. In 1555, Henry II consolidated debts of 1,500,000 ecus and borrowed another 500,000 by promising the merchants of Lyon quarterly interest payments. By 1557 the capital value of this composite loan, known as the Grand Parti, had risen to 9,660,000 ecus. Henry’s accidental death ‘destroyed the hopes of creditors’, and payments were stopped altogether in 1559. ³⁴ One exception is Karel Jan Willem Verhofstad, SJ, De Regering van de Nederlanden in de Jaren 1555–1559 (Nijmegen: J. J. Berkhout, 1937), to be discussed in the next chapter. ³⁵ Louis Sicking, Neptune and the Netherlands: State, Economy and Warfare at Sea in the Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 42; Tracy, ‘Herring Wars: The Habsburg Netherlands and the Struggle for Control of the Sea, ca.1520–1560’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 24 (1993), 249–72, here 253. ³⁶ Gustaaf Asaert, De Antwerpse Scheepvaart in de XVe Eeuw (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1973); Sicking, Neptune and the Netherlands, 6–7; Tracy, ‘Herring Wars’, 253–5.

34

The Habsburg Netherlands, 1549–1567

brought grain and timber (from the Baltic) and North Sea herring to southwestern France or Iberia, in exchange for southern wines and fruits, salt for the herring trade, and spices from Portugal’s overseas possessions. In 1546, ‘250 great ships’ from the Low Countries were reported to be taking on cargo at the salt-pans of Brouage, near La Rochelle.³⁷ The ‘eastward’ trade ran through Denmark’s Øresund into the Baltic, where captains took on rye and wheat all along the southern shore, roughly from Gda´nsk to Riga. In 1497, the ﬁrst year of Denmark’s Sound Toll, 567 of the ships passing through (about 70 per cent) came from the Low Countries, including 455 based in Holland.³⁸ The herring ﬁshery, based on the annual migration of herring down the eastern coast of Great Britain, made use of vessels known as busses, equipped to ﬁllet and salt the catch while still at sea; the Netherlands had some 375 busses in 1477, 700 in 1562. According to a tax levied on the catch in 1550, it seems the catch in Holland (where the majority of busses were now based) was worth about 700,000 pounds.³⁹ During the 1540s, corsairs based in Scotland—France’s ally—demonstrated the vulnerability of these maritime trades, taking an estimated 2,000,000 ecus worth of Netherlands ships and merchandise during a period of ten years.⁴⁰ For the last Habsburg–Valois war, Henry II deployed his war galleys⁴¹ to the same end. In 1552, an estimated ﬁfty Netherlands herring busses were taken by the French, at a loss of some 100,000 pounds to their skippers and outﬁtters.⁴² In 1553, in hopes of intercepting Spanish treasure ships crossing from Nombre de Dios (Panama), the king issued letters of marque to François Le Clerc (1553), the ﬁrst recognized privateer in the Caribbean.⁴³ During the summer of 1555, forty-eight French warships off Dover captured ﬁve Low Countries caravels sailing for Spain, and burned six others.⁴⁴ In March 1557 ‘the famous corsair Le Clerc, known as gambe de bois’ (peg-leg), had thirty-six warships in the ³⁷ Cornelis de Scepper to Maximilian of Burgundy, lord of Vere and Beveren, 5 June 1546, Aud. 1659/3/III. ³⁸ Denmark then controlled the now-Swedish province of Skåne, forming the north shore of the Sound. Christensen, Dutch Trade to the Baltic. The Baltic trade is discussed further in Chapter 6. ³⁹ Sicking, Neptune and the Netherlands, 134–9; Tracy, ‘Herring Wars’, 253–4. ⁴⁰ Petition of Antwerp’s maritime insurers to Mary of Hungary [September 1551], Aud. 1659/ 3/III, 47–53. Henry II could not make use of the same allies, for Charles V acknowledged Christian III’s rule in Denmark by the 1544 Treaty of Spires, and a 1550 truce between Scotland and the Low Countries was regarded as trustworthy in Holland (RSH 3 August 1551). ⁴¹ Galleys were still used for combat at sea, even in the Atlantic: John Guilmartin, Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology in Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974); Tracy, ‘Herring Wars’, 253–4. ⁴² RSH and Sandelijn, 6–7 March 1553; Baumgartner, Henri II, 136; Council of Holland to Mary of Hungary, 18 November 1553, Aud. 1646/2, 200. ⁴³ Baumgartner, Henri II, 135. ⁴⁴ Testimony of Low Countries seamen heard by the bailiff of Middelburg, 16 August 1555, Aud. 1656/2, 159.

The Habsburg–Valois School of War

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North Sea; some twenty Low Countries vessels were sold at auction in French ports.⁴⁵ The traditional defences against attack from the sea—ﬁre signals along the North Sea coast, and church bells sounding the tocsin⁴⁶—were not adequate against large enemy ﬂeets operating in the North Sea. Ofﬁcials in Brussels worried about Brill and Goedereede, two small ports on the Holland side of the Maas estuary; each was difﬁcult of access, and might have been easily defended by a successful landing party. Small garrisons were posted in both towns, and Brill was ordered to break down a wooden tower that afforded incoming vessels a line-of-sight bearing.⁴⁷ But, as in warfare on land, defence was not enough. Maximilian of Burgundy, as lord of Vere (Zeeland) and admiral of the Low Countries (1540—58), had been for some years an admiral without a ﬂeet. But in 1549 his chief deputy, Cornelis de Scepper, developed a plan for a war ﬂeet that would make Charles V ‘master of the sea’.⁴⁸ As a ﬁrst step eight ships based in the admiral’s town of Vere were purchased and reﬁtted for war (1551).⁴⁹ Once the war with France began in earnest, Mary of Hungary won agreement from the provincial States for a uniform tax on wine to support a war ﬂeet of twenty-ﬁve sail, as envisioned by Scepper. But this new excise was a dismal failure,⁵⁰ and for the duration of the war the government in Brussels was not able to keep more than eight warships at sea.⁵¹ So long as the war continued, the port of Vere prospered, as the constant work of reﬁtting drew new craftsmen in trades like cannon-founding and ship’s carpentry. The ﬁrst naval arsenal of the Low Countries was built here in 1555, and rebuilt after a ﬁre in 1565. Once peace came, warships were superﬂuous; in 1561, the war ﬂeet’s last vessels were sold at auction.⁵² The naval stores and munitions were kept in storage—until Vere and its arsenal were seized by rebels in 1572. As Louis Sicking has suggested, the ⁴⁵ Adolph of Burgundy to Philibert-Emmanuel of Savoy, two letters of 2 March 1557, 8, 19 March 1557 (the quote), Aud. 325, 52–3, 53–7, 67–70, 93–5; Jeroen Sandelijn, Rentmeester for Zeeland East of the Scheldt, to Emmanuel-Philibert, 29 March 1557, Aud. 325, 119. ⁴⁶ Council of Holland to Mary of Hungary, 29 March 1552 (Aud. 1646/2, 156), and to Philip II, 30 April 1558 (Aud. 326, 25–6). ⁴⁷ Council of Holland to Mary of Hungary, 4 September 1551, Aud. 1646/2, 174; Adolph of Burgundy and Cornelis de Scepper to Mary of Hungary, 18 September 1551, Aud. 1659/3/III, 60–1; Sandelijn, 9 October 1551, 30 January 1552; Council of Holland to Mary of Hungary, 29 March 1552, Aud. 1646/2, 156; Mary of Hungary to Adolph of Burgundy and Cornelis de Scepper, 2 April 1552, Aud. 1659/3/III, 67; report of Jaspar van Treslong, bailiff of Voorne, on the defence of Brill, 3 May 1552, Aud. 1656/2, 48. Sicking, Neptune and the Netherlands, 313. ⁴⁸ See the ﬁne discussion of different ideas on making Charles V ‘master of the sea’ in Sicking, Neptune and the Netherlands, 345–54. ⁴⁹ Ibid. 370–416. ⁵⁰ The Council of State, made up of great nobles, dealt with war and diplomacy. ⁵¹ The proposal, as presented to the States of Holland: Sandelijn, 14 October and 5 November 1549, RSH 22–3 October 1549; the dispute about ‘Dordrecht measure’, RSH 25 November 1549, Sandelijn 7–8, 28–9 December 1549, 19 March 1550. ⁵² Sicking, Neptune and the Netherlands, chapter 6, ‘Toward a Permanent War Fleet’.

36

The Habsburg Netherlands, 1549–1567

sailors of the Dutch Revolt borrowed not only the naval stores of the Habsburg era, but also a strategic conception of mastery of the sea.⁵³ This maritime connection was a direct link between the last Habsburg–Valois war and the Dutch Revolt. More broadly speaking, ﬁghting during the Revolt carried on an older tradition. Military leaders on both sides not only shared a common sense of what one did to make war, they also knew each other. If Alba took the offensive in Holland, it was in part because he (and not Orange) had money to build a ﬁeld army. Conversely, if Boisot won what was perhaps the decisive naval engagement of the war (Battle of the Zuider Zee, 1573), it was in part because he and not Boussu had access to precious stores and munitions from the arsenal of Vere. On both sides, there was a level of strategic and tactical thinking capable of minimizing reverses, to ﬁght another day; on both sides, commanders had learned their lessons well, in the Habsburg–Valois school of war. ⁵³ Ibid. 354: Holland’s notion of mastery of the sea during the 1550s was ‘an idea that bore witness to a vision of the future’.

2 War Finance and Fiscal Devolution In time of war the dynasty expected Habsburg territories to support one another, not just within the same complex of lands but even at a distance.¹ Yet in the sixteenth century a person’s ‘country’ was in the ﬁrst instance his land (Dutch or German) or pays (French, with variants in Spanish and Italian). Netherlands provincial parliaments, each claiming to speak for a land or pays, were loath to see their subsidy moneys spent to ‘put out the ﬁre’ a province or two away.² Transfers of provincial subsidy funds out of the Low Countries for the dynasty’s needs in Germany or Italy were widely suspected, but can rarely be documented.³ On the contrary, it is clear that the Netherlands received a signiﬁcant inﬂow of cash from Habsburg Spain. As king of Castile, Charles had direct control over most of the realm’s revenues, without requiring the consent or cooperation of the Cortes;⁴ hence he routinely authorized transfers to the Low Countries, either directly or through the agency of his bankers, twice in the 1530s, more often during the war with France in 1542–44.⁵ During the last years of her regency (1552–5), Mary of Hungary was even more successful in shifting the cost of war in the Netherlands to the Spanish treasury. Philip resisted Mary’s demands, but Charles, then in Brussels, had the ﬁnal word. (In fact, deeply depressed after his terrible failure at Metz, the emperor was effectively under Mary’s guidance.) Mia Rodriguez-Salgado has calculated that from the beginning of 1552 to February 1554, some 5,700,000 Spanish ducats (equivalent to perhaps 9,124,000 pounds of twenty stuivers)⁶ ﬂowed from Spain to the Netherlands, as direct transfers or as loan repayments.⁷ ¹ On the Parma war, Tracy, Emperor Charles V, chapter 12; on the Siena war, Rodriguez-Salgado, Changing Face of Empire, 111–18. ² Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 120. ³ Tracy, Emperor Charles V, chapters 4, 11. ⁴ For the alcabala, taxes on church wealth, and the ﬂow of specie from the New World, Tracy, Emperor Charles V, chapter 5; servicios granted by the Cortes amounted to only about 15% of crown revenue. ⁵ Tracy, Emperor Charles V, chapter 5. ⁶ I use the average of two different exchange rates given by Rodriguez-Salgado (Changing Face of Empire, pp. xiv–xv), that is, 0.6247, which is close to the ﬁgure used by Carande Thobar, Carlos V y sus banqueros. ⁷ Rodriguez-Salgado, Changing Face of Empire, 59–64; ‘for most of this decade the Netherlands managed to avert catastrophe by pushing an ever growing burden of debt upon the Spanish realms’ (60). For Charles V’s ‘collapse’ following his return to Brussels, after the defeat at Metz, 73–5.

38

The Habsburg Netherlands, 1549–1567

These and other charges put an intolerable burden on Castile’s treasury. But Charles regarded a suspension of payments on the crown’s debts as incompatible with his honour as emperor, and Philip would not let his father off the hook by acting on his own. When he did decree a partial suspension of payments in June 1557, Philip’s order struck at high-interest short-term loans to bankers, not the famous long-term bonds issued by Castile’s treasury.⁸ Nonetheless, Philip, now managing the war himself, had to take still more money from Spain for the Netherlands. Again according to Rodriguez-Salgado, transfers for the years 1557–9 amounted to 4,022,958 ducats, or perhaps 6,440,000 Netherlands pounds.⁹ In the ‘proposition’ or formal request for funds presented to the States General in August 1558, Viglius van Aytta, president of the Council of State, reported that since Charles’s abdication (December 1555), Philip had caused the equivalent of 12,000,000 Netherlands pounds to be transferred to the Low Countries, not counting the exchange fees, nor an additional 3,000,000 spent to protect the ﬂeets travelling back and forth. According to Viglius, the account books would show that 10,000,000 pounds of the money from Spain had been spent to protect the king’s Low Countries territories.¹⁰ Putting these numbers together, it seems transfers from Spain may have averaged 250,000 pounds per month during the war years of the 1550s.¹¹ By comparison, the Low Countries provinces agreed in 1557 to provide a multi-year subsidy for 2,400,000 pounds per year, or 200,000 pounds per month.¹² It seems clear that the vast disparity between the ﬁscal resources of France and the Low Countries, noted in Chapter 1, was in effect equalized by cash transfers from Spain. Under these circumstances Philip had every right to expect the full cooperation of his Low Countries subjects. But there seems to be, in the affairs of states, something akin to tax fatigue. Evidently not believing what they were told about the costs of war, or about money coming from Spain, Netherlanders supported the wars of the 1540s and 1550s grudgingly, and only at the price of major concessions from their sovereign.¹³ This chapter focuses ⁸ The bonds (juros) carried interest rates between 3% and 7%, the short-term loans had rates between 12% and 24%. Bankers had to accept conversion of their loans into juros. ⁹ Rodriguez-Salgado, Changing Face of Empire, 118–20, and tables 10, 11, and 12, pp. 224–5, 246–7, and 248–9. ¹⁰ Aud. 650, 110–14, proposition of 19 August 1558; cf. Aud. 650, 107–9, proposition of 30 June 1559 to the States General: Philip has caused 500,000 pounds to be brought from Spain, to be followed by a further 600,000. ¹¹ For the two calculations by Rodriguez-Salgado, 9,124,000 pounds divided by 26 months ( January 1552–February 1554) = approximately 350,000 per month; 6,440,000 pounds divided by 36 months ( January 1557–December 1559) = approximately 180,000 per month. For Viglius’ estimate, 12,000,000 pounds divided by 31 months ( January 1556–July 1558) = approximately 390,000 per month. The war began in January 1552 and ended in August 1559, including roughly a year following the Truce of Vaucelles that was relatively free of ﬁghting. ¹² For the nine-year subsidy, see below. ¹³ For Philip II’s negotiations with the States General there is the ﬁne study of Verhofstad, De Regering der Nederlanden; on Holland, Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, chapter 7; on relations

War Finance and Fiscal Devolution

39

on three of the resulting institutional arrangements introduced during these years. Each involved a transfer of authority from the central government to parliamentary assemblies, and each was to prove of vital importance for the new rebel government in Holland after 1572. First, in order to fund the renten or bonds by which they raised a good portion of their wartime extraordinary subsidies, the provincial parliaments accepted the novel idea of permanent excise taxes, collected by and for the provinces. Second, in hopes of overcoming resistance to his demands for higher taxes, Philip took the risk of summoning delegates from his fractious provinces to meet and deliberate as one body, in the States General. Finally, as revenues came to be controlled by the provincial or General States, bankers on the Antwerp exchange drew the obvious conclusion; neglecting their erstwhile clients, the treasury ofﬁcials of the hard-pressed central government, they went to the source of funds, demanding, as surety for their loans, the promissory notes of parliamentary assemblies.

H O L L A N D MIDDELEN : T H E P ROV I N C I A L L A N D A N D E XC I S E TA X E S By long tradition,¹⁴ Low Countries provincial states voted ‘ordinary subsidies’ over a term of years, with the amount and length of the grant subject to negotiation. For ‘extraordinary subsidies,’ as in time of war, the government had to provide speciﬁc reasons, and the provincial states claimed a right to attach conditions. During Charles V’s reign these agreements were framed as budgets, with the understanding that deputies might examine the accounts to make sure the money was being spent as stipulated. The system rested on a premiss that was false, albeit demanded by public opinion, namely, that current revenue was used for current expenses. In fact, rulers outspent their income in peacetime years, and paid for war with borrowed money. Low-interest, long-term debt worked best; by issuing long-term bonds (renten), a province or town could raise money for the government at rates as low as 6.25 per cent.¹⁵ Alternatively, between Spain and the Low Countries, Rodriguez-Salgado, Changing Face of Empire. On Flanders, the period up to 1550 is covered by N. Maddens, De Beden van het Graafschap Vlaanderen tijdens de Regering van Karel V, Standen en Landen/Ancens Pays et assemblées d’état 72 (Heule: UGA, 1978). On Brabant, Gorissen, ‘De Prelaten van Brabant,’ and Gustaaf Janssens, Brabant in het Verweer: Loyale Oppositie tegen Spanje’s Bewind in de Nederlanden van Alva tot Farnese 1567–1578 (Heule: UGA, 1989). ¹⁴ For the next two paragraphs, save as noted, Tracy, Emperor Charles V, chapters 4, 11. ¹⁵ European towns of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries set a precedent for princes by issuing bonds to pay off high-interest bankers’ loans: see Tracy, ‘On the Dual Origins of Long-Term Urban Debt in Medieval Europe’, in Marc Boone, Karel Davids, and Paul Janssens, Urban Public Debts: Urban Government and the Market for Annuities in Western Europe (14th–18th Centuries) ( Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 13–24.

40

The Habsburg Netherlands, 1549–1567

when large sums were needed in a hurry, one had to look for money on the Antwerp exchange, where bankers demanded between 12 per cent and 20 per cent for government loans, with repayment in no more than a year. Hence the government’s receivers of provincial subsidies used their receipts to settle outstanding loans, notwithstanding any promises that had been made to local parliaments; otherwise, bankers would not lend again for the present emergency. But deputies waxed indignant whenever they learned that their grants were going ‘to purge old wounds of debt’.¹⁶ One solution to this problem was for local governments to collect and disburse subsidy income by their own agents, bypassing receivers answerable to the Council of Finance. Already by the 1530s, the central government had in this way lost control of extraordinary subsidies in Flanders, where the Four Members insisted on appointing their own collectors.¹⁷ Early in 1542, as she gathered intelligence on three hostile armies mobilizing just across her borders, Mary of Hungary saw that the coming war would require new revenues. In protracted negotiations, she induced the provincial States to accept new forms of taxation,¹⁸ and also—more importantly for present purposes—to begin issuing provincial renten on a new basis. Hitherto, provinces had issued renten to raise capital toward the extraordinary subsidies to which they had agreed, on the understanding that the province’s ordinary subsidy income would pay for interest charges and redemption of capital. In practice, however, scheduled redemptions were postponed again and again, because the Council of Finance always found more pressing needs for the precious cash receipts represented by the ordinary subsidies.¹⁹ Thus with each new issue of renten, the debt burden on the ordinary subsidy mounted, to as much as one-third the nominal value by the 1530s.²⁰ But Mary of Hungary and her ofﬁcials now persuaded the provincial States to issue renten that were to be funded from such new revenues as each States assembly might devise; what made the scheme palatable was that the new revenues would be collected and disbursed by provincial ofﬁcials. Like other provinces, Holland chose to back its new renten by imposing province-wide²¹ excises on beer and wine, to be ¹⁶ Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 83. ¹⁷ Maddens, De Beden van het Graafschap Vlaanderen. ¹⁸ A ‘tenth penny’ on income from real property, assuming a proﬁt margin of 5%; a ‘tenth penny’ on commercial income, likewise assuming a 5% proﬁt margin; and a ‘hundredth penny’ on the value of exports. For these new taxes, Tracy, Financial Revolution, chapter 3. ¹⁹ Redeemable renten or losrenten continued to pay interest to buyers and their heirs until the capital sum was repaid. Life-renten paid interest only, until the death of the designated beneﬁciary. ²⁰ By the 1530s, roughly 27,000 of an annual ordinary subsidy of 80,000 thousand pounds. The accounts of Holland’s Receiver for the Subsidies (Ontvanger van de Beden) are preserved for almost every year of the Habsburg era: Rijksarchief van Zuid-Holland, The Hague, series ‘Graafelijkheidsrekenkamer’. ²¹ Excise taxes were collected only by town governments; a previous attempt to introduce a province-wide excise in Holland (1523) had been a signal failure.

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Fig. 1 Mary of Hungary, regent of the Netherlands, 1531–1555. Claes Jansz. Visscher, ‘Mary of Hungary’, in Emmanuel van Meteren, Belgica: Historie der Nederlandsche ende haerder naburen oorlogen ende geschiedenissem (4 vols., The Hague: van Wouw, 1614), James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota Libraries.

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collected within walled cities, and an acreage tax or morgental in the countryside.²² In the market for public instruments of debt, this novel way of funding provincial renten made a difference over time. Under the old system, Holland’s ofﬁcials had found willing buyers for Holland renten in major capital markets, like Bruges, but not in Holland itself; here they had to employ coercion, having ﬁrst obtained from Brussels permission to do so. For this purpose, the States of Holland imposed purchase quotas on noblemen, or religious houses, or wealthy peasants—but not on town burghers.²³ In other words, while investors in Bruges were content to let some of their money run at interest, Hollanders did not want their funds tied up. But the fact that provincial ofﬁcials now controlled the critical revenues meant that redemptions were made more or less on schedule; for example, the 20,000 in renten that the States issued to raise part of Holland’s gift for Prince Philip (1549) were paid off within two years.²⁴ When war came again in 1552, it was time for more and larger issues of renten on the new model.²⁵ Mary of Hungary wanted to see wealthy burghers forced to buy, an idea not to the liking of the Lords States. They sent Amsterdam’s town secretary and other deputies to Brussels to ask if the regent would allow town magistrates to compel their burghers to buy renten issued by the city, using the capital to buy States of Holland renten in the city’s name. The point was that tight-ﬁsted burghers had more conﬁdence in their town corporations than they did in the Lords States. But the idea was not discussed at this time,²⁶ because ofﬁcials in Brussels grasped that the market for provincial renten had changed. Upon his arrival in Brussels, Amsterdam’s town secretary deleted from the petition he carried the clause relating to constraint; as he explains in his travel diary, Viglius van Aytta, president of the Council of State, had told him that constraint was no longer necessary. In fact, there was at this time, in the Low Countries as in much of Europe, ‘an almost insatiable demand for annuities’.²⁷ ²² According to estimates from the 1540s and 1550s, cited in Tracy, Financial Revolution, 51, Holland had roughly 300,000 morgen, of which about 10% had not been included in the schiltal assessment of 1514, either because the land lay within privileged enclaves not subject to direct taxation, or because it was land newly won from the waters. ²³ Government permission for a province to sell renten usually included authorization to constrain wealthy individuals and wealthy corporations (e.g. monasteries) to make purchases; on this point, Tracy, Financial Revolution, 123–6. ²⁴ RAZH, ‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, nos. 1792–4, Coebel’s accounts for the 67,500 gift for Philip, and for the excise and acreage taxes that funded 20,802 in renten. ²⁵ RSH 1552 21–6, 28–9, and 56–8: 26–8 February, 12 March, and 2–3 August, 1552; Sandelijn, 2–3 August 1552; Council of Holland to Mary of Hungary, 12 March 1552, Aud. 1646/2, 147; Mary to the Council of Holland, 15 March 1552, Aud. 1646/2, 149; Mary to Assendelft, 19 August 1552, Aud. 1646/3, 181; RAZH, ‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, no. 2277, Aert Coebel’s account for the 58,802 in renten, plus 39,215 pounds from a tax on hearths within the cities. ²⁶ The States of Holland would pursue a similar strategy—relying on the creditworthiness of the town corporations—during the Revolt: see Chapter 11. ²⁷ Sandelijn, 22 October 1552; Rodriguez-Salgado, Changing Face of Empire, 63.

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In October 1553, the States of Holland authorized an issue for 100,000 pounds, one-quarter in the usual redeemable renten, and three-quarters of the capital in life-term renten. Life-term annuities normally sold at a higher rate (1 : 8 or 12.5 per cent, as opposed to 1: 16 or 6.25 per cent), and they also paid interest until the death of the named beneﬁciary.²⁸ To attract buyers in Holland, the States now offered a rate of 1 : 6 (16.67 per cent), but with the proviso that these life-term renten would be redeemable. In fact, the lion’s share of these annuities (92 per cent) was snapped up by Hollanders.²⁹ Since it was no longer necessary to force people to buy, the States turned more readily to sales of renten for war subsidies. Between June 1554 and June 1556, Holland issued renten totalling 506,888, more than three times as much as for any comparable period in the past. During the remaining years of the war, there were further sales totalling 478,087.³⁰ All told, between 1552 and 1565, Holland contracted a renten debt amounting to 1,343,509. (The long-term debts of Flanders and Brabant, whose subsidy quotas were roughly twice as high as Holland’s, will have been larger still.³¹) The province’s annual interest burden mounted accordingly: 29,000 pounds in December 1553, 47,000 in August 1554, 90,000 in November 1555.³² To service this debt the States decreed a morgental or acreage tax, plus beer and wine taxes at half the rate used in the 1540s.³³ Rights to collect the excises and the land tax were farmed at auction, as cities did for their own excises. Collections for the ﬁrst full year, ending 31 January 1555, amounted to about 34,000 pounds—a sum that was by now far from sufﬁcient.³⁴ Rejecting proposals for new excises on a long list of goods, the States chose instead to double the beer and wine excises and triple the acreage tax; revenues now rose to about 70,000 a year—still not enough.³⁵ To get more from the countryside, the States abandoned the acreage tax for a traditional ²⁸ Parents or kinfolk often bought in the name of infants of 6 months or older. ²⁹ Permission to sell redeemable life-renten at 1 : 16 was granted or the previous sale, but not used, according to the octroy copied in at the head of Coebel’s account (‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, no. 2279). RSH 1553 44–7: 4, 18 October 1553; RAZH, ‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, no. 2280. ³⁰ Tracy, ‘The Taxation System of the County of Holland’, Under Charles V and Philip II’, Econouisch-en-social Historisch Jearboek, 48 (1984), tables I and III, pp. 108, 112–13. ³¹ Aud. 650, 232: raising new moneys will be difﬁcult because Brabant, Flanders, and Holland ‘se treuvent endebtez pour l’heure d’environ dix millions restes des subsides et aydes mises en avant par le passe’. In the ordinary subsidy of this period, Holland’s quota was 100,000 pounds, as opposed to 200,000 for Brabant and 250,000 for Flanders. ³² RSH 1553 50–2: 29 December 1553, and 1554, 23–34, 45: 27–8 August 1554, 24–5 September 1555; Sandelijn, 29 December 1553. ³³ RSH 1553 50–1: 29 December 1553; Sandelijn, 29 December 1553; RAZH, ‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, Coebel’s account for the acreage tax and excise taxes for the year from 1 February 1554 to 31 January 1555. ³⁴ RSH 1555 13–14, 31, 81–2: 31 March, 10 June, 5 December 1555; RAZH, ‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, no. 2293. ³⁵ RSH 1555 61–3, 78–81, 85–9: 14 November, 3–4, 13 December 1555; RAZH, ‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, no. 2294, for the period 1 February 1555–30 April 1556.

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schiltal, based on an assessment of land values, albeit one that dated from 1514. Additionally, land ‘outside the schiltal’—that is, land brought under cultivation since 1514—was now to be taxed for the ﬁrst time. With these changes, plus (1559) a tax on sales of turf, Holland’s provincial taxes yielded 85,000 to 100,000 pounds a year, more than enough for annual interest charges.³⁶ In 1570 the duke of Alba demanded an extraordinary subsidy for ﬁghting off William of Orange and other rebels. To help meet its assigned quota of 271,000 pounds, Holland agreed to issue 150,000 in renten. But because ‘the Troubles’ were expected to reduce the yield of the provincial middelen—that is, the excise and land taxes—and because Holland still owed 80,000 pounds in annual interest for renten sold in previous years,³⁷ this new debt was thought to require new taxes. Hence on 12 July 1570, Alba’s government in Brussels authorized excises on grain milled in Holland, cattle and other animals slaughtered for meat, butter, cheese, cloth, foreign beer, and herring.³⁸ These new excises were not readily accepted. In regard to the grain excise, for example, millers baulked at the requirement to keep registers of the grain they milled, while tax farmers were faulted for not having the needed ‘certiﬁcates’ (billietten) distributed twice a week at each village mill within their collection districts. To get compliance, it was necessary to deploy the full judicial machinery of the Habsburg Netherlands. At the request of the States of Holland, the Privy Council in Brussels sent instructions to the bailiff (deurwaarder) of the Court of Holland in The Hague. When tax farmers gave him the names of persons who refused to obey the ordinance, the bailiff was to summon them to pay the stipulated sums, or else appear in person in The Hague.³⁹ Meanwhile, following the tight-money wartime years, interest rates had fallen. The States were thus able to reduce Holland’s burden by offering renten-holders either a redemption of their capital, or new annuities at lower rates.⁴⁰ In 1564–5, with the permission of Philip II’s government, Holland reduced the capital outstanding still further by levying a tenth penny on real-property income and ³⁶ The schiltal was used for collection of Holland’s annual ordinary subsidy. RAZH, ‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, nos. 2295, 2296, 2297, and 2298, for the years ending 30 April 1557, 1558, 1559, and 1560. The 1 July 1559 octroy authorizing the States of Holland to levy a tax on turf is copied in at the head of account no. 2300, for the year ending 30 April 1562. On the expense side of the ledger, there are no entries for redemption of renten until account no. 2299, for the year ending 30 April 1561. ³⁷ RSH 1571 44–5, 521–53: 19 May, 12 June 1571. For his last three years as collector of the land and excise tax, ending 30 April 1567, Coebel paid renten interest of 73,409, 70,870, and 59,685 (‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, nos. 2303–5). ³⁸ RAZH, ‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, 3, 01, 28, no. 327, Philip II’s octroy of 12 July 1570. ³⁹ RSH 1571, 20, 37–9, 56, 60–5: 3 March, 18 May, 27 June, 11 August 1571. ⁴⁰ Tracy, Financial Revolution, 93–8: initially, some 280,000 in life-renten at 1 : 6 were exchanged for redeemable renten at 1 : 12; then about 345,000 in redeemable renten at 1 : 12 were traded in for new annuities at the traditional rate of 1 : 16. In both cases, few renten-holders exercised the option of cashing in their investments.

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using the proceeds to redeem renten.⁴¹ Because of these measures, Aert Coebel, Holland’s chief ﬁscal ofﬁcer, could apply money from the land and excise tax to other purposes, as dictated by the States. Thus for an extraordinary subsidy of 300,000 pounds, payable at Christmas 1559 and St John’s Day (June 24) 1560, two payments totalling 89,000 came from the land and excise tax.⁴² Such was Holland’s reputation that wealthy investors readily bought renten in sums of 5,000 pounds or more,⁴³ even, in one case, 100,000 pounds.⁴⁴ In 1566, when Coebel was instructed to provide a 10,000-pound gratuity for William of Orange, Holland’s stadtholder since 1556, he took the money from his land and excise receipts. Unfortunately for Coebel, by the time his account for 1566/7 was heard (in March 1568), government auditors disallowed the payment; William of Orange, once and future stadtholder, was now in Germany, a rebel against his majesty the king.⁴⁵

T H E S TAT E S G E N E R A L : C E R E M O N I A L F O RU M OR COMMUNITY OF THE REALM? During the Dutch Revolt the ‘Generality’, as embodied in the States General, was seen by many as representing the sovereignty of the people.⁴⁶ Yet the previous history of this body offers little basis for such an opinion. Ofﬁcials of Duke Philip the Good summoned the ﬁrst States General in 1464. After a ‘general proposition’ stating the duke’s need for a subsidy was presented, there was no deliberation; rather, deputies of the provincial States returned home for the customary deliberations about whether or not to meet the quota for their province. Philip’s successor, the imperious Duke Charles the Bold (1467–77), compelled the States General to act as a deliberative body, insisting that deputies respond to his demands for subsidies without going back home to consult their principals. But when Charles’s reign ended with an ignominious death on a foreign ﬁeld of battle (1477), his daughter and heiress Mary of Burgundy (ruled 1477–82) faced a powerful reaction in favour of provincial autonomy. Her ‘Great Privilege’ of 1477 stipulated that no province was bound by the votes of others, ⁴¹ RAZH, ‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, no. 2344, 228,499 pounds applied to the redemption of renten. ⁴² RAZH, ‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, no. 2287. ⁴³ Loc. cit. ⁴⁴ RAZH, ‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, nos. 2289 (sales of renten, 1565), 2304 (excise and land tax for the year ending 30 April 1567), and 2344 (tenth penny, collected according to an octroy of March 1565); half of Duke Erich von Braunschweig’s renten for 100,000 pounds was redeemed from each source. Philip II granted the Holland town of Woerden to Duke Erich (1528–83), a Habsburg ally and stout Catholic, after he was expelled by the Protestant estates of his German territory. ⁴⁵ RAZH, ‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, ⁴⁶ Van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, esp. 199–207, and the introduction to his The Dutch Revolt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

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even if they formed a majority in the States General. The States assemblies of the core provinces demanded and got separate privileges guaranteeing the same autonomy for their ‘members’ (i.e. cities with voting rights). Under Mary’s husband Emperor Maximilian I (ruled 1482–1519), and their grandson Emperor Charles V (1519–55), Habsburg ofﬁcials had some success in re-establishing the principle of majority rule for the provincial States. But the States General had no more than a ceremonial function: deputies assembled to hear the general proposition, made comments if they wished, and returned home.⁴⁷ To minimize bickering among the provinces about their respective quotas, Charles V instructed both Margaret of Austria (regent from 1519 to 1531) and Mary of Hungary (1531–55) to negotiate separately with the States of each province, making as little use of the States General as possible.⁴⁸ To be sure, geopolitics pointed to the need for united action. If France was the principal danger to the Low Countries from the south, the principal danger from the east was the duke of Gelderland, who had French gold to pay his troops whenever he marched them down the river valleys into Utrecht or Holland. Hence in 1534 and again in 1535, Mary of Hungary called for a ‘union’ of the provinces to support a standing army for the defence of the Netherlands as a whole. But the provincial States demurred, preferring the traditional arrangement whereby the subsidies of each province were to pay for its defence. In 1536, as ﬁghting with France began again, Flanders and Holland called for a meeting of the States General. Sensing an opportunity, Mary summoned the States General and proposed new, country-wide taxes, the proceeds of which would pay the wages of garrisons throughout the land. To her keen disappointment, the provinces delayed for months; when assembled again they adjourned without declaring their instructions, since no province would accept the onus of speaking ﬁrst. Were those among Mary’s advisers who thought that union was ‘contrary to the nature of the country’ perhaps right after all?⁴⁹ The lesson that Charles V’s ofﬁcials seem to have learned was that no matter how bad things were, they could be made worse by turning to the States General. ⁴⁷ Richard Vaughan, Duke Charles the Bold (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1973); W. P. Blockmans, ed., Het Algemene en de Gewestelijke Privilegiën van Maria van Bourgondië, Standen en Landen/Anciens Pays et assemblées d’etat 80 (Heule: UGA, 1985); Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, chapter 2; Helmut G. Koenigsberer, ‘The States-General of the Netherlands before the Revolt’, in his Estates and Revolutions (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971), 125–43. ⁴⁸ Helmot G. Koenigsberger, Monarchies, Estates and Parliaments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 107–9. Cf. p. 186: ‘People did not think of it as a state, as a realm. For a long time the provinces had considered themselves bound together only by having the same prince. Only very gradually had they come to consider themselves as a political community, and they were very suspicious of the word union.’ ⁴⁹ Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, chapter 3, ‘The Guelders Wars’. AGN. 101–3, 140–2; n, Maddens, De Beden van het Graafschap Vlaanderen, 368, 399–401; RSH 1524–43 217–18, 232, 245, 266–7: 8 July 1534, 15 July 1535, 12 April 1536; and Mary of Hungary to Charles V, 12 November 1536, Lanz, Letter 668, ii. 658: even Artois, ‘closest to the ﬁre’, gave its delegates no instructions on a proposed excise tax, save to respond as Flanders did.

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In this respect too the terrible ﬁscal strain of the last of the Habsburg–Valois war brought a change. In the summer of 1557, having suspended payment on bankers’ loans in Castile, Philip II could expect no help from Spain for defending the Low Countries. Moreover, subsidies approved by the provincial States in 1556, just now being collected, were already spent, through the medium of bankers’ loans. On the Antwerp exchange, the debts of the Brussels government included 2,500,000 pounds charged against subsidies that had not even been proposed to the provinces, much less approved. At a meeting of the Council of State in June, Savoy, the governor-general, proposed convening the States General, to give deputies a frank picture of state ﬁnances. Senior members of the council—Viglius van Aytta, and Antoine de Granvelle, bishop of Arras—objected. Granvelle later claimed to have warned the king that Mary’s States General of 1536 had such evil consequences that twenty years were not long enough to recover. But Philip gave the nod to Savoy’s plan. The States General convened in September, to hear from Viglius a reasonably accurate account of how bad things were. Though delegates from the various provinces initially refused to communicate, they agreed at the urging of Brabant to a general discussion of the country’s ﬁscal problems. Eventually, they voted (January 1558) for a complex and ambitious proposal. The provinces would raise 2,400,000 pounds at once, through sales of provincial renten. To get the balance of what was needed for the coming campaign season, they would borrow a further 2,400,000 on the Antwerp exchange. To pay off this loan, and to provide 300,000 pounds per year for garrison troops, they would raise annual subsidies of 800,000 for eight years, starting in 1559. Finally, to pay for debts currently assigned on the ordinary subsidies, which were now to be abolished, they would raise a further 800,000. All monies would be collected by receivers appointed by the States General, and disbursed by treasurers of war appointed in the same way. Philip understood what it meant to lose control of the collection and disbursement of his revenues; in Rodriguez-Salgado’s opinion, ‘this blow to the sovereign’s authority cannot be sufﬁciently stressed’. Nonetheless, he could not pass up having ready money for his debts; he accepted the nine-year subsidy.⁵⁰ The one historian who has carefully examined the matter has found the States General wanting in its ﬁscal stewardship—for example, in determining what kinds of units would be needed for garrison duty, and calculating how much they would cost.⁵¹ One may also doubt whether ofﬁcials of the States General were as effective as Habsburg ofﬁcials were in browbeating the provinces to raise the sums to which they had agreed. In any case, once the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis freed him from the burden of war with France, Philip II seems to have drawn ⁵⁰ Verhofstad, De Regering van de Nederlanden, 112–20, 128–48; Rodriguez-Salgado, Changing Face of Empire, 191–3; Folkert Postma, Viglius van Aytta: De Jaren met Granvelle, 1549–1564 (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2000), 112–14, 152–4. ⁵¹ Verhofstad, De Regering van de Nederlanden, 68–74, 151–4.

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the same conclusion. Prior to his departure to Spain (August 1559), he gave the new regent, Margaret of Parma, standing instructions not to summon the States General again. As soon as she could, Margaret cancelled the nine-year subsidy and concluded agreements with the separate provinces for renewal of the traditional ordinary subsidies.⁵² Yet if the States General did make a mess of managing the country’s ﬁnances, it was a failure that made no impression on politically conscious Netherlanders. On the contrary, the mere fact that deputies from the various provinces had for the ﬁrst time freely discussed among themselves ‘matters of state and of high policy’ gave rise to the idea, resounding through the political debates of the 1560s and beyond, that only the States General properly represented the whole community of the realm.⁵³

T H E B A N K E R S C O M E TO C A L L Bankers dealt directly with the men who collected the sovereign’s revenues. In the Low Countries, where subsidies granted by the provincial States were the chief source of revenue, the government-appointed provincial receivers of subsidies were the favoured intermediaries for bankers. In Holland this post was held by Willem Goudt from 1510 until his death in 1543, and by Jacob Grammaye 1546 to 1555.⁵⁴ In 1541, for example, Goudt travelled to Bruges ‘to show the merchants [lenders] copies of all the obligatiën [promissory notes] he has given on behalf of the emperor’. In January 1542, an ‘Antwerp merchant’ named Jan de Paep came to The Hague for money owed by Goudt, which he brought back to Antwerp under armed guard. In February, Goudt sent to Antwerp an obligatie for 50,000 pounds, for continuance of loans previously contracted in the emperor’s name. By this time Goudt was having problems collecting all of Holland’s subsidies, because the Lords States of Holland were unwilling to see war taxes used to satisfy his debts.⁵⁵ Goudt’s successor, Jacob Grammaye, had more serious problems. Like Goudt, Grammaye regularly sent the Council of Finance copies of the obligatiën he had ⁵² Aud. 650, 107–9, proposition to the States General, 30 June 1559; GRK 3456 and 3457: Holland’s ordinary subsidy was not collected in 1558 or 1559, and was collected only for the second half of 1560; Robert Fruin, ‘Het Voorspel van de Tachtig-Jarige Oorlog’, in his Verspreide Geschriften, vol. I ( The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1900), 266–449, here 276–86. ⁵³ Koenigsberger, Monarchies, 187; cf. p. 180, ‘The general public seems to have been unaware of the royal decree’ [1557] by which Philip suspended payment on his bankers’ loans. ⁵⁴ RAZH, The Hague, Inventaris for the series ‘Grafelijkheidsrekenkamer’ (GRK). ⁵⁵ Hoogstraten to Mary of Hungary, 17 July 1537, Aud. 1532, 233; GRK 3440, the expenditure subsection for ‘trips’ (reysen); GRK 3441, under reysen, 3 October 1542, Jan de Paep is reimbursed for a trip to Leuven to procure ‘certain letters of assurance’ for Goudt in connection with his obligatie of 30,000 pounds; Mary of Hungary to Assendelft, 27 November 1542, Aud. 1646/3, 50–1, and 5 May 1543, Aud. 1646/1, 53; cf. Council of Holland to Reynier van Nassau, 22 July 1543, Aud. 1646/1, 53.

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given to lenders for the sovereign’s debts; in return, the council sent ‘discharges’ (décharges) acknowledging that the debts Grammaye contracted in Antwerp were in partial satisfaction of what he owed as collector of the subsidies; these discharges were then submitted with his accounts, in lieu of cash revenue. But Grammaye was asked to give obligatiën against future subsidies that were not yet agreed to by the provincial States, and not even ‘letters of surety’ from Brussels could protect him from what happened as the provinces demanded the right to collect and disburse their own subsidies.⁵⁶ As of 1554, Grammaye was left with 530,000 pounds in ‘unfruitful discharges’—government receipts that had no value, because the subsidies from which the respective debts were to be paid were now collected not by Grammaye, but by Aert Coebel, an ofﬁcial of the States of Holland.⁵⁷ Bankers were not slow to realize that the central government’s ﬁscal ofﬁcers were no longer trustworthy partners for contracting loans. They already had experience in dealing directly with local magistrates, especially in the great metropolis of Antwerp.⁵⁸ In 1537, Mary of Hungary asked the States of Holland to ‘give letters’ on future terms⁵⁹ of the current ordinary subsidy; her ofﬁcials could then use these letters to raise the money in Antwerp right away. The president of the Council of Holland, Lord Gerrit van Assendelft, professed incomprehension: ‘I know not what letters the said States could provide, other than their act of consent for the said subsidy, which, I am told, was delivered to Brussels some time ago.’⁶⁰ In 1552 Holland was not let off so easily. For the ﬁrst of two terms of a 300,000-pound subsidy, Mary induced the States to issue ﬁve such ‘letters’ or obligatiën, each sealed by the six great cities of Holland,⁶¹ for a total in excess of 100,000 pounds; these instruments of debt would allow her to raise cash right away. In 1554, Mary wanted the States to issue an obligatie for 110,000 pounds so that she herself would not have to borrow the money in Antwerp;⁶² the implication was that bankers would lend more readily, or at lower interest, to the provinces. Lenders insisted on dealing with the States as a corporate body. In January 1556, Viglius van Aytta informed Coebel that his personal obligatie for a requested 70,000 would not be accepted in Antwerp; to be assured that Holland’s full faith and credit was engaged, the bankers wanted an obligatie with ⁵⁶ Called the receiver of the common territory, a post ﬁlled at this time by Aert Coebel. ⁵⁷ See the entries for reysen in GRK 3448, 3449, 3450, 3451, and 3452; Grammaye’s ‘unfruitful discharges’ are listed in an appendix to GRK 3454. ⁵⁸ Aud. 868, 97–104. ⁵⁹ The ordinary subsidy, payable twice a year, was normally approved for periods of three to six years. ⁶⁰ Mary to the Council of Holland, 6 January 1537, Aud. 1530, 233; Assendelft to Mary, 13 January 1537, Aud. 1530, 261. ⁶¹ A rentebrief (‘bond-letter’) also had the seals of the six great cities attached. This was to ensure that the province as a whole was liable for the debt. ⁶² Mary to Assendelft, 16 October 1554, Aud. 1646/3, 226–7.

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the seals of the six great cities afﬁxed.⁶³ As with loans contracted by government receivers, once he had made payments in Antwerp, Coebel would bring back the cancelled obligatiën, to be exchanged for the discharges from the Council of Finance, which he could then submit to the States along with his accounts.⁶⁴ Many of Holland’s obligatiën were made directly out to Matthaeus Oertel, Antwerp factor for the Fuggers, or to Gaspar Schetz, Mary of Hungary’s loanbroker in Antwerp. Hollanders were apparently nervous about falling into the clutches of Antwerp’s big bankers. Through a government ofﬁcial, Schetz offered to have the obligatie made out to him ‘redeemed by a third party’, letting Holland off the hook, but the terms of the offer were not deemed favourable.⁶⁵ In 1558, the States objected when some 188,000 pounds from Holland’s ﬁrst instalment of the nine-year subsidy was assigned to repay loans by Schetz to the government, instead of covering Holland’s own obligatiën, as had been agreed.⁶⁶ Later in the same year Schetz accepted a Holland obligatie for 60,000, at 12 per cent, but he got less than 3,600 pounds in interest, because the loan was settled in three months, not six.⁶⁷ For an obligatie for 100,000 pounds due in 1559, also payable to Schetz, Coebel extended the loan for a year and a half; the States accepted Coebel’s excuse—he had followed orders from the Council of Finance—but ordered him to consult his principals before doing so again.⁶⁸ Schetz was a prime example of the ‘great purses’⁶⁹ whose wealth and connections were suspect in Holland. Nonetheless, he and the States were condemned to do business with each other. The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis meant a drop in the government’s demand for revenue, but not in its dependence on the corporate credit of the provinces. In 1562, Margaret of Parma’s ofﬁcials assumed that Holland would have no trouble raising 200,000 pounds ‘on the faith and credit of the said States’.⁷⁰ In 1571, ⁶³ Sandelijn, 12 December 1555, 6 January 1556. ⁶⁴ Sandelijn, 9 May 1556; RSH 1557, 1–2, 7: 6–8 March, 27 May 1557. ⁶⁵ RSH 1553, 30, 34, 40, 45: 8 August, 12 September, 5 October 1552; RAZH, ‘Staten van Holland voor 157’, no. 2278, Coebel’s account for this subsidy: among payments for Holland’s obligatien, one for 35,400 to Matthaeus Oertel. Obligatiën of this era had to have waxen seals of the six great cities attached, just as rentebrieven did: cf. ‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, no. 2280, fo. 129v –130: to collect the proper seals for 600 rentebrieven issued in 1553, a clerk of the Council of Holland takes six weeks to carry two chests full of documents from one town to another, carefully packing and unpacking the chests, ‘so as to protect the seals, and ensure that none are broken’. ⁶⁶ RSH 1558 34: 21 June 1558; for the government’s reasoning on this issue, Aud. 650, 104. ⁶⁷ RAZH, ‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, no. 2286, Coebel’s account for 300,000 pounds raised as part of the nine-year subsidy; cf. RSH 1555, 77: 30 November 1555, Coebel is ‘sharply instructed’ to pay off certain obligatiën on time. For routine prolongation of government loans, Michel Baelde, ‘Financiële Politiek en Domaniale Evolutie in de Nederlanden onder Karel V en Filips II’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 76 (1963), 14–33. ⁶⁸ RAZH, ‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, no. 2287; RSH 1559 112: 18 September 1559. ⁶⁹ Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 51, 52. ⁷⁰ RSH 1562 87–8, 89–94: 21 June, 5 August 1562.

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51

when Alba wanted 100,000 pounds of a 271,000-pound subsidy delivered on short notice, he left if to the States whether to raise the money by dipping into the provincial excise and land tax—the middelen described above—or by issuing an obligatie; the deputies chose the latter option.⁷¹ In sum, the Low Countries had experienced a process of ﬁscal devolution: towns and provinces, in lieu of the central government, collected and disbursed revenues, issued bonds, and dealt with Antwerp’s bankers. The corporate ﬁscal solidity of the provinces is particularly striking if contrasted with the near insolvency of a central government that had never recovered from the slough of debt left by the last Habsburg–Valois war.⁷² Holland’s credit rating, along with much else, would be sorely tested in the years immediately following 1572. ⁷¹ RSH 1571, 3, 31:16 February, 4 May 1571. ⁷² Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 180–7.

3 Holland as a Body Politic, I: The Habsburg Era, to 1567 The union of multiple entities in a larger framework was commonly described by a humble metaphor, the body politic. For Margaret of Austria and Mary of Hungary, the Habsburg provinces formed a whole: each ‘member’ must support the others.¹ But each States assembly begrudged the allocation of its revenues to needs in other provinces.² Was the province itself a body politic, not a mere collection of quarrelling towns and conﬂicting interests? In 1514, Dordrecht argued that only South Holland (the revenue district consisting of Dordrecht and the villages it controlled) counted as a ‘body’; Holland as whole could not be a body (lichaam), because ‘the members are so diverse that one cannot be outvoted by the others’.³ Holland’s status as a body politic will have to be addressed here on more than one occasion. This chapter examines, for the Habsburg era, (1) economic conﬂicts that made for political fragmentation, and (2) external pressures that created a sense of common interests.

C E N T R I F U G A L F O RC E S : S E C TO R A L I N T E R E S TS Economically and politically, the centre of gravity for the Habsburg Netherlands lay south of the great rivers, in Brabant and Flanders. As Table 1 shows, Holland in 1550 had many towns with more than 5,000 people, but its important towns were a good deal smaller than those in Brabant and Flanders. Larger cities were also the major industrial centres; in 1570, Brabant and Flanders accounted for nearly half the goods ﬁnished or produced in the Low Countries (Holland ¹ The best study of processes of integration at work is Schepper, Belgium Nostrum. ² When Mary of Hungary asked for an extraordinary subsidy to defend Artois against a French invasion (1537), Holland refused, for Holland got no help from Artois in its war against L¨ubeck: Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 120. Cf. A. C. Duke, ‘The Elusive Netherlands’, BMGN 119 (2004), esp. 28–31. ³ ‘Floris Oem van Wijngaerten, ‘Register van tgeene Gedaen Is in Diverse Dagvaartegn’, (Gemeentearchief Dordrecht), no. 29 (fos. 34r –36) of a 33-point memorandum that begins on fo. 22.

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53

Table 1 The core provinces, 1550: cities over 5,000 with reliable population ﬁgures Cities with reliable population ﬁgures Brabant

Total population

Average population

170,000

42,500

4 Flanders Holland Zeeland

115,000

23,000

5 11

141,000

12,818

1

7,000

7,000

Notes: ’s-Hertogenbosch, now part of the Netherlands, was then part of Brabant. I also count Mechelen as part of Brabant, even though for administrative purposes it was a separate enclave, surrounded by Brabant. The Holland cities with the population in 1550: Amsterdam, 30,000; Delft, 14,000; Dordrecht, 11,000; Enkhuizen, 8,000; Haarlem, 14,000; Gouda, 11,000; The Hague, 6,000; Hoorn, 8,000; Leiden, 12,000; Rotterdam, 7,000; Zaandam, 10,000. According to de Vries’s estimates for 1550, The Hague and Leiden declined slightly (from 7,000 to 6,000 and 14,000 to 12,000 respectively), while Delft, Dordrecht, Gouda, and Haarlem remained at the same level. The cities that grew were Amsterdam (14,000 to 30,000), Enkhuizen (4,000 to 8,000), Hoorn (6,000 to 8,000), Rotterdam (5,000 to 7,000), and Zaandam (7,000 to 10,000). Note that with the exception of Rotterdam, all the other cities registering population growth lay north of the IJ, and were heavily involved in the Baltic trade. Source: Jan de Vries, European Urbanization, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), appendix 1, pp. 271 (cities in present-day Belgium, Amsterdam to Zaandam) and 272 (cities in present-day Belgium, Antwerp to Valenciennes).

accounted for a mere 4.2 per cent).⁴ Holland’s prosperity depended on towns tied to the maritime trades; Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the Zuider Zee ports (Hoorn and Enkhuizen) all grew in population during the sixteenth century.⁵ What matters here is the tension between these prosperous towns and the inland industrial cities that fared poorly.

The landed interest Arable and pasture land counted in Holland, even if cities represented about 60 per cent of the taxable wealth in the 1514 assessment.⁶ Along with Utrecht, and coastal Flanders and Brabant, Holland became famous in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries for the reclamation of swampland; dykes were built by drainage boards (heemraadschappen) invested with limited powers of taxation.⁷ ⁴ Cl´e Lesger, Handel in Amsterdam ten tijde van de Opstand: Kooplieden, commerci¨ele expansie en verandering in de ruimtelijke economie van de Nederlanden, ca.1550–ca.1630 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2001), 28, citing a contemporary survey. ⁵ See the note to Table 1. Zaandam, which also grew in population, was not yet regarded as a city, but it was a major centre for Holland’s shipbuilding industry. ⁶ Tracy, ‘Taxation System’, 89; the 1514 schiltal survey was edited by Robert Fruin, Informacie op het Staet van Holland in 1514 (Leiden: Maatschappij der Nederlands Letterkunde, 1866). ⁷ William H. TeBrake, Medieval Frontier: Culture and Ecology in Rijnland (College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 1985).

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Reclaimed land, still waterlogged, was mainly used for pasturing dairy cows.⁸ Higher patches of ground were ﬁt for cultivating grain,⁹ but the surge in Baltic grain imports, especially from about 1500, enabled farmers to shift to industrial crops like ﬂax, hemp, or (for the brewers) barley. Near Gouda, farmers converted land to peat-bogs to meet the demand for cheap fuel.¹⁰ Farm labour being seasonal, rural folk pursued other work. In Flanders and Brabant, where the government kept towns from controlling the countryside, rural industry ﬂourished. But Holland’s twenty-ﬁve walled towns gave the government a goodly sum for a ban on new industrial activity outside city walls (1531). If the ban did not work as well as the towns hoped it would,¹¹ rural Hollanders typically found their extra work on the herring ﬂeet, not in rural industries like brewing.¹² Table 2 shows land taxes in Holland’s revenue districts in 1542, for subsidies worth around 180,000 pounds. Land subject to the schiltal assessment was concentrated along both sides of the IJ. Had the schiltal applied to all of Holland’s productive land, there would have been a similar concentration along Table 2 Rural property values in Holland by revenue district, 1542 Revenue district

Great city

Assessed on agricultural land

South Holland Kenemerland/W. Friesland (Noorderkwartier)

Dordrecht Haarlem

10,305 17,522 23,473

Amstelland Rijnland Delﬂand

— Amsterdam Leiden Delft

Arkel, Heusden, Schieland

Gouda

10,549 10,354 7,418 11,627

Source: Rijkasarchief van Zuid-Holland, The Hague, ‘Graafelijkheidsrekenkamer’, no. 3441, Willem Goudt’s account for both terms of the ordinary subsidy collected in 1542 (nominal value 100,000 pounds), plus an extraordinary subsidy granted for the war with France (nominal value 80,000 pounds). The nominal value was what Goudt as receiver for subsidies was entitled to collect, not counting the rebates (grati¨en or graces) granted by the government to cities great and small. The actual total Goudt lists as due is 176,897, or 179,097, counting 2,200 from the island of Putte, not subject to the schiltal.

⁸ Ad van der Woude, Het Noorderkwartier: Een regionaal historisch onderzoek (3 vols., Wageningen: Veenman & Zonen, 1972), ii. 339–41. ⁹ De Vries, Dutch Rural Economy, 71. ¹⁰ Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 27–45, 195–201. ¹¹ E. C. G. Br¨unner, De Order op de Buitennering van 1531 (Utrecht: A. Oosthoek, 1918), with the comments of Lesger, Handel in Amsterdam, 27–8; De Vries and Van der Woude, The First Modern Economy, 274–5; Richard W. Unger, A History of Brewing in Holland, 900–1900 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 182–7. ¹² Van der Woude, Het Noorderkwartier, ii. 343–6.

Holland as a Body Politic, I

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the Maas. But Voorne and Putten, two large and fertile islands in the estuary, claimed exemption from the schiltal.¹³ Sixteenth-century rural entrepreneurs specialized in the creation of polders (dyked-in ﬁelds); the favoured zones for projects of this kind were, again, the Maas estuary and, north of the IJ, the Noorderkwartier. When the North Sea broke through the dunes in 1552 to ﬂood the Noorderkwartier’s largest polder (the Zijpe), Andries Verliengh, a master engineer from Brabant, built a massive seawall, with stone instead of the traditional wooden beams. Local nobles applied another of Verliengh’s ideas by using windmills to pump out two small lakes.¹⁴ One can get a sense of the proﬁt to be realized from such projects by comparing subsidies levied according to the 1514 schiltal assessment with those levied by the duke of Alba (1569) as a tenth penny on the income from rural property. In the Noorderkwartier, one village adjacent to the Zijpe polder was assessed at 0.0081 per cent of Holland’s taxable wealth in 1514 and 0.0199 per cent of its real-property values in 1569; for the nearby village of Bergen, a partner in the draining of a small lake, the ﬁgures were 0.0039 per cent in 1514 and 0.0162 per cent in 1569.¹⁵ The collection of subsidies according to the schiltal assessment was a major source of friction, because the six great cities got rebates on their quotas, while small towns and villages did not.¹⁶ Small towns were better than villages at defending their interests; ¹⁷ from the 1540s they began quietly meeting among themselves.¹⁸ The real remedy was to break the voting monopoly of the great cities. During the Revolt, Holland’s States came to have eighteen urban votes, including seven from the Noorderkwartier. This change was mainly due to circumstances of the war,¹⁹ but can also be seen as reﬂecting old grievances against abuses of power by the great cities.

Urban industry Among the six great cities, three inland towns—Gouda, Haarlem, and Leiden—depended on traditional urban industries. Leiden was Holland’s principal woollen manufacturing town, brewing was vital for the economy of Gouda, ¹³ Putten contributed 2,200 in 1542, but Voorne (including Brill) paid nothing. ¹⁴ Tracy, ‘Lords, Peasants and the Introduction of Calvinist Preaching in Holland’s Noorderkwartier’, in Tracy, The Low Countries in the Sixteenth Century (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), chapter IX, 60–2. ¹⁵ RAZH 3.01.29, no. 462, ‘Kennemerland en West-Friesland’. Totals were 60,000 pounds for the 1514 schiltal (487 for Schagen and 233 for Bergen) and 214,290 for the 1569 tenth penny (4,220 for Schagen and 3,452 for Bergen). ¹⁶ Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 142–3. ¹⁷ Small towns often sent representatives to meetings of the States of Holland, even though they did not have a vote. ¹⁸ While a guest lecturer at the University of Amsterdam (autumn 2004), I had the pleasure of reading a good master’s thesis on this topic by Mr Loek Zoon. ¹⁹ In the summer of 1572, thirteen towns (not including Amsterdam, which held for the king) guaranteed a much-needed loan for 500,000 pounds: see the Prologue to Part II.

56

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and Haarlem emphasized the production and bleaching of linen cloth. All of Holland’s industries were caught in a secular downturn.²⁰ Even as cloth towns in the southern Netherlands shifted to lighter fabrics like says and kerseys, Leiden fared poorly in the market for heavy woollens; production fell from 29,000 bolts of cloth per year in 1529 to 16,000 in 1532, 5,000 in 1563, and 1,000 in 1573.²¹ Around the turn of the sixteenth century, Holland’s brewers produced an estimated 32,000 ‘brews’ per year, equivalent to 955,000 barrels of beer, or 200,000,000 pints. But as against nearly 12,000 brews in 1480, Gouda produced only about 5,500 in the 1540s, followed by a further drop of perhaps 90 per cent in the 1560s and 1570s. Modern scholars identify various reasons for the decline,²² but contemporaries blamed protectionist measures by other Low Countries towns and provinces on behalf of their own brewers.²³ Not surprisingly, while population grew in the countryside and in maritime cities like Amsterdam, Leiden, Gouda, and Haarlem stagnated or declined in population between 1500 and 1550.²⁴ People without work could not afford good beer; a town’s economic wellbeing was thus reﬂected in receipts for the beer excise, the largest source of urban revenue. Amsterdam in the 1530s was about twice as populous as Leiden and Gouda,²⁵ but beer excise receipts ﬂuctuated between 20,000 and 30,000 pounds in Amsterdam, as compared with 5,000 to 8,000 for Leiden and Gouda. Since magistrates often used excise receipts to pay their city’s quota in government, the poorer towns had the least ﬂexibility in bargaining with Habsburg ofﬁcials. Between 1520 and 1540, Gouda raised its ordinary subsidy rebate from 10 per cent to 62 per cent, Leiden from 18 per cent to 68 per cent. Amsterdam jacked up its rebate too, but only from 5 per cent to 22 per cent;²⁶ unlike Leiden or Gouda, this prosperous city had the luxury of bargaining for concessions favourable to its trade instead of for rebates. Besides protecting them from higher taxation, the one thing that magistrates of the less prosperous towns could do for their burghers was to defend, tooth and nail, their privileged position in the trafﬁc along Holland’s inland waterways. ²⁰ De Vries and Van der Woude, The First Modern Economy, 274, 290 (data on Haarlem’s linen industry scarce before 1580). For the woollen industry, John D. Munro, ‘The Symbiosis of Towns and Textiles: Urban Institutions and the Changing Fortunes of Cloth Manufacturing in the Low Countries and England, 1280–1570’, Journal of Early Modern History, 3 (1999), 1–101. ²¹ De Vries and Van der Woude, The First Modern Economy, 277–9; N. W. Posthumus, De geschiedenis van de Leidse Lakenindustrie (3 vols., The Hague: Nijhoff, 1908–39). ²² Unger, A History of Brewing in Holland, chapters 3 (69–107) and 6 (163–98). De Vries and Van der Woude, The First Modern Economy, 319. ²³ See complaints scattered through the resolutions of Gouda’s town council: M. RollinCouquerque and A. Meerkamp van Embden, ‘Goudse Vroedschapsresoluti¨en betreffende Dagvaarten van de Staten van Holland’, Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap te Utrecht, 37 (1916), 61–81; 38 (1917), 98–357; 39 (1918), 306–407. ²⁴ See the note to Table 1. ²⁵ See note to Table 1, giving estimates for 1500 and 1550. ²⁶ Tracy, ‘Taxation System’, Figures D (p. 79) and F (p. 90). During these years Amsterdam’s annually elected treasurers often passed large surpluses to their successors.

Holland as a Body Politic, I

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The inland waterways In the sixteenth century, Dordrecht was losing out to Rotterdam, further downstream on the Maas, as a shipping centre.²⁷ Hence Dordrecht was all the more insistent on maintaining its staple privilege. Prior to the St Elizabeth’s Day ﬂood of 1421, when the estuary was conﬁgured differently, Dordrecht was a more obvious port of call than it would later be for ships headed upstream.²⁸ Between 1299 and 1355, in return for cash payments, the counts of Holland decreed that vessels passing up or down the Maas and its tributaries (the Lek and the Holland IJssel)²⁹ must call at Dordrecht, for goods to be unloaded and offered for sale. To ensure compliance, Dordrecht was authorized to station gunboats at key points. Upon appeal from other towns, a later count abolished the staple for downstream trafﬁc (1393), but Dordrecht behaved as if the privilege were still in force for trafﬁc in both directions. In 1510, for example, Dordrecht warships entered the harbour of Schiedam to seize three Amsterdam vessels that had bypassed Dordrecht. In 1539, Amsterdam sent grain ships down the Holland IJssel to Rotterdam fully armed, ready to defy Dordrecht’s outliers.³⁰ In 1505, Gorinchem, Dordrecht’s near-neighbour and long-time rival, brought suit against the staple before the Grand Council of Mechelen, soon joined by thirteen other Holland cities and three villages. But the suit dragged on: no court wanted to render a verdict that had to injure the vital interests of one party or the other. In 1527 the president of the Grand Council told Amsterdam’s town secretary that even though the staple privilege was ‘contrary to all natural equity, and therefore void’, he could do nothing to help Amsterdam unless the city initiated a new action before the council.³¹ Finally, in 1540, Charles V himself decreed that the 1505 suit was ‘not well founded’. A clariﬁcation (1541) put limits on the staple requirement for upstream trafﬁc, but Dordrecht’s long and belligerent defence of its privileges was in the main vindicated.³² Just as the Maas and the Rhine river system bisected the Low Countries from east to west, provinces lying between the Maas and the Zuider Zee were bisected ²⁷ Fruin, Informacie op het Staet van Holland, under Dordrecht; W. S. Unger, ‘De Sociale en Economische Strukctuur van Dordrecht in 1555’, De Economist, 63 (1913), 947–84. ²⁸ The ﬂood created a lake east and south of Dordrecht, the Hollands Diep. ²⁹ Another IJssel, a branch of the Rhine, ﬂowed from a point east of Utrecht into the Zuider Zee. ³⁰ J. T. De Smidt et al., eds., Chronologische Lijst van de Ge¨extendeerde Sententi¨en en Procesbundels berustende in het Archief van de Groote Raad te Mechelen (6 vols., Brussels: Paleis der Academi¨en, 1965–88), entries for 10 November 1475, 10 October 1504, 30 July 1521, 23 May 1523, 23 May 1534; Bernard van Rijswijk, Geschiedenis van het Dordtsche Stapelrecht ( The Hague : Nijhoff, 1900), 64, 80–93; AJ, 11–17 October 1527; Council of Holland to Mary of Hungary, 17 November 1539, Aud., 1528. ³¹ AJ, 17 October 1527. ³² For a copy of the emperor’s judgment of 18 October 1540, Aud. 1530; the text (with the 1541 clariﬁcation) is printed in Matthys Balen, Beschryving der stadt Dordrecht (Dordrecht: Simon Onder de Linde, 1610), 451–65.

58

The Habsburg Netherlands, 1549–1567

Map. 2 Holland’s waterways

from north to south by three channels collectively known as the binnenlandvaart, or inland waterway. (Instead of sailing through the stormy North Sea, Baltic skippers bound for Antwerp or Bruges usually chose to enter the Zuider Zee, and continue along one of the inland routes to the Maas estuary.) The westernmost and shortest of these routes ran through Holland. Ships sailed west up the IJ from Amsterdam to Spaarndam, passing through a lock into the Spaarne, Haarlem’s

Holland as a Body Politic, I

59

river. Crossing the Haarlemmermeer (Lake Haarlem) from north to south, they entered the Oude Rijn (Old Rhine) at a point upstream from Leiden, and proceeded thence eastward to the Gouwe and through the lock inside Gouda’s town walls to the Holland IJssel, which ﬂowed into the Maas below Dordrecht.³³ This route was ﬁxed during the fourteenth century, when Holland’s counts had toll stations at Spaarndam and Gouda. The Holland binnenlandvaart was clearly busy in the sixteenth century. During one twelve-month period in the 1540s, 6,126 toll-paying vessels passed through the Gouda lock; during the 1550s sixty to eighty ships or barges at a time lined up to enter the lock at Spaarndam.³⁴ But economic growth in Holland now focused on a slightly different axis, from Amsterdam and the Zuider Zee ports in the north to two downstream harbours on the Maas, Rotterdam and Delfshaven (the port of Delft). With the help of rural magistrates (ambachtsheren) and landowners willing to make ‘improvements’ in the inland waterway system,³⁵ the prospering maritime zones sought a more direct connection, bypassing the westward detour along the IJ to Haarlem, or the eastward detour along the Gouwe to Gouda. Farmers of the Holland tolls, ﬁrmly supported by Haarlem and Gouda, resisted all such novelties; ordinances in the name of Charles V, prohibiting the use of routes other than the established binnenlandvaart, were issued in 1516, 1519, 1536, and 1553.³⁶ Leiden, with no stake in the inland waterway, was involved willynilly, as the seat of Holland’s largest drainage district, the Hoogheemraadschap of Rijnland.³⁷ All along its ‘ring’ of dykes, conﬂicts arose between those seeking to preserve the dykes, and those wanting to cut through them to facilitate trafﬁc.³⁸ For example, along the dyke road linking Amsterdam to Haarlem, Amsterdammers repeatedly cut a channel into the Haarlemmermeer, while Haarlem just as often sent its militia companies to close the opening by driving in stakes.³⁹ Ten miles to the south, where a small dyke divided the Amstel from ³³ The three routes are shown in De Vries and Van der Woude, The First Modern Economy, 14–15. ³⁴ F. C. Ketner, ‘Amsterdam en de Binnenvaart door Holland in de XVe Eeuw’, Bijdragen en Mededelingen voor Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde, 4 (1943), 169–200; 5 (1944), 33–59; Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 56. Cf. Lesger, Handel in Amsterdam, 49. ³⁵ On the duties and privileges of rural magistrates (ambachtsheren), Van Nierop, Van ridders tot retgenten, 119–26. ³⁶ J. C. Overvoorde and J. N. Overburgt, Archief van de Secretarie van de Stad Leiden, 1253–1575 (Leiden: J. J. Groen & Zoon, 1937), ‘Regesten’, nos. 1317 (14 May 1519, a placard issued at the request of the farmer of the Gouda toll), and 1818 (26 October 1553); A. J. Enschede, Inventaris van het Oud-Archief van de Stad Haarlem (Haarlem: A. C. Kruseman, 1866), ‘Regesten’ 26 June 1536, and ‘Privileges’ (no. 253, 1516). Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 56–60. ³⁷ For the Hoogheemraadschap of Rijnland, see the map in TeBrake, Medieval Frontier, 57. ³⁸ On the west side, Rijnland was bounded by the North Sea dunes. ³⁹ Stadsarchief Haarlem, Grote Lade 6, Bundel i–ii, lett. Vv; Loketkast. 5.8, no. V (1–3; and Loketkast 7.5.4 no. 1 (a summary of the dispute from 1514 to 1571); Gemeentearchief Amsterdam, ‘Thesauriers Ordinaris’, no. 5039 (copy of the Haarlem–Amsterdam agreement of 28 December 1514).

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another stream giving access to the Haarlemmermeer, Haarlem won a judgment against a cut made by an Amsterdammer, but nothing was done until Haarlem sent its militiamen to rebuild the dyke (1545).⁴⁰ For vessels headed from Delft or Rotterdam to Amsterdam, the binnenlandvaart ran east up the Maas and the Hollandse IJssel, then back west along the Oude Rijn. The ancient canal known as the Vliet afforded a more direct connection, once an opening was made in the dam at Leidschendam, seven miles below Leiden (1487). Dordrecht and Gouda, equally threatened, joined forces to send out 400 men to close the opening at Leidschendam. In 1575, when he had a ﬂeet of small craft ready to relieve the siege of Leiden, William of Orange ordered a cut in the dam; he promised to close the opening, but action was postponed from year to year, until, in 1579 Gouda’s magistrates sent two militia companies to smash the opening.⁴¹ These quarrels, settled more by self-help than through the courts, indicate a fault line in provincial politics. Towns prospering from their maritime trades, probing for more efﬁcient lines of communication, continually found their efforts obstructed by other towns whose magistrates and burghers clung ﬁercely to privileges that embodied vestiges of a former prosperity. Could towns thus divided fashion a political consensus?

C E N T R I PE TA L F O RC E S : H O L L A N D ’ S C O N N E C T I O N S TO T H E W I D E R WO R L D Three distinct sets of circumstances pushed Holland’s quarrelling cities to ﬁnd common ground, each pointing to a different form of possible political integration. First, the Baltic trading interest pitted Holland as a whole against certain government policies, and also against the interests of other provinces. Second, Habsburg wars against Gelderland, with steady ﬁnancial support from Holland, ended by making Holland the political and ﬁnancial centre for a sub-region within the framework of the larger Habsburg polity. Finally, the determination of the Habsburg sovereigns to eradicate heresy, even by setting aside cherished privileges, roused growing opposition from the whole realm, as if the provinces formed, after all, a single country. ⁴⁰ RAZH, ‘Hof van Holland’, Sententi¨en, vol. 500, nos. 6, 155, 156; Stadsarchief van Haarlem, Grote Lade 6, Bundel i–iii, letters iii, ppp; Stadsarchief Leiden, ‘Oude Secretarie’, 1263, 300a, 300c, 373a–373m; GVR 6 February 1525, 3 February 1526; AJ 8–9 February 1525; RSH 1524–43, 1: 31 January 1525. For a related dispute, J. P. A. Louman, ‘Roerende dat Heycoopwater en Amstellant, 1520–1527’, Hollandsche Studi¨en, 12 (1982), 115–66. ⁴¹ Stadsaarchief Haarlem, Grote Lade, Loketkast 6.1, letter aa; also Loketkast 7.5.2, documents relating to Leidschendam, 1523–1559; Gemeentearchief Gouda, 2432A, summary of disputes over Leidschendam, 1479–1579; Stadsarchief Leiden, ‘Oude Secretarie’, 1264.1.58a; and RAZH, ‘Hof van Holland’, Sententi¨en, vol. 485, no. 32, and vol. 552, no 51b.

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The Baltic trade For the astonishing prosperity of Holland’s Golden Age (c.1585/90–1650) economic historians have differing explanations. One line of argument builds on the deep historical roots of Holland’s trading connection to the Baltic.⁴² The trafﬁc of Holland skippers to ports like Gda´nsk (modern Poland) and Reval (modern Lithuania) was furthered by a conﬂuence of circumstances, including (a) the favourable outcome of Holland’s war with the Wendish Cities (1438–41) of the Hanseatic League, not reversed by L¨ubeck and its allies in subsequent conﬂicts;⁴³ and (b) population growth that stimulated the production of grain in the Baltic for export to the west.⁴⁴ Many scholars (not all Dutch) thus contend that Holland’s seventeenth-century prosperity must not be seen as a product of the Dutch Revolt; rather, Holland’s economic empire in the east, built over centuries, was the springboard for later greatness.⁴⁵ It has remained for another Dutch historian, Cl´e Lesger, to make a convincing case for the contrary view, stressing the central importance of the Revolt: sixteenth-century Holland depended on a Low Countries economic system, centred on Antwerp, that was disrupted in Amsterdam’s favour by events of the war. The external trade of the Low Countries was in all likelihood signiﬁcantly less than its internal trade,⁴⁶ including the products of local industry (in which Holland had a minimal share). Antwerp was the hub for both internal⁴⁷ and external trade. Receipts from the hundredth-penny tax show that for February to August 1545 Antwerp was responsible for 76 per cent of all goods exported, as against only 6 per cent for Amsterdam.⁴⁸ Did Amsterdam draw hidden strength from its role as a ‘staple market’ where certain kinds of goods were ⁴² The case for the medieval roots of Holland’s later prosperity is made by H. P. H. Jansen, ‘Holland’s Advance’, Actae Historiae Neerlandicae, 10 (1978), 1–20. On the ‘mother trade’, De Haan, Moedernegotiatie en grote vaart. ⁴³ Klaus Spading, Holland und die Hanse im 15. Jahrhundert (Weimar: H. B¨ohlau, 1973); when Hollanders made direct connections with Gda´nsk (modern Poland) and Reval (modern Lithuania), they bypassed the Wendish Cities, a subgroup of six Hanse towns headed by L¨ubeck. Holland war ﬂeets also sailed against L¨ubeck in 1511, and 1533. ⁴⁴ De Vries and Van der Woude, The First Modern Economy, 198: Baltic grain imports to the Netherlands are estimated at 2,000 to 3,000 last per year in the 1470s, 10,000 last per year in 1500, and 60,000 last per year in 1560. The last was a measure of volume roughly equal to eighty-ﬁve bushels. ⁴⁵ e.g. Israel, The Dutch Republic, 12: ‘Despite the overwhelming superiority of the south in many ﬁelds, it would be wrong to conclude that the north Netherlands was in a politically or economically subordinate position to the south, or was any sort of appendage.’ For a summary of views on this point, Lesger, Handel in Amsterdam, 8–13. ⁴⁶ Lesger, Handel in Amsterdam, 48, cites Wilfrid Brulez’s estimate that only 25% of the industrial production of the Low Countries was destined for export. ⁴⁷ Herman van der Wee, The Growth of the Antwerp Market and the European Economy ( The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963). ⁴⁸ Lesger, Handel in Amsterdam, 33; the ﬁgures are: total exports, 5,702,500 pounds; Antwerp exports, 4,257, 200 pounds; and Amsterdam exports, 354,600.

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kept in stock for redistribution? This argument is commonly made, but not supported by the hundredth-penny registers. Unlike (for example) Delft and Schiedam, which exported only herring, Amsterdam exported more different kinds of goods than any other port, mainly to north Germany, the Baltic, and Norway (62 per cent of the value of goods), and the northern Netherlands provinces (22 per cent). Lesger concludes that Amsterdam (with Hoorn and Enkhuizen) functioned as a ‘specialized intermediary’ or ‘gateway’ between the Low Countries and lands to the north and east: north Germany, the Baltic, and the northern Netherlands.⁴⁹ Contemporary Hollanders did not necessarily have a clear-headed picture of their dependence on Antwerp. In particular, the capital markets of Antwerp and Bruges, which a modern economic historian might see as injecting resources into the whole system, were seen in menacing terms; Antwerp’s ‘great purses’ were thought to threaten the livelihood of honest traders, for example by negotiating purchase contracts with Baltic growers before the grain was ripe.⁵⁰ But Hollanders understood very well their dependence on connections to the Baltic, via Denmark’s Øresund.⁵¹ Threats to close the Sound to Netherlands shipping always brought a reaction from Holland. When Charles V proposed intervening in a succession war in Denmark (1535/36)—after Holland had made its peace with King Christiern III, the apparent victor—the States did everything possible to obstruct his plans, and so did the stadtholder, who in this case sided with his province against Brussels.⁵² The greatest fear was that Holland’s Baltic trading partners could choose to go elsewhere: ‘The Easterling is by nature a hard man, and above all others loves freedom in his trading . . . he will altogether not abide any new restrictions.’ In fact, Baltic German traders could indeed sail directly to markets in England and Iberia, bypassing the Low Countries altogether, or choose Emden (East Frisia) instead of Amsterdam as a stopping place to offer their grain for sale.⁵³ To give them reason for coming to Holland, Amsterdam in 1495 had purchased from Emperor Maximilian I the privilege of paying no duty on the re-export of Baltic grain.⁵⁴ When later Habsburg governments eyed the revenue prospects of this growing trade—duties of one kind or another were decreed four times between 1527 and 1545—Hollanders united in their opposition, using judicious concessions on government subsidy requests, or well-crafted arguments about the nature of the Baltic trade, and, in one case (1541), a riot in Amsterdam ⁴⁹ Ibid. 17 (the quote), 23–64, especially table 1.2, p. 34. ⁵⁰ Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 51, 52, 195. ⁵¹ The Øresund now divides Denmark from Sweden, but the now-Swedish province of Skåne was then under Danish rule. ⁵² Sicking, Neptune and the Netherlands, 231–6. ⁵³ Meilink, ‘Rapporten’; M. van Tielhof, De Hollandse Graanhandel, 1470–1570: Koren op de Amsterdamse Molen ( The Hague: Stichting Hollands Historische Reeks, 1995), 129–45. ⁵⁴ H. Klompenmaker, ‘Handel, Geld- en Bankwezen in de Noordelijke Nederlanden’, AGN, vi. 61.

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that drove the would-be collector out of town.⁵⁵ There was a reason for this unanimity: as the hundredth-penny records show, goods produced or processed in Holland ﬁgured largely in Amsterdam’s exports: textiles, 31.7 per cent of the total; grain and other unprocessed farm products, 18.5 per cent; ﬁsh, 10.9 per cent; and dairy products and animal fat, 5.3 per cent.⁵⁶ Keeping the Baltic trade was in Holland’s interest, not just Amsterdam’s.⁵⁷

The Gelderland wars Holland had not been a province unto itself since 1256, when Holland’s Count William II established his claim to Zeeland. Under Burgundian and Habsburg rule, Zeeland remained administratively subordinate; there was but one stadtholder for both provinces, and the Council of Holland in The Hague, with two of its eight members from Zeeland, served both as appellate court and administrative body.⁵⁸ Economically, Zeeland, lying athwart the estuary of the Scheldt, was wholly drawn into Antwerp’s orbit. Arnemuiden, on Walcheren Island, functioned as the ‘gateway’ for Antwerp’s exports to Iberia and its dependencies.⁵⁹ Moreover, there were tensions between Holland and Zeeland at the level of court politics. Politically, Zeeland looked for support at court to its greatest landholding family, the lords of Vere, whose main town passed by marriage to a bastard branch of the House of Burgundy (1485). From 1491 to 1558, the Burgundian lords, as admirals of the Netherlands, made Vere the base for a Habsburg war ﬂeet; Holland, however, was at loggerheads with successive admirals, refusing to recognize their jurisdiction over Holland shipping.⁶⁰ In sum, Zeeland’s administrative links to Holland did not create common interests. In the early 1500s Holland was the only Habsburg province north of the great rivers. Friesland, on the northern shore of the Zuider Zee, had resisted ⁵⁵ 5 Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 98–105; Dordrecht dissented on one occasion, the college of nobles on another. ⁵⁶ Based on Lesger, Handel in Amsterdam, table 1.4, p. 38. ⁵⁷ During the dispute over export duties on grain, Leiden’s deputies told government ofﬁcials that if Baltic grain was carried by the Easterlings to England instead of Holland, the cloth they took back would also be English (AJ 16 May 1528, 11 February 1530, 20 March 1531). ⁵⁸ Israel, The Dutch Republic, 14; the introduction to A. S. DeBlecourt and E. M. Meijers, Memorialen van het Hof van Holland . . . van de Secretaris Jan de Rosa (10 vols., Haarlem: H. J. Tjenk-Willink & Zoon, 1929–85). ⁵⁹ Lesger, Handel van Amsterdam, table 1.2, p. 34, value of exports from various ports to various destinations; the important destinations for Arnemuiden were Iberia (60.7%), north Germany (Grote Oost, 20.8%), and Madeira and the Canary Islands (10.5%). J. H. Kluiver, De Souvereine en Independente Staat Zeeland (Middelburg: De Zwarte Arend, 1998), 54: ‘De handel en scheepvaart van Zeeland hingen in de zestiende eeuw nauw samen met de positie van Antwerpen als centrum voor de Europese goederenhandel.’ ⁶⁰ Sicking, Neptune and the Netherlands, pp. xxvii–xxviii, 46–9, 105–22; the Burgundian lords of Vere who served as admirals were Philip of Burgundy-Beveren (1491–8), Philip of Burgundy-Blaton (1498–1517), Adolph of Burgundy (1517–40), and Maximilian of Burgundy (1540–58).

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efforts at conquest by medieval counts of Holland.⁶¹ To the east, between the Zuider Zee and the Rijn (Rhine), Holland faced the Nedersticht, controlled by the prince-bishop of Utrecht. Between the Rijn and the Maas Holland had a common border with the duchy of Gelderland, which also extended north along the Nedersticht’s eastern border to the Zuider Zee and the IJssel, one of the branches of the Rhine. Between the IJssel and the southern border of Friesland lay the Oversticht, the other part of the prince-bishop’s territory, also known as Overijssel.⁶² These lands formed a regional trading economy, with links to north Germany and the Baltic, and to the Maas estuary.⁶³ But trade depends on peaceful conditions, and towns along the Zuider Zee were often at war. In 1473, Duke Charles the Rash of Burgundy (ruled 1467–77) invaded Gelderland and expelled its ruler.⁶⁴ In 1492, with help from France, and broad support from the towns and nobles of Gelderland, Duke Charles of Egmont reclaimed his duchy. From this time forward, when his French ally was at war with the Habsburgs, Charles of Egmont wreaked destruction on southern Holland and northern Brabant. Margaret of Austria, during her ﬁrst term as regent for the young Archduke Charles (1506–14), lacked the resources for a counter-offensive; the areas immediately affected supported war against Gelderland, but other provinces did not, fearing that an attack on this ally of France might provoke war with France itself.⁶⁵ Then came the opening of a northern front. Emperor Maximilian I had pawned his claim to Friesland⁶⁶ to Duke Albert of Saxony, who brought an army here in 1514. Meanwhile, the City and Rural Districts (Ommelanden) of Groningen, a North Sea territory lying between Friesland and the Ems estuary, acclaimed Charles of Egmont as their ruler.⁶⁷ Hence Frisian opponents of Saxon rule also turned to Gelderland, giving Charles of Egmont a base to invade Holland’s Noorderkwartier. In 1517 his mercenary troops stormed Medemblik and Alkmaar, then marched though ⁶¹ Antheun Janse, Grenzen aan de macht: De Friese oorlog van de graven van Holland omstreeks 1400 ( The Hague: Stichting Hollands Historische Reeks, 1993). ⁶² Sticht (cf. German Stift) meant a foundation, e.g. the landed endowment controlled by a prince-bishop or prince-abbot of the Holy Roman Empire. The two parts of the bishop’s territory were lower down (Nedersticht=province of Utrecht) and higher up (Oversticht=province of Overijssel-Drenthe) the Rhine and its branches. ⁶³ De Vries and Van der Woude, The First Modern Economy, 14–15; note that the IJssel valley cities of Deventer, Kampen, and Zutphen, more important in the Middle Ages than in the sixteenth century, were members of the Hanseatic League. ⁶⁴ For this paragraph, J. E. A. L. Struick, Gelre en Habsburg, 1492–1528 (Arnhem: S. Gouda Quint, 1960); Tracy, The Politics of Erasmus: A Paciﬁst Intellectual and his Political Milieu ( Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), chapter 4, ‘The Mystery of our War with Guelders’; Israel, The Dutch Republic, 27–29. ⁶⁵ 5 In 1511 Margaret got England’s young monarch, Henry VIII, to send an army against Venlo in Gelderland, but the siege was soon abandoned. Meanwhile, Charles of Egmont occupied Woudrichem, a Holland town on the south bank of the Maas. ⁶⁶ That is, the claim on which medieval counts of Holland had not made good. ⁶⁷ Folkert Postma, ‘De mislukte missie van mr. Maarten van Naarden als luitenant-stadhouder van Stad en Lande, 1541–1557’, BMGN, 120 (2005), 1–28, here p. 4.

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Holland from north to south. Holland now faced a foe who could attack at any point. If ‘the common man’ remained suspicious of the Habsburg government, the urban elites represented in the States threw their weight behind government proposals to carry the war to the enemy.⁶⁸ During the campaign that made Friesland a Habsburg province (1521–3), Holland consented to subsidies at two to three times the normal level. When the ﬁghting was over Amsterdam boasted that the Zuider Zee belonged to the emperor. In 1527, however, Charles of Egmont occupied parts of the Nedersticht. Henry of Bavaria, the prince-bishop of Utrecht, unable to dislodge the foe, offered to resign his temporalities into the hands of Charles V, an arrangement formalized in November of 1527. As one Habsburg ofﬁcial explained to the States, with Utrecht as a Habsburg possession Holland would have a buffer against Gelderland. Holland again opened its collective purse-strings, granting in 1528 subsidies that were nearly 50 per cent higher than for any previous year. Both Utrecht and Overijssel-Drenthe (the Oversticht) were brought under Habsburg rule, and by the Treaty of Gorinchem (October 1528) the childless Charles of Egmont recognized Charles V as his heir and successor in Gelderland. The story has one ﬁnal act. Upon Charles of Egmont’s death (1538), the States of Gelderland offered their allegiance to the duke of neighbouring Cleves. It remained for Charles V to deal with this problem the next time he became involved in a war with France. From 1543, Gelderland was again a Habsburg province; save for its North Sea dune coast, Holland was now insulated from attack on all sides. Holland continued to sponsor the process by which Friesland and Utrecht became Habsburg provinces. The city of Utrecht was guarded by a new fortress, with garrison wages paid for from Holland’s ordinary subsidy.⁶⁹ Economically, Amsterdam and the Noorderkwartier ports served as the ‘gateway’ for trade between these new lands and the rest of the Netherlands.⁷⁰ Administratively, it became customary for the stadtholder of Holland and Zeeland to be stadtholder of Utrecht as well. If Friesland, Groningen, and Overijssel had their own stadtholder, as did Gelderland,⁷¹ Brussels often chose ofﬁcials trained in Holland for posts in the new provinces.⁷² To speak of Holland as exercising an incipient ⁶⁸ For this paragraph, Struick, Gelre en Habsburg; Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, chapter 3, ‘The Guelders Wars’, and Tracy, Emperor Charles V, chapter 9, ‘Charles’s Grand Plan, 1543–1544’. ⁶⁹ Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 275 n. 14. As a symbol of the former regime, Vredenburg Castle was pulled down in the early Revolt; vestiges of the foundations may be seen outside the entrance to Utrecht’s Central Station. ⁷⁰ Lesger, Handel in Amsterdam, table 1.2, p. 34. ⁷¹ Israel, The Dutch Republic, 68. ⁷² Postma, ‘De mislukte missie van Mr. Maarten van Naarden’; Juliaan Woltjer, Friesland in Hervormingstijd (Leiden: Brill, 1962). The ﬁrst Chancellor of Habsburg Gelderland (1543–6) was a former member of the Council of Holland, Joost Sasbout: Maarten Hageman, Het kwade exempel van Gelre: De stad Nijmegen, de Beeldenstorm en de Raad van Beroerten, 1566–1568 ([Nijmegen]: Vantilt, 2003), 39.

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‘hegemony’ over the newly acquired provinces goes too far.⁷³ But Holland willingly lent its support to a government policy consistent with its own interests. The Zuider Zee was indeed the emperor’s lake, and Holland was now the ﬁnancial hub and the political centre of a sub-regional economy.

Treason against God, local privileges, and iconoclasm When a great wave of iconoclasm swept across the Netherlands in August and September of 1566, most people were still Catholic.⁷⁴ Nevertheless, Protestant doctrine, appealing directly to God’s Word, found many sympathizers in this highly urbanized and thus highly literate region.⁷⁵ The Catholic clergy were not conspicuously corrupt or ill educated, but lay folk resented the privileges of the not-always-zealous aristocratic gentlemen who monopolized higher positions in the Church.⁷⁶ What sets the Netherlands apart in religious history is that the repression of Protestant dissent was more ruthless and unremitting than anywhere else in Catholic Europe. Charles V brooked no compromise with heresy, or ‘treason against God’ (l`ese-majest´e divine).⁷⁷ Between 1523 and 1566 more than 1,300 people were executed as heretics, among a population of approximately 2,000,000.⁷⁸ Because treason (including treason against God) was a crime exceptionnel, Netherlanders could not in the government’s view claim the privileges that obtained for lesser offences.⁷⁹ But towns and provinces rejected this distinction, and resisted infringements on privileges deemed essential to ⁷³ Israel, The Dutch Republic, 56: ‘The break of 1572 was only in a superﬁcial sense a reversal of the [territorial] uniﬁcation of 1516–1549. In reality, the Revolt against Spain was to conﬁrm the underlying separation of north and south and long-term gradual integration of the north under Holland’s hegemony.’ ⁷⁴ Alastair Duke, Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries (London: Hambleton, 1990); Guido Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation: Underground Protestantism in a Commerical Metropolis, 1550–1577, trans. J. C. Grayson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Philip Benedict, Christ’s Chuches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), chapter 6. ⁷⁵ 5 For the importance of the printed word in the spread of Protestantism, see, for example, Miriam Chrisman, Lay Culture and Learned Culture: Books and Social Change in Strasbourg, 1480–1599 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). ⁷⁶ Charles H. Parker, ‘Community on the Fringe: Catholics in the Dutch Republic, 1580–1650’, forthcoming from Harvard University Press; I am grateful to Professor Parker of St Louis University for letting me see a copy of his work. ⁷⁷ On the thirteenth-century assimilation of heresy to the Roman law crime of laesa majestas, Dictionnaire de th´eologie catholique, vii:2. 2049. Cf. Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed, 174: ‘What differentiated the Habsburg Netherlands from most of the Holy Roman Empire of which it technically remained a part was the determination with which the ruling prince sought to repress these ideas.’ ⁷⁸ Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed, 177; Benedict notes that Catholic France, with about nine times the population of the Netherlands, executed 500 people for heresy during roughly the same period. ⁷⁹ For treatment of treason against God as a crime exceptionnel, Gerta Grosheide, Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis der Anabaptisten in Amsterdam (Hilversum: J. Schipper, 1938), 272–7.

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their well-being. Especially in Philip II’s reign, the anti-heresy edicts increasingly divided the people of the Netherlands from their government. The Lutheran movement of the 1520s was prevented from taking root here by enforcement of the government’s placards against heresy. To be sure, Charles V’s plan for an Inquisition on the Spanish model foundered when the ﬁrst and only inquisitor-general provoked unanimous opposition from the States of Holland (he was thought to have violated the privilege de non evocando, according to which no Hollander could be ‘evoked’ for trial outside the province). Nonetheless, two Augustinian friars, members of Luther’s order, burned at the stake in Brussels (1523), were Europe’s ﬁrst Protestant martyrs.⁸⁰ With or without preachers to encourage them, lay people were found in many places to reject points of Catholic doctrine, especially the belief that the body and blood of Christ are truly present in the Eucharist. From about 1530, Melchior Hoffman (d. 1533) and other Anabaptists preached in the Low Countries; interpreting the Bible according to the visions of their prophets, Hoffman’s followers in Holland, foreseeing apocalyptic struggle between the saints of God and the minions of Satan, launched a revolutionary movement that climaxed in the rise and fall of a Melchiorite kingdom at M¨unster in Westphalia (1534–5).⁸¹ Town courts had the primary responsibility for enforcing Charles V’s placards. But if the accused had the status of burghers, magistrates were loath to prosecute for offences of this kind, not part of the traditional criminal code. Since the towns were not cooperating, responsibility was shifted to provincial tribunals like the Council of Holland, which had authority to evoke cases from town courts. Even the councils, serving by appointment of the sovereign, did not enforce the edicts strictly; in keeping with their discretion in passing sentence, they meted out lesser penalties for what the placards deﬁned as capital crimes. Hence Charles issued a new placard (1529): all persons henceforth convicted of capital offences must be executed, without exception.⁸² After the fall of M¨unster former Melchiorites gathered around a Frisian priest, Menno Simons, who insisted on strict paciﬁsm, and a literal interpretation of the Gospels. Tribunals that had no difﬁculty applying the full force of the placards to seditious Melchiorites had little stomach for proceeding against peaceful and industrious Mennonites, despite what the placards might say.⁸³ Where the government had least control, as in the provinces acquired from 1515 to 1543, prosecution for heresy more or less collapsed in the latter part of Charles V’s ⁸⁰ Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 152–5; Hans Wiersma, ‘Recantation’; Probst or Proost was a former pupil of Luther who ﬂed Antwerp for Bremen. ⁸¹ Krahn, Dutch Anabaptism. ⁸² Alastair Duke, ‘Salvation by Coercion: The Controversy Surrounding the ‘‘Inquisition’’ in the Low Countries on the Eve of the Revolt’, in his Reformation and Revolt, 152–74; Tracy, ‘Heresy Law and Centralization’, and Holland under Habsburg Rule, chapter 6. ⁸³ For the storming of Amsterdam’s town hall by Melchiorites (1534), see the Prologue to Part I. For Netherlands Anabaptism after 1535, Decavele, De dagraad van de Reformatie in Vlaanderen, and Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation.

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reign.⁸⁴ Yet some ecclesiastical inquisitors were persistent. With grudging support from the Council of Flanders, Pieter Titelmans, inquisitor for that province, presided over 454 trials, and was responsible for 105 of 200 executions for heresy carried out in Flanders between 1545 and 1566.⁸⁵ Reformed Protestantism did not gain a ﬁrm foothold until 1555, when separate congregations for Netherlandish and Walloon speakers were organized in Antwerp. From the metropolis, these churches ‘under the cross’ of persecution organized new congregations, as in Brussels, Bruges, and Mechelen.⁸⁶ In Brabant and Flanders, the number of persons executed for heresy was noticeably greater during the 1550s than it had been during the 1540s.⁸⁷ In turn, fresh trials and further executions brought more vigorous protest, not just from the States General but seemingly from all levels of society. In Holland, crowds gathered for public executions rioted, freeing the condemned persons and causing magistrates to bar their doors for safety (Haarlem 1557, Rotterdam 1558).⁸⁸ Philip II was now meditating a drastic reorganization of the Netherlands Catholic Church, whereby fourteen new dioceses would be erected. The idea came from Franciscus Sonnius, an ecclesiastical inquisitor. More bishops would promote reform of the Catholic clergy, and more inquisitorial tribunals (one for each bishopric) would mean a more vigorous campaign against heresy. In 1559 Sonnius reported from Rome that Pope Paul IV had signed the bulls necessary for erecting fourteen new dioceses. Philip appointed a commission to work out the details, headed by his most trusted adviser for the Netherlands, Granvelle, who was bishop of Arras and a member of the Council of State.⁸⁹ For endowment of the new bishoprics, Sonnius had proposed that Philip invoke his sovereign authority to take land or income from the country’s plentifully endowed monasteries. But the commission decided, at Granvelle’s initiative, to solve the ﬁnancing problem by ‘incorporating’ into the new bishoprics certain abbacies that now happened to be vacant; thus the bishop of ’s-Hertogenbosch (Sonnius) would be the new abbot of the nearby abbey of Tongerlo.⁹⁰ In the judgement of a recent scholar this was ‘the most fatal government decision ever taken in the Habsburg Netherlands’. Monks from the monasteries affected, often ⁸⁴ Postma, Viglius van Aytta, 81. ⁸⁵ 5 Duke, ‘Salvation by Coercion’, 160–1; Israel, The Dutch Republic, 99. ⁸⁶ Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation, 61–72; Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed, 177–81; Andrew Pettegree, Emden and the Dutch Revolt: Exile and the Development of Reformed Protestantism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 59–78. ⁸⁷ Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed, table 6.1, p. 176. ⁸⁸ Duke, ‘Salvation by Coercion’, 168; Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 200–2. ⁸⁹ Granvelle’s father Nicholas Perrenot (d. 1550), lord of Granvelle in Franche-Comt´e, had been Charles V’s chief adviser on foreign policy. ⁹⁰ For the most recent account, Postma, Viglius van Aytta, 81–6, 137–49, 197–202, correcting at many points the classic study, M. Dierickx, De oprichting der nieuwe bisdommen in de Nederlanden onder Filips II, 1559–1570 (Antwerp: Standaard, 1950).

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of noble families, were up in arms at the high-handedness of the sovereign, and so were their brothers and cousins.⁹¹ Towns designated as episcopal sees cared little how abbacies were ﬁlled, but they did not want an inquisitor within the walls. Haarlem barred its bishop from entering the city, as did Roermond (Gelderland) and Deventer (Overijssel).⁹² Meanwhile, following the conclusion of peace with France (April 1559),⁹³ Philip made plans to return to Spain. As regent of the Netherlands he installed his half-sister Margaret of Parma, an illegitimate daughter of Charles V. Margaret’s authority, like that of her predecessors, depended on the collaboration of the great nobles who sat in her Council of State. One of them, William of Orange, was already suspicious of the new order, having been told by the duke of Alba—a close ally of Granvelle—that Philip II and France’s Henry II had promised each other to erect state tribunals for the extirpation of heresy, like the Spanish Inquisition.⁹⁴ Others—including the counts of Egmont, and Hornes—resented Philip’s increasing reliance on the advice of Granvelle, who, as archbishop of Mechelen, would be at the summit of the new episcopal hierarchy. In May 1561 Orange took the unusual step of inviting nobles resident in Brussels to his palace to discuss the state of the country; their aim was to break Granvelle’s power. At the same time, local ofﬁcials at all levels dragged their feet on enforcement of anti-heresy laws.⁹⁵ In March 1563, having failed to oust Granvelle by other means, Orange, Egmont, and Hornes sent Philip II an ultimatum: if this man were not dismissed from the Council of State, they would be forced to resign. Amid reports of widespread support in Brussels for Orange and his cohorts, and with encouragement from the Spanish court faction at odds with Granvelle’s ally, Alba, Philip made his decision: on 13 March 1564 Granvelle left Brussels, for good.⁹⁶ Orange and his allies now pressed for change, in keeping with broad sentiment in the country at large. In December Orange made before the Council of State an impassioned speech on behalf of the principle of religious toleration. Margaret of Parma and the Council would not go this far, but they agreed to request ‘moderation’ of the placards; Lamoral d’Egmont, the victor of Gravelines (1558), was designated to make a personal appeal to the king. Philip let his closest advisers know that he would not relent on the principle that heresy was punishable by death, but he was unwilling to make a public response to Egmont’s petition so long as the massive Ottoman siege of the Knights of St John on Malta hung in the balance. Thus if Egmont returned (April 1565) with the impression that ⁹¹ Postma, Viglius van Aytta, 197–202 (the quote, 199). ⁹² Israel, The Dutch Republic, 141–4. ⁹³ The Treaty of Cateau-Cambr´esis: see Chapter 2. ⁹⁴ Postma, Viglius van Aytta, 210, citing what Orange later told Granvelle, as recounted in a 1562 letter of Granvelle to Philip II. ⁹⁵ Duke, ‘Salvation by Coercion’, 167–70; Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 202–3; Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 63. ⁹⁶ Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 47–55; Postma, Viglius van Aytta, 207–14, 248–58.

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the king was prepared to make concessions,⁹⁷ many in the Netherlands thought otherwise. Hendrik van Brederode, Holland’s largest landholder, represented a family that was politically suspect to the Habsburgs.⁹⁸ In July, August, and September 1565, in out-of-the-way places, Brederode organized discussions among sympathetic nobles as to what they might do if the king insisted on maintaining the placards. Meanwhile, the arrival of a relief force organized from Spain induced Ottoman commanders to abandon the siege of Malta. Hence Philip announced his decision in letters of 17 and 20 October 1565, dated from Segovia Woods, which arrived in Brussels on 5 November: the placards would remain the law of the land.⁹⁹ Two days earlier, twenty Calvinist nobles, including Orange’s brother Count Louis of Nassau, and John and Philip Marnix van Sint-Aldegonde, both of whom had been educated in Geneva, met privately in Brussels to discuss their options. To appeal to Catholic nobles, still a large majority, they envisioned a petition that would call only for abolition of the Inquisition. This plan was now all the more pertinent. Starting in December 1565, some 400 signatures were collected for the so-called Compromise of the Nobility, mainly from lesser nobles. Men of higher rank—the provincial governors—held back from signing, but notiﬁed Margaret of Parma that they would sooner resign their positions than enforce the placards. On 5 April 1566, Brederode and 300 noble confederates, all in arms, demanding admission to Margaret’s presence, presented her with a petition of the same tenor as the Compromise. One of her aides famously referred to the petitioners as ‘beggars’, thus giving the movement a name. The regent felt compelled to give in; on 9 April, she signed letters informing ofﬁcials at all levels that the placards were suspended, pending a further appeal to the king in Spain. This was the signal for which Calvinist congregations had been waiting; often choosing sites on the lands of sympathetic noblemen, ‘hedge-preachers’ attracted large crowds in all parts of the country, including Holland, where there had been no trace of Calvinist inﬂuence. For those familiar with recent events in France, it was an ominous sign that nobles sometimes appeared at these gatherings in arms. Neither Margaret nor the confederate nobles wanted civil war in the Netherlands. By late July the two sides were letting each other know their respective terms for keeping the peace: a stop to the hedge-sermons on one side, legalization of Protestant religious practice on the other.¹⁰⁰ Netherlands Protestant refugeees—gathered in Emden (East Friesland), Wesel (duchy of Cleves), or London—followed these events closely. When Margaret ⁹⁷ Kamen, Philip of Spain, 98–101; Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 64–5, and Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 70. ⁹⁸ Van Nierop, Van ridders tot regenten, 196–9; Duke, ‘Salvation by Coercion’, 1979. ⁹⁹ Israel, The Dutch Republic, 144–5; Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 66–8. ¹⁰⁰ Israel, The Dutch Republic, 144–7; Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 69–74; Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation, 88–9; Alastair Duke, ‘The Time of Troubles in the County of Holland, 1566–1567’ (with D. A. Kolff), in his Reformation and Revolt, 125–51 (here, 126–31).

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of Parma suspended the placards (April 1566), some exiles returned, including Sebastiaan Matte, a hatmaker by trade, who began preaching at a site not far from his native Ieper, in west Flanders. Some months on, with 2,000 armed Calvinists, he tried but failed to force an entry to the nearby walled town of Veurne (1 August). The tenth of August was the day ﬁxed for the annual pilgrimage to the monastery of St Lawrence in Steenvoorde, from nearby Hondschote, an important centre of the new cloth industry. After Matte preached outside the cloister, one of his colleagues, also returned from England, led a party of men who broke into the monastery church and smashed the images. Three days later this man, Jacob de Buzere, also of Ieper, led a raid on another monastery church. On 14 August Matte and about a hundred men (half of them erstwhile exiles in England) brought down the ‘idols’ in St Bertin, the oldest church in the town of Poperinghe. From industrial west Flanders, Matte’s disciples fanned out to carry on their work.¹⁰¹ The iconoclastic movement spread quickly across the country. In Antwerp, images were smashed in the chapter church of Our Lady, then in other churches and monasteries throughout the city; these were ‘planned and organized’ riots, in which prominent Calvinists supervised the destructive work of men who, as subsequent investigations brought out, had no property (20–21 August). In Amsterdam, the strongly Catholic magistrates felt the need to consult with leading burghers of moderate opinion on how to prevent violence; on their advice they ordered the churches closed for a time, a move that infuriated Margaret of Parma but did not prevent assaults on the Franciscan monastery. Lille was a thoroughly Catholic city, and the residence of Margaret’s governor for Walloon Flanders; companies of civic militia, with the governor’s men, kept this city’s churches safe from attack by ‘foreigners’.¹⁰² Lille was an exception. For the government in Brussels, and for town magistrates, the frightening aspect of these tumultuous days was that in most places the civic militia companies—made up of those solid burghers who formed the backbone of any community—refused to intervene to protect the churches.¹⁰³ Margaret now agreed to permit Protestant worship where it was already being conducted, outside town walls. In some places magistrates and/or provincial governors went a step farther, designating churches or other structures ¹⁰¹ Andrew Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 74–5; J. Scheerder, De Beeldenstorm (Bussum: De Haan, 1974). ¹⁰² Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation, 89 (the quote), 91; Charlie Steen, A Chronicle of Conﬂict: Tournai, 1559–1567 (Utrecht: HES, 1985), 85–7; Ter Gouw, Geschiedenis van Amsterdam, vi. 93–117; Robert DuPlessis, Lille and the Dutch Revolt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 210–15. ¹⁰³ J. C. Grayson, ‘The Civic Militia in the County of Holland, 1560–1581’, BMGN 95 (1980), 55–63; Israel, The Dutch Republic, 147–9, believes that the lack of a response to the iconoclasm by Catholics was particularly striking in the provinces north of the great rivers.

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within town walls as approved sites for the Protestant cult.¹⁰⁴ But things were not after all so chaotic. Orange and others on the Council of State joined forces to suppress insurrectionary movements among Calvinists in Valenciennes, Tournai, west Flanders, Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Vianen (Brederode’s town in Holland). By April 1567 Margaret felt able to dispatch an emissary to Spain, informing the king that she had regained control of the country. In Spain, Philip II had resolved (July 1566) to return to the Netherlands. As reports of the iconoclastic riots came in, he concluded that the country was in a state of full rebellion. At meetings of his council (22, 29 September) Alba maintained that the king must indeed journey north, with an army. His rival, the prince of Eboli, contended that it was dangerous for the king to leave Spain, and that sending an army was premature. Philip decided in favour of Alba’s opinion. But over the next two months reasons for postponing his voyage began to look persuasive; a ‘general’, it was said, might go in his stead. Command of the army, now being mobilized from Spain’s tercios in Italy, was offered to two prominent men who declined; reluctantly, Alba accepted the charge. Thus was taken the ‘fateful’ decision to send Alba to the Low Countries with 10,000 seasoned veterans. Margaret of Parma’s emissary—carrying the message that sending an army would do more harm than good—arrived at the court in Madrid on 17 April; the same day, Alba sailed from Cartagena to take command of his troops.¹⁰⁵ As the story is often told, the tense atmosphere of June and July 1566 ﬂowed naturally into the ensuing iconoclastic riots.¹⁰⁶ Yet Calvin abhorred mob violence, and some Netherlands preachers kept their distance from the image-breakers. In other words, Calvinist condemnation of images did not make iconoclasm inevitable.¹⁰⁷ Moreover, iconoclasm did not have to be followed by repression. One can imagine a counter-factual history in which (a) Margaret of Parma and her Council of State (with help from the Eboli faction at the Spanish court) had some capacity to restrain the religious zeal of Philip II; (b) Brederode and his confederates had some capacity to restrain the religious zeal of Calvinist congregations; and (c) both sides were willing to pursue the difﬁcult discussions begun in July.¹⁰⁸ On these assumptions, the Netherlands might have evolved in ¹⁰⁴ Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 80–4; G. N. M. Vis, Jan Arentsz: De mandenmaker van Alkmaar, voorman van de Hollandse reformatie (Hilversum: Verloren, 1992). ¹⁰⁵ Kamen, The Duke of Alba, 70–3; Maltby, Alba, 131–7 (the ‘fateful’ decision, 135); Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 90–1. ¹⁰⁶ Parker, The Dutch Revolt, chapter 2, ‘The First Revolt (1565–8)’, esp. 74; Israel, The Dutch Republic, 147–8 (to speak of ‘decades of iconoclastic indoctrination’ in the schools, not just by crypto-Protestants but also by ‘Erasmian humanists’, ignores distinctions that were of considerable importance to Erasmus and many who followed his lead). ¹⁰⁷ Phyllis Mack Crew, Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands, 1544–1569 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 20–38. ¹⁰⁸ On the usefulness of counter-factual history, especially in the case of revolutionary movements, Clark, Our Shadowed Present.

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the direction of the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, where, under Catholic monarchs, and a largely Catholic nobility that opposed prosecutions for matters of belief, many churches and sects ﬂourished.¹⁰⁹ Even after the iconoclasm that began on 10 August, many in the Netherlands hoped to see freedom of worship for all, without public violence, hedge-sermons, or the burning of heretics.¹¹⁰ But once Alba and his 10,000 men crossed the Netherlands frontier, this door to the future was closed. ¹⁰⁹ Janusz Tazbir, A State without Stakes: Polish Religious Toleration in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York: Kosciusko Foundation, 1973); Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland (2 vols., New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), vol. i; Jerzy Kloczowsky, A History of Polish Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). ¹¹⁰ Juliaan Woltjer, ‘De Vredemakers’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 89 (1976), 299–321, repr. in his Tussen Vrijheidsstrijd en Burgeroorlog: Over de Nederlandse Opstand 1555–1580 (Amsterdam: Balans, 1994). Professor Woltjer believes (67) that the possibility of religious peace was ‘threatened’ by the iconoclasm, but ‘ran into a dead end’ a few months later, when Margaret of Parma revoked concessions she had made (as she thought) under duress.

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PART I I WAR I N H O LL AN D , OCTOBER 1572–JULY 1576

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Prologue: Repression, Rebellion, and Revolt, 1567–1572 To describe events in the Low Countries after 1566, contemporaries spoke of ‘troubles’ (beroerten), ‘civil war’, ‘alteration’, or ‘rebellion’.¹ Historians speak of Revolt,² but not ‘revolution’, possibly because of the avowed anti-revolutionary tenor of an important strain of Dutch political and historical thought in the decades following the establishment of the kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815.³ Here the broader historical signiﬁcance of this grand upheaval will be addressed at the end of the book.⁴ For now, it will be useful to summarize what happened after the arrival of the duke of Alba and his 10,000 troops, under the headings of repression, rebellion, and revolt.

REPRESSION Alba and his army reached Thionville (Luxembourg) by 3 August, and entered Brussels on 22 August. He expected Margaret of Parma to continue exercising civil authority while he served as captain-general. Nonetheless, on 5 September he established a ‘Council of Troubles’ to deal with all those he deemed responsible for sedition. Within a few days, prominent men like Egmont, Hornes, and Antoon van Stralen, one-time receiver-general for the States General, were taken into custody. Margaret of Parma now resigned her position, just as Philip II announced that his journey to the Netherlands would be postponed, leaving Alba in charge for an indeﬁnite period. By May 1568 the Council of Troubles, overriding all normal judicial machinery, was sending out warrants and conducting trials at a rapid pace. Over the next few years, some 9,000 persons would be convicted, mostly in absentia. Egmont, Hornes, and Van Stralen were ¹ Pérez, De Tachtigjarige Oorlog in Spaanse Ogen, 51, discusses terms used by Spanish chroniclers. ² In Dutch, opstand, in French révolte. ³ J. W. Sap, ‘De angst voor revolutie bij de democratisering van de rechtsstaat: Groen van Prinsterer en De Tocqueville’, in J. De Bruijn and C. Harink, Groen van Prinsterer in Europese Context (Hilversum: Verloren, 2004), 25–36. ⁴ See the Epilogue.

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among the 1,000-plus victims paraded to the main square in Brussels (the Groote Markt) for public execution.⁵ Among Calvinists, French speakers sought refuge in France’s Huguenot towns, or with Huguenot nobles. Netherlandish-speaking Calvinists swelled the ranks of existing refugee communities in London, Emden, or Wesel, where they were joined by people of more moderate religious views (Alba’s regime made life dangerous for those who had merely supported initiatives for religious peace, like the temporary closure of the churches in Amsterdam). Like many who were persecuted for their beliefs within the Low Countries, many refugees were folk of modest means, often active in the craft guilds.⁶ But by the end of 1567 there were also men of wealth and reputation, forming a potential network of resistance. Of this inchoate opposition William of Nassau, safe in his ancestral German lands, was the natural leader.

REBELLION To Dillenburg, capital of the county of Nassau, capable men came offering their services to Orange. Many were to play leading roles in Holland once a new order was established there: Willem Blois van Treslong, a Holland noble and iconoclast, would be the conqueror of Brill (April 1572); Jacob van Duivenvoorde, lord of Warmond (near Leiden), helped defend Leiden against its Spanish besiegers (1573/4); Willem van Zuylen van Nyvelt, a Utrecht nobleman and iconoclast, played a key role in Holland’s college of nobles; Diederik Sonoy, a gentleman of Cleves domiciled in The Hague, would become Orange’s governor for North Holland; Reynier Cant of Amsterdam, a Baltic merchant and member of the Calvinist consistory, raised funds for the rebellion in north Germany; Willem Bardesius, son of Amsterdam’s Sheriff Baerdes, served as Sonoy’s adviser in the Noorderkwartier, and later as burgomaster of Amsterdam.⁷ As sovereign prince of Orange, William had the undisputed right to make war. As a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and a leader tested in battle, he had the credit and the connections to bring experienced commanders under his banner. Dillenburg thus became the nerve centre for a plan to invade the Netherlands from several directions. Crossing the Ems from East Friesland into Groningen, Orange’s brother Louis of Nassau met and defeated a Spanish–Walloon force near Heiligerlee (23 May 1568). The men of Louis’s naval arm—the ‘Sea ⁵ Maltby, Alba, 93 (the quote), 143–51; Kamen, The Duke of Alba, 80–93; Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 104–8. ⁶ Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation, table 5.1, p. 120, occupations of Calvinists persecuted in Antwerp, 1550–66. ⁷ Israel, The Dutch Republic, 157–8; entries for Sonoy and Cant in Nieuw Nederlands Biograﬁsch Woordenboek, v. 773–4, and vi. 265.

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Beggars’, as they called themselves—then defeated a royalist ﬂeet that had been dispatched to the Ems estuary. But this was to be the last rebel victory for some time. In June 1568, a Huguenot army crossing into Artois was pushed back into France, there to be met and destroyed by the troops of King Charles IX (reigned 1561–74). Alba was already on the march toward Groningen, where Louis of Nassau had inexplicably chosen to encamp on a peninsula jutting into the Ems, at Jemmingen; from the base of the peninsula Alba’s Spaniards attacked with such force that most of Louis of Nassau’s men perished in battle, or drowned while attempting to ﬂee across the river. Orange was now forming in the Rhineland the largest of the rebel armies, some 30,000 men. As he pushed across the Rhine and the Maas into Brabant, no town opened its gates to him. Alba, blocking the roads to Brussels with a smaller but better-disciplined force, was not foolish enough to offer battle. Within a month the invading army began to disintegrate; promising his men that they would be paid eventually, Orange retired to France.⁸ Since the fortunes of the Huguenot party offered the only hope of continuing the war in the Netherlands, Orange and Louis of Nassau both joined the prince of Condé’s army for ﬁghting in France in 1569. Orange then returned to Germany, to fend off creditors as best he could. To get their men to muster out in the closing months of 1568, his commanders raised money on credit, backed in some cases by Orange’s personal obligatiën; now the prince could not raise even the 10,000-pound part-payment needed to keep the favour of one of his principal backers, the duke of Saxony. In Frankfurt, Germany’s ﬁnancial centre, angry gens de guerre demanded that Orange surrender himself into their custody, as a guarantee of payment.⁹ Yet cracks were beginning to appear in Alba’s control of the Netherlands. To provide permanent support for a garrison of 11,000 Spaniards, Italians, and Walloons, Alba summoned the States General in 1569 to request approval for three taxes: a one-time hundredth penny on the value of real property, and two permanent sales taxes, a twentieth penny on sales of real property, and a tenth penny on all other sales. The provincial States accepted the hundredth penny, but resisted the tenth and twentieth pennies, proposing instead a series of ad hoc alternatives which Alba accepted, but on the understanding that the idea of permanent sales taxes was still on the table. Early in 1571 Alba insisted on implementation of the tenth and twentieth pennies, but the States raised objections, and murmurs were now being heard from those who would have to pay the new taxes.¹⁰

⁸ Maltby, Alba, 162–78; Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 108–11. ⁹ Orange to Lodewijk Sundershausen, 1 January 1569, and to John of Nassau, 17 February 1570, Groen, Letters CCCXXXII, iii. 337–40, and CCCXXXVII, iii. 355–60. ¹⁰ Maltby, Alba, 214–23; Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 114–17; Israel, The Dutch Republic, 166–8.

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Louis of Nassau had stayed on in France for negotiations leading up to the Peace of Saint-Germain in 1570.¹¹ The treaty effected a reconciliation (albeit temporary, as things turned out) between the Huguenots and Charles IX. Huguenot chieftains like Gaspard de Coligny, admiral of France, were now welcome at court. To promote lasting internal peace, some proposed a marriage between Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre, the leader of the Huguenot party, and the king’s sister, Marguerite de Valois. Another idea, put forward by Coligny, was to join Frenchmen of all religious persuasions in a renewal of war against the ancient enemy, Spain. When Charles IX and Coligny were seen in intimate conversation, observers like Spain’s ambassador in Paris were not slow to draw the appropriate conclusion. Alba did not take lightly this credible threat of an invasion from France. Early in 1572 he took the precaution of concentrating most of his 7,000 troops at points where they could respond to an invasion from this direction. The tercio of Lombardy, whose companies were spread out along the Maas, with one serving as garrison for the vulnerable port of Brill, was among the units recalled to the south. The count of Boussu, stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht, was expected to use his ten companies, stationed in Utrecht, for the defence of all three provinces. Not all of Alba’s deployments were aimed at France. Following a direct order from the king (February 1572) to begin collection of the tenth and twentieth pennies, he posted men in Brussels and other cities where resistance to the new taxes was expected to be strongest. This measure was necessary, yet hardly sufﬁcient; ofﬁcials who tried to collect the tenth penny came back loaded with opprobrium, but no revenue. The profound unpopularity of the tenth penny, combined with failure to implement it, did much to undermine the credibility of Alba’s government. Meanwhile, Louis of Nassau and Gaspard de Coligny matured their plans, with the blessing of King Charles IX. Mons, the last major citadel on the road to Brussels, would be the target for Huguenot forces led by Louis. As in 1568, there would also be an initial incursion into the north-eastern provinces while William of Orange mobilized the main army in Germany, with the aim of crossing the Maas to be ready for any eventuality. Finally, Pietro Strozzi, commander of France’s Atlantic ﬂeet, was to sail from his base at La Rochelle against Holland or Zeeland. In fact, what proved to be the decisive attack came from a different quarter. Following Louis of Nassau’s defeat at Jemmingen, the Sea Beggars had found refuge in England’s channel ports, where local ofﬁcials turned a blind eye to their free booting. Willem Blois de Treslong’s ﬂeet grew to twenty-six vessels by the spring of 1572. The soldiers on board, as many as a thousand, were commanded by Lumey de La Marck, a fanatical Protestant. As per Orange’s instructions, the Beggars attacked Habsburg shipping in the North Sea, and ¹¹ Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 110–12; Maltby, Alba, 227–30; C. C. Hibben, Gouda in the Revolt: Particularism and Paciﬁsm in the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1572–1578 (Utrecht: HES, 1983), 35–45, 56.

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harassed the coastal provinces, including six raids on Holland from January 1571 to April 1572. But as free booters will do, they also preyed on neutral shipping, causing the Hanseatic League to send missions of protest to Elizabeth’s court.¹² Elizabeth and her council pondered whether to go to war with Spain, in response to Spanish support for plots against the queen’s throne, or to mollify Spain by cutting off England’s tacit support for the Sea Beggars. By 1 March 1572 England decided for peace. Treslong and Lumey de La Marck were ordered to vacate the Channel ports by the end of the month. Just now, news came from Holland, informing them of the withdrawal of the tercio of Lombardy. Treslong and Lumey decided to establish a base at Brill, in a sinuous estuary at the north end of Holland’s island of Voorne. In the afternoon of 1 April, they drew their ships up before Brill. Sending an emissary with a recognizable signet ring—his father had been bailiff of Voorne—Treslong summoned the town’s magistrates to raise the standard of the prince of Orange. Facing a superior force, the magistrates asked for a guarantee that burghers would be free to continue in the practice of the Catholic religion; Treslong offered assurances of religious freedom for all, as per the standing instructions of William of Orange.¹³ When the burgomasters continued to hesitate, Lumey’s men staved in the town gate with ships’ masts, stormed the city, and plundered the churches.¹⁴ On hearing the news, Alba ordered Boussu to march on Brill, with all of his ten companies. From Dordrecht, Brill could be reached along the left bank of the ‘Old’ or south channel of the Maas. But since Dordrecht’s magistrates refused to let the ten Spanish companies pass through, Boussu doubled back along the ‘New’ or north channel of the Maas to Rotterdam. Though the magistrates baulked here too, they agreed to let Boussu’s men through the city one platoon at a time. But at the gate, one platoon got into a tussle with a company of the civic militia; this led to a general mêlée, with Spaniards rushing through the gate, in which as many as 400 burghers were killed. Boussu left some of his men in Rotterdam and hired ships to cross the Maas to Voorne. Meanwhile, according to Bor, Brill’s master of works took it on himself to cut open the sluice gate at Nieuwlandsluis, ﬂooding the approaches to Brill. When Treslong burned some of their ships, Boussu and his men ﬂed back across the Maas to Rotterdam. Lumey’s violence—seventeen priests were strung up by his order—made Catholics and other ‘good burghers’ wonder if the Beggars were not worse than the Spaniards. Yet Brill was secure, an example for other towns to follow.¹⁵ ¹² H. F. K. van Nierop, Het Verraad van het Noordekwartier (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1999); J. A. C. De Meij, De Watergeuzen en de Nederlanden, 1568–1572 (Amsterdam: NoordHolland, 1972). ¹³ Groen, Letter CCCIVa, iii. 196–200, Orange’s instructions (March 1568) for soldiers who gain control of a town; soldiers must swear an oath ‘to the evangelical religion’ as well as to Orange, but are not to ‘make enemies’ of local Catholics. Cf. Groen, Letter CCCLVIIa, iii. 419–25. ¹⁴ Pieter Christanszoon Bor, Oorsprong . . . der Nederlandtsche Beroerten, (Amsterdam: Abraham van Poot, 1679–84) vi. 365–7; Van Nierop, Verraad, 64. ¹⁵ Bor, Oorsprong, iv. 366–8.

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In Vlissingen (Zeeland) the foundations for a fortress—part of Alba’s plan for holding key towns—were just now rising above the ground. As quartermasters arrived to make preparations for a Spanish garrison, the civic militia rose in rebellion; Walloon troops already in the city were driven out by 6 April. At the rebels’ behest, Johan van Cuyck, a local nobleman, carried letters to Brill, where he arrived 11 April; by 20 April, three of Treslong’s ships sailed into Vlissingen harbour, carrying 200 new recruits, mostly (says Bor) from Rotterdam. Meanwhile, Cuyck sailed for England, and brought back 125 soldiers, paid for by the Netherlands refugee community of Norwich. On 3 May, Cuyck and his men broke into Vere; supported by many of the civic militia, he occupied the city and the harbour, where the Habsburg arsenal, though not used for ten years, still held precious naval stores.¹⁶

R EVO LT Though at ﬁrst put off by the precipitate action of the Sea Beggars, William of Orange and Louis of Nassau soon realized that rebels now controlled, for the ﬁrst time, a deﬁned space within the Netherlands. From France, Louis sent Jeronimus ’t Seraerts, Orange’s constable, to Vlissingen with letters of commission as governor of Walcheren Island. For North Holland, where no town had as yet declared for him, Orange commissioned Diederik Sonoy as governor. From Bremen, where Reynier Cant was raising money, Sonoy and Lazarus Muller were to recruit ten companies of German infantry and sail for Enkhuizen, considered the ‘key’ to control of the Zuider Zee. An Enkhuizen refugee named Pieter Buiskens returned to his native city, with a commission from Orange (dated 20 April) to be revealed at the appropriate moment. Trouble started in Enkhuizen when Boussu’s deputy stadtholder tried to get a company of German soldiers admitted to the city: the soldiers were let in, without arms, to buy food, but when weapons were smuggled in burghers ran for their own weapons and drove the intruders out. The burgomasters, sympathetic to the government, persuaded the townsmen to double the size of the city’s hired guard, so as to hold Enkhuizen for the king, against Spanish troops and Beggars alike. But tension developed over the issue of exporting grain stored in Enkhuizen to other provinces loyal to Philip II; the magistrates hired a company of citizens to escort two grain ships past the bar, but they were blocked by a larger party of Orangists, organized by Buiskens. On the night of 20 May posters went up all through the city, summoning burghers to assemble before the town hall and defend themselves against the magistrates. At noon on 21 May the magistrates faced a large crowd, as the militia companies summoned to protect them melted away. The next day ¹⁶ Bor, 369–71; Van Nierop, Verraad, 65.

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ships carrying an advance party of Lazarus Muller’s troops entered the harbour; Sonoy arrived on 2 June.¹⁷ The revolt now spread rapidly. On Walcheren Island, rebel troops began siege works around Middelburg, holding out for Spain. In South Holland, Adriaan van Swieten, a local nobleman, occupied Oudewater with a small party of men, and help from within (19 June). Gouda went over to the Revolt when Orangist burghers opened the city gates at night to Swieten and a force variously estimated at between 50 and 200 men (21 June). This apparently tipped the scales for nearby Dordrecht, hitherto neutral, which accepted a company of troops sent by Swieten, and signed an agreement with Lumey’s representative to recognize Orange as the lawful stadtholder of Holland (25 June). One of Lumey’s captains occupied Gorinchem on 26 June and gathered the burghers to swear an oath to Orange; the next day he stormed the castle, where Catholic burghers had taken refuge. On 3 July, Haarlem’s magistrates agreed to terms with two of Sonoy’s representatives: Haarlem would stand with the prince of Orange, but its burghers would remain free to practise the religion of their choice, and no soldiers would be quartered in the city without permission of the magistrates. In North Holland, Hoorn’s magistrates opted for a vote by the burghers, who chose for Orange and the Beggars by a two-to-one majority (18 June). Lazarus Muller’s companies, sent from Enkhuizen by Sonoy, conquered Medemblik with its castle (8 June), Alkmaar (20 June), and Edam (27 June). As of 18 July, when Philip Marnix van Sint-Aldegonde presented his credentials from Orange to deputies convened in Dordrecht for the ﬁrst rebel session of the States of Holland, only three towns held ﬁrmly for the king of Spain: Amsterdam, Schoonhoven, and Woerden. Boussu’s Spaniards still occupied Rotterdam, and Delft was making up its mind which way to turn.¹⁸ During these months, Alba continued to believe that the decisive battle would be fought along the southern frontier. Crossing the frontier with 1,000 Huguenot infantry and 500 cavalry, Louis of Nassau gained entry to Mons by a ruse (24 May 1572), and had control of the citadel when more troops arrived under Franc¸ois de La Noue, a seasoned Huguenot commander. Alba’s 7,000 troops were at this time badly in arrears for their pay, and the widespread resistance provoked by the tenth penny made his position as governor in the Netherlands vulnerable to attack by enemies at the Spanish court. Nonetheless, he was not without resources. In the king’s name, but without telling Philip II, he arranged to borrow 200,000 ducats from his kinsman Cosimo I de Medici, grand duke of Tuscany.¹⁹ This promise of resources was enough to activate the contracts of German commanders kept on the Habsburg payroll, like Georg von Frundsberg ¹⁷ Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 371–7; Van Nierop, Verraad, 72–4. ¹⁸ Van Nierop, Verraad, 75–81; Hibbert, Gouda in the Revolt, 52–5; Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 380–1, 386, 389. ¹⁹ The grand duke’s wife was a daughter of Alba’s nephew Pedro de Toledo, erstwhile viceroy of Naples.

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and Maximilian von Eberstein. Since these German regiments would not be at his disposal for a month or more, Alba recalled his son Fadrique, whom he had instructed, only a few days before the capture of Mons, to march to the relief of Middelburg. With Julian Romero and Chiappino Vitelli, Fadrique de Toledo and 4,000 men camped before Mons on 23 June; their orders were to block the arrival of any fresh troops or supplies from across the French border. In fact, Senlis, leading 6,000 to 7,000 Huguenot musketeers and 800 cavalry, was already en route. William Maltby calls the ensuing rout of Huguenot forces at Quiévrain (27 July) a ‘textbook lesson’ of the need for providing musketeers with proper support. Facing a force with fewer musket-men, Senlis’s troops advanced conﬁdently, until Spanish musketeers moved aside to disclose a square of pikemen behind them, and 1,500 cavalry charged from a nearby wood. The defence of Mons now depended on William of Orange.²⁰ At Venlo (Gelderland), on the Maas, Orange had forty-ﬁve companies of infantry, or 13,500 men, ‘not counting volunteers’ (8 July 1572). His cavalry numbered 7,600, divided into a number of independent companies and three regiments, of which the most important was that of Count Ernst von Manderslohe, with 2,500 men.²¹ But unlike in 1568, he had little of his lands left to use in raising money, save for the lordship of Siegen, which he pawned to the Landgraf of Hesse. The 10,000 pounds in ready money brought from the Netherlands by Arent van Dorp (May 1572) seemed so important at the time that it would later be described as ‘the principal beginning and foundation that made possible the ﬁnal onslaught to free the fatherland from the tyranny of foreigners’.²² The Revolt did have a windfall in early June, when a Portuguese ﬂeet sailed unsuspectingly into Vlissingen harbour, carrying spices from Asia and 600,000 ducats in cash. The spices and other goods were at some point sold for the common cause, but as of 25 July Orange had not received any of this money; he was able to muster his infantry only after letting them sack nearby Roermond.²³ Still in Gelderland (11 August), Orange ‘had not received anything in cash, save for 150,000 or 160,000 pounds, in that the magistrates of Dordrecht sent me an obligatie for 100,000 daalders so as to raise this money promptly from the merchants’. This credit paid for the ﬁrst month’s wages for his men,²⁴ but they would not have left ²⁰ Maltby, Alba, 227–31; Bor, Oorpsrong, vi. 384. Orange to John of Nassau, 5 August 1572, Groen, Letter 382, iii. 482–5. ²¹ Ernst von Manderslohe to Orange, 26 June 1572, INGWVO, no. 4603; Orange to Louis of Nassau, Venlo, 8 July 1572, Groen, Letter 377, iii. 464–8. ²² For Van Dorp’s delivery of the money to Orange at Dillingen (May 1572), Groen, iii. 428, 447; the quote, RSH 1571–4, 156–7: 25 October 1574. ²³ Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 392; N.N. to Louis of Nassau? June 1572, Groen, Letter 368, iii. 445–6; Orange to John of Nassau, Roermond, 25 July 1572; and Orange to Adriaan Manmaker et al., Delft, 5 March 1573, INGWVO, no. 6838. ²⁴ Orange to John of Nassau, Hellenray, near Roermond, 11 August 1572, Groen, Letter 383, iii. 488–91. The Dordrecht obligatie, with a face value of perhaps 175,000 pounds, would have been discounted by merchant bankers for perhaps 150,000 or 160,000 pounds.

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Fig. 2 Obligatie of the States of Holland for 500,000 pounds, August 1572. This was the credit that made it possible for William of Orange to bring his army into action. The fourteen seals (one missing) represent thirteen Holland towns, plus the college of nobles. Nationaal Archief, The Hague, 3.01.14, no. 882.

Gelderland without ‘an obligatie for 500,000 pounds that the States of Holland have sent me for the second and third months’ wages for my cavalry’. The original obligatie, dated 4 August 1572, is preserved at the Nationaal Rijksarchief in The Hague, with the seals of thirteen of fourteen signatory towns still attached. The text attests that the Lords States pledge Holland’s credit for this sum, to pay for German cavalry that is to help relieve the siege of Mons. The States of Holland had never previously issued an obligatie for anything close to 500,000 pounds. Moreover, Amsterdam, Holland’s wealthiest town, was not a signatory. Thus in addition to the remaining ﬁve great cities, eight smaller towns, not previously recognized as having a vote in the States, were called upon to afﬁx their seals.²⁵ Orange’s commanders used the obligatie as surety in borrowing to pay their men, on the assurance of reimbursement from Holland.²⁶ This transaction shows the solidity of Holland’s credit: German military men ²⁵ Orange to John of Nassau, 11 August 1572, as in the previous note; for the original parchment obligatie with twelve of thirteen seals still attached, RAZH 3.01.29, no. 882; for a contemporary copy, RAZH 3.01.14, no. 235, item 4. The towns were, in alphabetical order, Alkmaar, Brill, Delft, Dordrecht, Edam, Enkhuizen, Gouda, Haarlem, Hoorn, Leiden, Medemblik, Monnickendam, and Oudewater. ²⁶ Claims by Ernst van Manderslo and other German commanders are itemized in other documents in the silver box that contains, no. 882 RAZH 3.01.29; for settlement of the debt, Chapter 8. Maltby, Alba, 237, thinks Orange’s men mutinied in September when they ‘came to realize they would be paid only in securities of dubious value.’ But cf. Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 408: on the Rhine, after his retreat from Mons, Orange would have been in danger from his unpaid men, had it not been for his captains and colonels, who had verzekertheid from Holland.

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accepted a piece of parchment as a warranty for debts they incurred in getting their men to march. It was the Holland obligatie for 500,000 pounds, not Van Dorp’s 10,000 in cash, that launched Orange’s campaign. Orange now crossed the Maas to advance toward Mons. Contrary to his experience four years earlier, town after town either opened its gates to him, or yielded to a minimum of pressure. Perhaps savouring the moment, he wasted precious time in Brabant, as in a siege of the small castle of Weert.²⁷ Meanwhile, Alba brought 8,500 men before Mons on 27 August, including the German regiments of Frundsberg and Eberstein. Spaniards remaining in Holland were also plucked from their posts, like Boussu’s men in Rotterdam, and Rodrigo de Zapata’s company from The Hague, followed on the road south by a train of 4,000 Catholics. On 30 August, Alba’s thirty-seven siege cannon, planted opposite the south side of Mons’s walls, commenced their bombardment. On 8 September, Orange made camp half a day’s ride to the east, and set up his cannon to ﬁre long range at Alba’s camp. After two detachments that Orange sent to probe the encirclement of Mons were turned back, the second on 12 September, he re-established his camp closer to the town. Learning from his spies that this camp was poorly guarded, Alba gave the order for a trademark Spanish tactic, an encamisada, or night attack by men wearing shirts to keep their armour from glinting in the moonlight; by morning the rebel army was gone, leaving only 300 corpses behind. By way of Nivelles and Mechelen, where he left some of his men to reinforce an occupying garrison, Orange withdrew to the Rhine, hoping to keep his army together and maintain his position in the country. At Mons, where Louis of Nassau signed honourable terms of surrender on 21 September, Alba promised his unpaid men the satisfaction of a good sack at Mechelen. Thus when Mechelen’s unsuspecting magistrates opened their gates to Alba on 29 September, three days of murder, rape, and looting followed.²⁸ The punishment of towns that had opened their gates to the foe was a standard tactic of war, intended to make other towns come to terms more quickly. But with Rotterdam and Mechelen on its escutcheon, the Spanish army was building an evil reputation. This part of the book is framed by two events: Orange’s arrival in Enkhuizen (October 1572), to take command of the rebellion in Holland and Zeeland, and the collapse of Spain’s military position in the great mutiny that followed the capture of Zierikzee in Zeeland (July 1576). During these four years, Spanish forces in Holland controlled much of the countryside south of the IJ, and some towns, including Amsterdam. Together, Orange and the rebel States had to ﬁnd ²⁷ Maltby, Alba, 234; Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 400–1; Orange to John of Nassau, ? September 1572, Groen, Letter 385, iii. 501–10, mentions Tienen, Diest, Leuven, Dendermonde, Oudenaarde, and Nivelles. ²⁸ Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 135–40; Maltby, Alba, 240.

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a strategy for defending towns that were at times mere islands of rebellion in a Spanish sea (Chapter 4). They also had to raise more money per year than a united Holland had ever raised before the Revolt, even while coping with a vastly larger debt (Chapter 5). Finally, amid the effervescence of Revolt, the urban oligarchies had to reassert their authority within the towns, so as to maintain their position in the States, and thus their leverage for bargaining with Orange (Chapter 6).

4 Toward a Workable Strategy for Defensive Warfare Defending a deﬁned territory required three things: fortiﬁcations to block likely invasion routes; garrison troops in the towns; and a ﬁeld army or strike force, known as a ‘ﬂying army’ or’ camp’.¹ Orangist Holland in the summer of 1572 had both a strike force and a rudimentary system of fortiﬁcations. In North Holland, Governor Diederik Sonoy had eleven ‘banners’ (companies) posted behind the dunes, at Egmont, while Lazarus Muller’s ten companies of North Germans occupied sconces² along the IJ dyke, vulnerable to attack from Spanish Amsterdam.³ In South Holland, Governor Lumey de La Marck had 4,000 infantry at Noordwijk, across the dunes from Haarlem; Barthold Entens, his lieutenant, had a smaller ‘camp’ near the Haarlemmermeer.⁴ Other units occupied sconces at key points, like Maaslandsluis, commanding the entrance to the Maas channel.⁵ Town garrisons were a problem. Commanders knew that a town had to have foreign soldiers, under a military governor, to ‘defend against enemies without and innovations within’.⁶ But for Holland’s burghers German or English mercenaries were hardly more welcome than the hated Spaniards. In July 1572, Gouda, with a population of less than 10,000, had nearly a thousand soldiers and camp followers, clamouring for money, food, and lodging. Despite the complaints provoked by their indiscipline, there could be no question of reducing the garrison in a town of uncertain loyalties.⁷ In Delft, chosen by Orange as his residence,⁸ magistrates ¹ Leger meant either ‘army’ or ‘fortiﬁed camp;’ cf. the Spanish word campo. ² The English word for the Dutch schans, a fort with mud walls reinforced by timbers. ³ Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 418, 421. ⁴ Ibid. 418, puts Entes at ‘Venen’, ‘The Fens’, which could refer to any of several nearby villages with names ending in -veen. ⁵ Bernardino de Mendoza, Commenaires sur les ´ev´enements de la guerre des Pays-Bas (2 vols., Brussels: Soci´et´e de l’Histoire de Belgique, 1860–3), i. 305 (rebel sconce at Spaarendam); RSH 1573, 6–7: 23 October 1573, budget for the fort at Maaslandsluis (cf. ibid.ii. 172–3). ⁶ Janssens, Brabant in het Verweer, 143, citing Margaret’s letter of 5 January 1567 to Philip II, on the need for a citadel in Antwerp. ⁷ Hibben, Gouda in the Revolt, 77; for complaints about its garrison from nearby Woerden, Woerden to Orange, 1 January 1573, INGWVO, no. 4773. ⁸ When Spanish units began digging in north of Haarlem (11 December 1572) the prince and his entourage fell back on Delft.

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had made not having a garrison a condition of their adherence to the Revolt (23 July 1572). When the city fathers ﬂatly refused his request to reconsider, Orange gave in. This was the price he paid in order to borrow money—best raised in Delft⁹—for the ‘camp’ he was forming at Sassenheim on the Haarlemmermeer.¹⁰ While the problem of military indiscipline was made worse in Holland south of the IJ by Lumey’s public deﬁance of Orange’s authority, in North Holland Sonoy made sure that soldiers guilty of wanton cruelty—for example, against Catholic priests—received exemplary punishment.¹¹ But even Sonoy could not persuade all the towns under his command to take in garrisons. If Alkmaar had a garrison, it was only because three companies broke in at one gate while 2,000 Spaniards stood to arms outside another, waiting for the town council to decide whether or not to surrender (16 July 1573).¹² In Medemblik the civic militia evicted the garrison; Sonoy’s military governor had enraged burghers by claiming, under military law, power to pronounce death sentences for petty offences. Hoorn made no move to expel its garrison, but complained that, as of December 1572, troops were still paid ‘at the cost of the city’.¹³ To bottle up Spanish Amsterdam, North Hollanders sank some eighty ballastladen vessels in its harbour. In time, Boussu armed thirteen great warships to break out of this virtual blockade, only to suffer a crushing defeat on the Zuider zee at the hands of Boisot (13 October 1573). From this time forward, rebel towns in North Holland had (as in Zeeland) the great advantage of remaining in constant communication with one another by sea.¹⁴ To protect his southern and eastern ﬂanks Sonoy used bands of armed peasants and ﬁre signals on the Zuider Zee dykes,¹⁵ which gave access to ﬁve of North Holland’s seven cities.¹⁶ A sixth, Purmerend, was nested among interconnected lakes forming the centre of the province, while Alkmaar lay between the lakes and the North Sea dunes. Despite rebel control of the Zuider Zee, the capable Sonoy¹⁷ could not protect the IJ against troops from Amsterdam, who repeatedly occupied Waterland. To ⁹ Delft was Holland’s second largest city (after Amsterdam), and thus at this time the largest urban centre of the Revolt. ¹⁰ J. H. van Dijk, ‘Bedreigd Delft’, Bijdragen voor Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde, 6e Reeks, 6 (1928), 177–98; Orange to Delft, [some time in 1573], INGWVO, no. 2881, approval of its request not to be burdened with a garrison. ¹¹ Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 34. ¹² According to Bor, ibid. 444–5, the wooden gate where Jacob van Cabeljauw’s three companies waited was broken through by one of the burgomasters, Floris van Teylingen, assisted by the town’s master of works. ¹³ Hibben, Gouda in the Revolt, 77–84; Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 415–16; Hoorn to Orange, 14 December 1572, INGWVO, no. 9248. ¹⁴ Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 455–6; Mendoza, Commentaires, ii. 143–5. Mendoza attributes this defeat to the fact that rebels were able to launch their missiles from ships with higher fore- and afterdecks, ‘built with thin planks, so as not to add to the weight of the vessel’. Cf. Bor, Oorsprong, viii. 617. ¹⁵ Van Nierop, Verraad, 94–9. ¹⁶ From north to south, Medemblik, Enkhuizen, Hoorn, Edam, and Monnickendam. ¹⁷ For a positive overall assessment of Sonoy as governor of North Holland, Van Nierop, Verraad, 125–8.

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defend the lake district, north of Waterland, Sonoy built sconces at the land bridges.¹⁸ Sonoy’s defences were tested only twice. In July 1573, Fadrique de Toledo, having conquered Haarlem, marched his men north along the beach to Alkmaar. Sonoy had the North Sea sluice gates opened at Krabbendam, north of Alkmaar, but farmers came at night to close them. After another sluice was opened by public authority and closed by private initiative, soldiers were posted at Krabbendam, to make sure the gates remained open. Prevailing winds pushed the water south as far as a dyke road forming the last barrier before Alkmaar. Rural folk here too were ‘very unwilling’ to see their ﬁelds ﬂooded, but Orange had ordered Sonoy to cut open as many dykes as needed. With the waters rising, Fadrique de Toledo withdrew (8 October).¹⁹ In February 1574, Henri de Fiennes, baron de Chevreux, took advantage of a hard frost to push north from Waterland. His Spaniards and Walloons overwhelmed sconces at Het Kalf and Ilpendam, guarding two of the inland lakes, the Wormer and the Beemster. Gathering his forces in Purmerend, Sonoy ordered ships built for a counter-attack against the two sconces once the water thawed. But by March 8 Chevreux was gone; Luis de Requesens, the new governor-general, had summoned all his forces to meet an advance toward the Maas by Louis of Nassau.²⁰ In South Holland, the island-like aspect of rebel towns must have been emphasized to contemporaries by Orange’s orders to create a ﬁeld of ﬁre by tearing down suburbs—everything ‘within shooting distance’ of the city wall.²¹ But the towns had to communicate, despite the fact that the dyke roads and waterways connecting them could be blocked at many points.²² This meant multiple sconces, and much discontent among rural folk, for mercenaries tended to be even more unruly in the countryside than in the towns. Villagers resisted ad ¹⁸ Bor, Oorsprong, vii. 477–8: though Spanish troops controlled rural south Holland (early 1574), North Holland was safer because of seven sconces built by Sonoy. ¹⁹ Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 443–56; cf. the order for commanders in the Noorderkwartier to open dykes as needed, drafted by Sonoy in Orange’s name, 9 September 1573, and Orange to Cornelis Janszoon van Egmond van Nijenburg, 11 September 1573, INGWVO, nos. 9371, 9372; Mendoza, Commentaires, ii. 154–64; Van Nierop, Verraad, 19, 83; Maltby, Alba, 259–60. In May 1575, Gilles de Berlaymont, lord of Hierges, advanced from Beverwijk as far as Krabbendam; ﬁnding this land under water, and the sconces well defended by soldiers and armed peasants, he turned back: Bor, Oorsprong, viii. 620–3; Van Nierop, Verraad, 100–4. ²⁰ Bor, Oorsprong, vii. 486–8. ²¹ Orange to Alkmaar, Leiden, 29 June 1573, INGWVO, no. 9365 (the quote); inhabitants of Gouda’s voorsteden (suburbs) to Orange, 30 June 1573, INGWVO, no. 9466; Gouda to Orange, 23 August 1573, INGWVO, no. 4691: a request to let some troops be withdrawn from the city, to make room for inhabitants of ‘the torn-down suburbs’; and Orange to Alkmaar, Delft, 26 October 1572, INGWVO, no. 2522, an order to allow no new construction within 600 roeden of the city wall. ²² Cf. Mendoza, Commentaires, i. 301–8: in the summer of 1572, as Alba was pulling all his units out of Holland, Rodrigo de Zapata was sent from The Hague with 300 men to collect victuals and munitions for the journey in Amsterdam. Since between the two cities there were no fewer than ‘sixty bridges’ that could easily be torn down by the enemy, he had to return by a different route, on the beach track along the North Sea.

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hoc levies (imposed by the Lords States) to support these unwelcome guests,²³ and they liked even less informal arrangements devised by the soldiers, such as seizing the village treasury.²⁴ Within a few months of his arrival in Holland, Orange dealt with one source of problems by dismissing Lumey from his post.²⁵ But the towns now voting in the States²⁶ could not be defended without agreement on an overall strategy. What kind of army would Holland support: urban garrisons, rural sconces, a strike force, or all three? The political will to settle these issues emerged under the hammer blows of three Spanish invasions. Loyalist Amsterdam,²⁷ chosen by Alba as his command post, could only be supplied from Spain’s base in Utrecht, either by water, along the Vecht and the Amstel, or by the dyke road along the southern shore of the Zuider Zee. Both trajectories were targeted for attack,²⁸ and Bernardino de Mendoza estimates that Alba had to commit 8,000 men to keep this critical line of communication open.²⁹ Of the four ‘entries’ to Holland recognized by Spanish planners, two started from Amsterdam.³⁰ First, the southern IJ dyke road ran past Haarlem and Beverwijk to the North Sea, where the hard sand at low tide afforded good passage north or south, even for baggage wagons. Second, small boats could be winched over the Amsterdam ‘Haulover’³¹ into the Haarlemmermeer, and thence to Haarlem or Leiden. Third, from Montfoort, south of Utrecht, the IJssel ﬂowed to Oudewater, Gouda, and the Gouda sluice at Alphen, which, via the Rhine, gave access to Leiden. Finally, the Waal–Maas river system, ﬂowing through southern Holland, could be entered either upstream (from the east), or from the North Sea (at Maaslandsluis). Of these possible invasion routes, Alba chose the last and the ﬁrst. Moving down the Linge, a tributary of the Maas, Cristobal de Mondragon occupied Woudrichem on the Maas, before crossing the wide estuary known as the Hollandse Diep to Sint Geertruidenberg, a town in Brabant ²³ For exactions by garrisons in rural South Holland, RSH 1574, 116: 28 September 1574; RSH 1574, 158: 26 October 1574; RSH 1574, 224–5: 4 December 1574; and RSH 1574, 249: 16 December 1574. ²⁴ RSH 1574, 58, 82, 103–4, 174–6: 25 August, 9 September, 22 September, 18 October 1574; RANH 1 February 1575. ²⁵ Swart, Willem van Oranje, 50–4. The dismissal ( January 1573) came after Lumey had authorized the murder of a respected priest and scholar of Delft, Cornelis Musius, and after his lieutenant, Barthold Entes, had insulted the Lords States by calling the deputies ﬁlthy traitors. ²⁶ South Holland towns represented in the States were: Brill, Delft, Dordrecht, Gorinchem, Gouda, Haarlem (until July 1573), Leiden, Oudewater, Rotterdam, Schiedam, and Schoonhoven. ²⁷ For Amsterdam’s loyalist magistrates and the popular support they enjoyed, Van Nierop, Het Foute Amsterdam . ²⁸ Especially during the siege of Haarlem (December 1572–July 1573), when supplies for the Spanish army had to come by way of Amsterdam: Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 437, 439; Mendoza, Commentaires, ii. 99–100, 108. ²⁹ Commentaires, ii. 69; in the author’s view, this was why Alba could not give Fadrique de Toledo more men for the siege of Haarlem. ³⁰ Ibid. ii. 239, with a few details added here to ﬁll in the somewhat sketchy picture Mendoza gives. ³¹ In Dutch, overtoom, now the name of a neighbourhood in Amsterdam.

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claimed by Holland.³² Meanwhile, Fadrique de Toledo, commanding the main force, was to march from Zutphen toward Haarlem, by way of Amsterdam. Naarden, east of Amsterdam, was summoned to surrender on 22 November 1572. According to Dutch sources, credited by scholars, formal acceptance of the town’s submission by senior Spanish ofﬁcers was followed by a slaughter; among 3,000 burghers none were spared, not even Catholic priests. This was the third massacre of civilians by Spanish troops in seven months. Because of its effect in Holland—creating a will to resist Spain, no matter the cost—the destruction of Naarden may have been the turning point of the war.³³ Haarlem, a city of about 18,000, had refused foreign mercenaries. But the magistrates did admit Nicolaas Ruychaver, scion of a Haarlem family, whose company was made up of local men. Ruychaver’s troops, supported by the civic militia, thwarted a pro-Spanish coup on 20 July. In December, as Fadrique de Toledo’s 15,000 infantry began digging in,³⁴ the city council was disposed to accept secret overtures from Amsterdam. But Wigbolt Ripperda, the military governor, summoned an assembly of burghers to nullify the council’s action. Four of Lazarus Muller’s German companies, sent across the IJ in response to an urgent appeal, were promptly admitted.³⁵ To prevent Haarlem from being encircled, Orange called on his South Holland strike force. But Fadrique de Toledo, hearing that Lumey was bringing his 4,000 infantry up from Noordwijk, intercepted him with 500 Spanish arquebusiers and Maximilian von Eberstein’s High Germans, inﬂicting heavy losses (12 December). When Orange sent seven of his eighteen companies at Sassenheim for a night attack a month later, they were turned back by the Walloon companies of Philip van Sint-Aldegonde, lord of Noircarmes.³⁶ Meanwhile, each time Toledo’s artillery battered down sections of Haarlem’s ﬁfteenth-century curtain wall, defenders worked through the night to shape mounds of rubble and dirt into a makeshift rampart bristling with guns; two Spanish assaults (20 December 1572, 20 January 1573) were repelled with heavy losses.³⁷

³² Magistrates of Gorinchem to Orange, 4, 7 January 1573, INGWVO, nos. 4686, 4687. ³³ Van Nierop, Verraad, 82; cf. J. W. Wijn, Het Beleg van Haarlem (Nijmegen: Nijhoff, 1982), 20; Maltby, Alba, 243–5. For the two sides of the story, Mendoza, Commentaires, ii. 31–4, and Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 417–19. Kamen, The Duke of Alba, 113, has no patience for the idea that the massacre at Naarden was anything other than a conscious policy decision by Spanish commanders. ³⁴ Wijn, Beleg van Haarlem, 26–8, counts sixteen German companies of 300 men, twenty-two Walloon companies of 200 men, and thirty-six Spanish companies of only 100 men; but according to Geoffrey Parker, The Spanish Road and the Army of Flanders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), ‘from 1567 until 1636, the Spanish company in ‘Flanders’ consisted of 250 men in theory’. These companies had been involved in months of ﬁghting—at Mons, Mechelen, and Zutphen—and their numbers were no doubt considerably reduced. ³⁵ Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 422; Wijn, Beleg van Haarlem, 10–16; Joke Spaans, Haarlem na de Reformatie: Stedelijk cultuur en kerkelijk leven, 1577–1620 ( The Hague: Stichting Hollands Historische Reeks, 1989), 19 (population in 1572). ³⁶ Wijn, Beleg van Haarlem, 27, 51–2, 84. ³⁷ Ibid. 93–5.

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Could the besiegers prevent supplies from getting into Haarlem? So long as ice covered the Haarlemmermeer, hundreds of sleds used a narrow channel, protected by a fort called ‘the Fig’, to bring in cheese, powder, and other provisions, together with fresh companies of Walloon and Scottish mercenaries. As the water thawed, control of the lake became critical. Toledo cut through the IJ dyke (29 March), enabling Amsterdam’s caravels and war galleys to bring in men and materials for a Spanish fort opposite the Fig. At De Kaag and Sassenheim, near the south shore of the Haarlemmermeer, Orange got together nearly a hundred lake vessels, manned by burgher volunteers. When this ﬂeet was beaten back (9 April), Haarlem was effectively cut off. Three months on, a large force of soldiers and burgher volunteers set off from Sassenheim on the night of 8 July, with some 400 to 500 supply wagons. But the besiegers again had advance notice; Eberstein’s High Germans abandoned their sconces to lure the inexperienced attackers into an ambush, with devastating results. Haarlem now agreed to terms (13 July). To buy off the horrors of a sack, the magistrates promised an indemnity of 240,000 pounds. Toledo’s Spaniards, twenty-eight months behind in their pay, and now deprived of a sack, organized a month-long mutiny.³⁸ Before yielding his command to Requesens (November 1573), Alba outlined for Philip II a strategy for the war based on the Haarlem campaign: if cut off from the countryside, ‘the rebels will be imprisoned in their towns, and will perish from starvation’. Fadrique de Toledo, having failed to enrcircle Alkmaar, began siege works around Leiden on 30 October. In keeping with his father’s ideas, he did not bring up siege artillery; instead, he sent men ‘to the entry of Holland, so as to assure communication by water’. Thus Francisco de Valdez, sergeant-major of the tercio of Lombardy, took a few thousand men across the Haarlemmermeer to occupy key points along the dyke roads and waterways, including Leiderdorp, the Gouda sluice at Alphen, and Maaslandsluis. With Spanish lines extending in all directions, Delft, Rotterdam, and Schiedam were cut off from Leiden, and from each other.³⁹ Leiden’s magistrates, foreseeing the enemy’s plan, had been urging urged Orange to assure communications with Delft by putting troops in Leidschendam. But Orange’s strike force had been scattered during the siege of Haarlem; the good men remaining were added to town garrisons, as in Gouda, still of dubious loyalty. The unit he sent to Leidschendam soon abandoned its post, and Leiden requested permission to have its own militiamen replace ‘lazy’ soldiers guarding the lammenschaans (lambs-sconce), just south of the city wall. If Leiden was completely surrounded by 2, December Orange ³⁸ Orange to his admiral, William van Bloys van Treslong, Delft, 17 January 1573, INGWVO, no. 9518; Maltby, Alba, 245–54, 261; Spaans, Haarlem na de Reformatie, 40–6; Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 433–4, 439–42. ³⁹ Robert Fruin, The Siege and Relief of Leiden, trans. Elizabeth Trevelyan ( The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974), 9 (Alba’s letter); Mendoza, Commentaires, ii. 152–3.

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Map. 3 Holland divided by civil war, 1576

took comfort that his main towns were ‘of good heart’ and well stocked with provisions.⁴⁰ ⁴⁰ Leiden to Orange, 9 October, 25 October, 29 October, 31 October (the quote) 1573, INGWVO, nos. 4721, 4178. 4719, 4715; Orange to Louis of Nassau, 5 November, 13 November, and 2 December 1573, Groen, Letters 446, 449, and 467, iv. 231–2, 238–9, and 281–5; Hibben, Gouda in the Revolt, 79; Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 472, 477–8; vii. 486–8.

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A commander of Orange’s stature could not reconcile himself to a purely defensive war. Even now his forces in Zeeland tightened their siege of the main town, Middelburg, soon to be surrendered by its Spanish defenders (21 February 1574).⁴¹ He also kept an eye open for opportunities. For example, in the summer of 1573, he persuaded the consistory of the underground Calvinist community in Antwerp to raise troops for a successful assault on three villages that lay along the south shore of the Maas; the next step was to capture the nearby walled city of Sint Geertruidenberg. Even if it did not prove so easy to arrange reliable funding for Geertruidenberg’s new garrison, Orange had laid the foundations for what would become, in a few years, an important anchor in Holland’s system of defences.⁴² For breaking the siege of Leiden, he looked for help from allies abroad. From England, Colonel Edward Chester brought ﬁve companies to nearby Valkenburg Castle. Orange wanted to get these men into Leiden, but they ﬂed as Spanish units approached the castle, and were subsequently denied admission to Leiden because of their cowardice.⁴³ Germany was a better source of aid. With help from France, and promises of money from the Nassau family’s kindred and allies, Louis of Nassau raised 3,000 cavalry and 6,000 infantry, crossed the Rhine, and encamped opposite Maastricht on the Maas (February 1574). In response, Requesens had all his forces converge on Maastricht, including Fadrique de Toledo’s men, dug in before Leiden, and Chevreux’s troops in Waterland. The immediate task of Requesens’s ﬁeld commander, Sancho D´avila, was to prevent Louis from making a juncture with Orange, who was raising new units in the vicinity of Bommel (Gelderland). Hence as Louis set out down the right bank of the Maas toward Nijmegen, he was followed on the left bank by D´avila. At the village of Mook, Louis found D´avila (who had got across on a bridge of boats) encamped in his line of march. Louis’s German companies slightly outnumbered the enemy, but, lacking discipline, they suffered a great rout; as Motley remarks here, ‘it was the custom of these mercenaries to mutiny on the eve of battle—of the Spaniards, after it had been fought’. Louis himself and his brother Henry were among the dead (14 May 1574). As at Haarlem, the Spanish infantry now indeed enacted the ritual of mutiny. Yet by the end of May, Chevreux was back in Waterland, and a larger ⁴¹ Groen (IV, 302) believes that Orange made Middelburg the priority. ⁴² Orange to his troops in Brabant, 1 January 1573, an order not to molest the villages of Klundrert, Fijnaart, and Rugenhil; to the Antwerp consistory, 26 June, 13 July 1573; to Jan Heynricxzoon. Dordrecht, 6 August 1573, his commission as governor of the three vilages; to Geertruidenberg, 28 August 1573, an appeal to place the city under his protection; to Charles Trello, 1 September 1573, an order for payment of the troops in Geertruidenberg; to Philippe de Grenu, commander of the garrison there, 1 September 1573; and to the villages of Barle and Gestel, 3 June 1574, taking these nearby communities under his protection: INGWVO, nos. 6900, 3378, 3387, 2571, 3400, 8259, 3027, 2781, and 6913. ⁴³ Bor, Oorsprong, vii. 504; the ﬁve English companies were commanded by Colonel Edward Chester. Cf. Fruin, Siege and Relief, 14–16.

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Spanish army, now under Francisco de Valdez, was again digging in around Leiden.⁴⁴ Succour from abroad having failed, Orange now asked Holland’s towns for authority to conduct the war as he saw ﬁt. For a meeting of the States in Rotterdam (1 June), he summoned each city to send not just the usual magistrate delegates, but three or four members of the civic militia as well; these burgher companies had been the backbone of the Revolt in 1572, and Orange apparently counted on their support. He asked the assembly ‘how to keep a ﬂying army in the ﬁeld, especially for the relief of Leiden’. Rotterdam’s community of Protestant refugees made a counter-proposal, more to the liking of the States. To help maintain ‘forty companies of 150 men, serving only for the protection of the cities and the countryside’, they promised eight pounds per man per month, for one year. In their view, it was not possible under present circumstances to support a ﬁeld army to ‘harm the enemy in Brabant’ or elsewhere; rather, the aim was ﬁrst and foremost to hold South Holland’s cities. But to achieve good discipline, and thus make burghers amenable to the presence of mercenaries, the 300-man company of German landsknechte, familiar from the days of Charles V, had to be reduced to 150 men. Orange did not like the drift of the discussion; in the absence of loyal support from the towns, His Excellency said, he would be obliged to resign as stadtholder. But the resolution of June 15 made no more than a token concession: the States pledged to raise each month enough money to support ‘such garrisons as the ordinary defence needs of the cities shall be found to require’; there could be a ﬁeld army as well, but only if money were left over.⁴⁵ This decision was a milestone for the defence of the towns, but gave Orange no resources to relieve Leiden. Valdez, with 7,000 to 8,000 men, once again secured communications with the Maas by sending men to Vlaardingen, Maaslandsluis, and The Hague; he also occupied villages on all sides of Leiden and began construction on as many as sixty sconces and blockhouses. By the end of June messages got in or out of Leiden only by carrier pigeon. Like Alkmaar, Leiden could be saved only by ﬂooding the country. But Spanish troops guarded the IJ dyke, and also the Maas dyke west of Vlaardingen. Dykes and sluice gates would thus have to be opened further upstream on the Maas, at Rotterdam and Schiedam, and along the Hollandse IJssel, a tributary of the Maas. Against prevailing westerly winds, water would also have to ﬂow from the low-lying drainage districts of Delﬂand and Schieland to the higher ground of Rijnland, Leiden’s drainage district. Nonetheless, Orange persuaded the States to decree the opening, as needed, of all sluices and dykes in the three drainage districts (30 July 1574). Damages to crops and rural property, estimated at 3,000,000 crowns (6,000,000 pounds), were to ⁴⁴ John Lothrop Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic (New York: Harper, 1855), ii. 554–8; Bor, Oorsprong, vii. 489–92. ⁴⁵ Ibid. 508–10; Swart, Willem van Oranje, 97: whether the militia companies actually sent delegates on this or other occasions when they were summoned by Orange is not clear.

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be made good by the province. One can follow the slow progress of the waters by orders for more cuts further up the IJssel dyke, and along dyke roads north of Delft.⁴⁶ As at Alkmaar, however, the ﬂooding was accompanied by signs of discontent. On 1 September Oudewater and nine surrounding villages petitioned, unsuccessfully, for suspension of orders to open the sluices in and near Gouda. In Gouda itself, the military governor was ordered to have English mercenaries to make sure that sluices within the town walls were kept open—a task for which the civic militia could not be trusted.⁴⁷ By early September, the waters stalled at the landscheiding —the dyke road marking the boundary line between Rijnland and Delﬂand, defended by Valdez. Meanwhile, the soldiers and war barges Orange had summoned from Zeeland prepared to attack. On 11 September thirty-ﬁve galleys, commanded by Boisot, cut through the landscheiding at an unguarded point, and Valdez fell back on Zoeterwoude. Once again the waters stalled, until on 28 September the wind turned, giving Boisot enough depth to ﬂoat his inland armada; on 2 October Valdez abandoned his last sconce south of Leiden.⁴⁸ On 3 October, Leiden’s starving burghers feasted on white bread and fresh herring. Holland now had a respite, ﬁrst because Spain’s companies mutinied once more—this time following a defeat—and then because the States General of the loyalist provinces induced Requesens to open what proved to be a futile round of peace discussions with the rebel provinces.⁴⁹ During these months, Orange oversaw implementation of the 15 June resolution on town garrisons. Even if each mercenary company had no more than 150 men,⁵⁰ there would still be too many companies to be supported by the budget decreed by the Lords States, 45,000 pounds a month.⁵¹ The solution was to muster out superﬂuous companies—no easy task, because soldiers did not break ranks until their arrears were settled.⁵² By 1 September 1574 Orange and the States had at least agreed on a list of twenty companies to be dismissed.⁵³ ⁴⁶ Fruin, Siege and Relief, 84–7; RSH 1574, 10–11: 30 July1574; Bor, Oorsprong, vii. 548–9; Orange to Leiden, 12 August 1574, INGWVO, no. 11310 (his plans to cut through the Maas and IJssel dykes); RSH 1574, 60, 72: 26 August, 2 September 1574. ⁴⁷ RSH 1574, 74, 96–9, 60, 68, 78–9, 95, 101, 120: 9 September, 4 September, 16/17 September, 26 August, 1 September, 8, 15, 19, 30 September 1574. ⁴⁸ A synopsis of Fruin, Siege and Relief, 89–139. ⁴⁹ At discussions in Breda, Holland and Zeeland insisted on maintaining the ‘Reformed Evangelical Religion’, but Philip II would allow ‘heretics’ nothing more than a six-month grace period in which to sell their goods and quit the country: Bor, Oorsprong, viii. 573–8, 583–5; Swart, Willem van Oranje, 88–90. ⁵⁰ RSH 1574. 116, 110–11: 28 September 1574, 25 September 1574: one way to cut down the numbers was to ‘get rid of unsuitable men, and most of those having wives and children’. Cf. RSH 1575, 213: 8–10 April 1575. ⁵¹ RSH 1575, 11: 7 January 1575. ⁵² RSH 1574, 107, 139: 23 September, 13 October 1574: Geervliet and other communities in Voorne raised 1,500 pounds to be rid of Jonkheer Willem van Dorp and his cavalry troop, but while Van Dorp refused to quit the island unless paid, Geervliet would not release the money until he had crossed to the mainland. ⁵³ RSH 1574, 60–2, 66, 68–9: 27 August, 30 August, 1 September 1574.

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Fig. 3 The Relief of Leiden, October 1574. As Boisot’s shallow-draft barges advance with ﬂood waters along the line of the Vliet, Spanish troops abandon their sconces. Engraving by Frans Hogenberg, printed copy, in possession of the author.

Following the relief of Leiden, the States concluded that, despite their resolution of 15 June, it was no longer necessary to billet hated foreign mercenaries in the towns. They proposed (20 October) that all mercenary companies henceforth be quartered in the countryside.⁵⁴ Orange reacted with a rare hint of temper: such a measure, he said, was ‘contrary to all the usages of war, and not at all proper and permissible, especially when one is ﬁghting a defensive war’. Should the Lords States persist in this pernicious opinion, His Excellency would have to resign as stadtholder. This time, Orange’s threat had the desired effect. At their next session the States declared that the struggle against Spain required not merely a stadtholder, but a ‘head and high authority’, who could be none other than His Excellency. This new executive power the deputies envisioned was not ⁵⁴ RSH 1574, 176–8, 178–82, minute of the ‘proposal from His Excellency’, dated 1 November 1574, and the response of the States, dated 12 November 1574. For a ﬁne study of the slow process of building discipline among the garrison companies, see Swart, Krijgsvolk.

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equivalent to sovereignty,⁵⁵ but it did enhance Orange’s authority as commander in chief. According to ‘Instructions’ approved by the States, Holland’s ‘Head and High Authority’ had sole responsibility for deciding how many mercenary companies were needed, and where they should be stationed. In fact, when Orange had his list of companies and assignments ready, he wisely submitted it for approval by the States (1 May 1575). Just as wisely, the States made only slight changes. As before, there were to be forty-six companies for South Holland,⁵⁶ with thirty-seven instead of thirty-four quartered in towns; the difference was that some town-based companies were expected to take weekly shifts at rural posts.⁵⁷ To prevent Spain’s troops from reoccupying the countryside, the States also decreed special taxes on land to fund new sconces at Maaslandsluis, Alphen, Oudewater, and Woerden.⁵⁸ With this armature, Holland faced a new round of ﬁghting. In the summer of 1575 Requesens ordered a two-pronged offensive. Advancing from Tholen, a Zeeland town holding for Spain, Cristobal de Mondragon and his men made a daring portage across the channel between the islands of Duiveland and Schouwen in order to begin siege works at Zierikzee; by capturing this town, with the island of Schouwen, they would cut off Walcheren Island, to the south, from the rest of rebel-held territory. Meanwhile, Gilles de Berlaymont, lord of Hierges, pointed his forces toward the rivers running parallel to the Waal–Maas line in southern Holland.⁵⁹ Having quickly forced the surrender of Buren (on the Linge), he set down before Oudewater (on the Hollandse IJssel, 19 July). Rushing to nearby Gouda, Orange sent word for the dykes to be cut; Oudewater’s magistrates did not obey, possibly because the hay in the ﬁelds was ripe for mowing. Hierges was thus able to plant his artillery and open a breach in the wall. After reconnoitring to make sure the defenders had not built a retirata behind the breach, he gave the orders for a successful assault (6 August), and moved on to Schoonhoven (on the Lek). Orange had commanded the Lek dyke to be cut, but here too he was not obeyed; some thought the burgomasters had interests in the ﬁne stands of grain nearby. When Hierges’s cannon had made a breach three hundred paces wide, the garrison commander judged that the city was no longer defensible, and negotiated honourable terms. Some of Hierges’s men continued down the Lek dyke to capture a vital sconce at Krimpen, where the Lek enters the Maas. ⁵⁵ After granting ‘high authority’ to Orange, the States of Holland and Zeeland sent an embassy to Elizabeth I (November 1575), offering her sovereignty over their lands if she would drive out the Spanish: RSH 1575, 730: 14 November 1575, Bor, Oorsprong, viii. 660, 661. ⁵⁶ North Holland was evidently to support twenty companies. ⁵⁷ RSH 1574, 125–6, 192: 4 October, 12 November 1574; RSH 1575, 77, 256–8, 267–8: 18 February, 1, 9 May 1575. ⁵⁸ RSH 1575, 262–3, 264–5, 642–3, 666–7: 7, 9 May, 19 September, 2 October 1575. ⁵⁹ On Zierikzee, Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 167–8; Hierges’s campaign followed his abortive invasion of North Holland: Van Nierop, Verraad, 99–105.

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In this hour of need, Orange asked the States of Holland and Zeeland for new levels of manpower: a hundred companies of 150 men, plus a hundred warships.⁶⁰ Meanwhile, at Woerden, now besieged by the rest of Hierges’s troops, he made sure his orders to ﬂood the countryside were obeyed. To recapture the Krimpen fortress, he created a strike force that included 3,000 peasants from the hinterland of Dordrecht. To ﬂood inland roads by which the sconce garrison could be supplied, he had the IJssel dyke broken through at Ouderkerk, and posted men to defend the gap. To prevent relief along the Lek dyke, he stationed armed barges on the river; these effectively blocked the progress of Hernando de Toledo, Alba’s nephew, who had set off down the dyke with a detachment of cavalry. The Krimpen garrison surrendered on 26 February 1576.⁶¹ This turned out to be the last engagement in which rebels fought Spanish troops within Holland’s borders. Following their capture of Zierikzee (2 July), Spain’s unpaid soldiers launched a terrible mutiny, provoking a political reaction that would give Holland a precious respite from the war. From 1572 to 1576, the battle for Holland had been fought on relatively even terms. Spaniards took some walled towns by bombardment (Schoonhoven), assault (Oudewater), or starvation (Haarlem). But Orange’s forces held off the invaders whenever they able to ﬂood the countryside (Alkmaar, Leiden, and Woerden). The fact that a string of towns held their own against the Spanish monarchy must be accounted a victory. It was, however, a victory that reﬂected ﬁnancial infrastructure, not the ﬁghting qualities of the armies. In the end, Europe’s best soldiers could not prevail over troops that were their inferiors in every respect, save for the relative regularity of their pay.⁶² ⁶⁰ RSH 1576, 16, 22–3: 15, 23 March 1576. ⁶¹ Bor, Oorsprong, viii. 643–7, 662; Swart, Willem van Oranje, 93–4. ⁶² Bor, Oorsprong, viii. 658, contrasts the rare and localized mutinies on the rebel side with frequent and massive rebellions by Spain’s unpaid companies.

5 The New Fiscal Regime Stable governments had dependable revenues that could be earmarked for recurring expenses. Extraordinary expenses, like war, required borrowing against future revenues, but well-managed states created a sinking fund for the debt, encouraging creditors to lend at lower rates. Revolutionary governments had no dependable revenues, much less the luxury of a sinking fund. One of course sought to preserve old-regime revenues, but taxpayers had to be re-educated about the consequences of non-compliance.¹ Revolutionary governments also had to allow for the nervousness of lenders; while the pre-Revolt States of Holland could borrow 100,000 pounds at 12 per cent, in 1575 the going rate, for obligatiën of much smaller values, was between 30 and 40 per cent.² Even so, the managers of Holland’s ﬁnances still managed to juggle cash and credit in such a way as to keep most of the all-important town garrisons contented most of the time. This chapter explains how they did it. For money to pay the garrisons, the Lords States appropriated the provincial excise and land tax that had hitherto funded Holland’s renten. To prop up Holland’s credit, they persuaded purveyors and military commanders to accept Holland obligatiën in lieu of cash, while inducing town corporations to get burghers to subscribe to new loans. To appease unpaid lenders demanding relief, they made selective use of the properties of the Catholic Church, and of lay persons whose loyalty to the king had led them to choose exile. These arrangements pointed to a new balance of power—a second wave of ﬁscal devolution, in which town governments assumed a signiﬁcant degree of control over ﬁscal resources. T H E C O M M O N M E A N S (GEMENE MIDDELEN ) Habsburg Holland’s most dependable revenue was the provincial excise and land tax, dedicated to the payment of interest and principal on renten issued and ¹ States of Holland resolutions for the 1570s feature a formula that seems as much wish as command: one must proceed against delinquents ‘in fact and in deed (realijck ende metter daad), in such wise as one was wont to collect the king’s taxes’. ² RSH 1575, 444–5: 30 June 1575, ‘between 30% and 40%’; RSH 1576, 39: 14 April 1576: to get 30,000 pounds needed at once, let rich burghers be invited to lend on the promise of getting back principal and 20% interest in six months.

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managed by the States. For the year ending 30 April 1572, Meester Jacob Bol, receiver for the common territory,³ reported 202,801 pounds in revenues. The beer and wine excise was the most lucrative, yielding 84,071. In 1570, at the request of the States, Philip II had raised the rate for beer from two to four stuivers (from 0.1 to 0.2 pounds) per barrel, on domestic as well as imported beer; he also doubled the wine excise, proportionate to the values of casks distinctive to French, Spanish, and Rhenish wines.⁴ In addition, there was also 50,669 for taxes on land; 44,205 for excises on various goods sold in the towns; 29,153 for excises on grain and ﬂour; 9,421 for a tax on sales of ‘horned beasts’; and 6,238 for an excise on turf exported from Holland, added in 1571.⁵ At their ﬁrst session under the new regime (July 1572), the Lords States diverted the excise and land tax to the needs of war, authorizing each city to seize moneys held by ‘impost’ collectors for the year that began on 1 May, and to continue as before, by farming each tax at periodic auctions.⁶ This decision effectively suspended interest payments on Holland renten, although there is no record of formal action until May 1575, when the States resolved that ‘as far as possible’ renten-holders were to receive one year’s worth of the three years’ interest that was by now due.⁷ The States also conﬁrmed existing rates for the excise and land taxes (18 August),⁸ but early results were discouraging. For the fourteen months from 1 May 1572 to 30 June 1573, Franchoys van Valkensteyn, the ﬁrst receiver-general for the new regime, reported only 24,699 pounds for the beer and wine excise, and 1,571 for turf.⁹ Because parts of rural Holland were now ﬂooded, while in others units of the Spanish army operated at will, the States suspended collection for excises on grain, butter, cheese, slaughter animals, and vegetable oil.¹⁰ ³ From the 1540s, the States increasingly took over the management of government revenues by having subsidies collected by its ofﬁcial, the receiver for the common territory (see Chapter 2). From 1572, the former receiver for the common territories was known as Holland’s receivergeneral. ⁴ Philip’s octroy of 12 July 1570 is copied at the head SH voor 1572, 3.01.28, no. 327, ‘Rekening van Jacob Bol . . . van de 83,370 ponden op renten, 1570’. ⁵ SH voor 1572, 3.01.28, no. 328 (the ﬁrst ﬁfty pages are missing). From Bol’s overall total of 409,144, one has to make subtractions for sums not related to the excise and land tax, notably for taxes on land related to subsidies granted to the king. ⁶ Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 388. ⁷ RSH 1575, 269–70: 10 May 1575; cf. RSH 1574, 81: 9 September 1574, Dordrecht asks 1,000 pounds for holders of Holland renten in Cologne and Neuss (payable from Dordrecht’s portion of the excise and land tax); the reply was, ‘habeant patientiam’. SH voor 1572, 3.01.28, Valkensteyn paid 8,386 pounds for interest on gemene lands renten (sold before 1572) in his ﬁrst account, and only 432 pounds in his second. ⁸ RSH 1572, 2–5: 18 August 1572. Two stuivers per barrel of beer was considerably less than the rates at which urban beer excises were set: Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 144. ⁹ SH voor 1572, 3.01.13, no. 20, ‘bordereel [summary] of the late Franchoys van Valkensteyn’s ﬁrst account as receiver-general’. ¹⁰ Orange to the States of Holland, 15 February 1573, INGWVO, no. 11283, approving a doubling of the excises on wine and beer. Provincial excises on many other commodities dated from (or were resumed in) 1574: R. Liesker and W. Fritschy, Geswestelijke ﬁnanciën ten tijde van

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Towns were the key to the ﬁnancial survival of the Revolt, and they had to do better. Thus in February 1573, even as they suspended collection of other excises, the States doubled the beer excise, to eight stuivers per barrel, and doubled the wine excise as well; in 10 May 1574 the latter was raised again, to 20 pounds per aam of Spanish or Rhenish wine, and ten pounds per oxhead of French wine. Valkensteyn’s receipts for the year ending 30 June 1574 were more than double the previous year’s total, but still only 64,242.¹¹ Moreover, expectations for the new rates outran receipts. On 8 May 1574 the towns of South Holland, counting on the provincial excises, promised Orange 30,000 pounds a month for the war, for the six months beginning 1 July; as Orange wrote to his brother Jan van Nassau, from a country that had suffered ‘so much wastage and destruction’ 180,000 pounds was ‘a ﬁne and handsome sum’.¹² So it would have been, had Holland’s towns lived up to their promise. By November of 1574, it was clear that 30,000 pounds a month would not be not enough. This was when Orange threatened to lay down his post if the States did not adequately support the war effort. Hence, to support garrisons in the towns, the deputies agreed to raise South Holland’s monthly allotment to 45,000, through the ﬁrst four months of 1575. Since the provincial excises were not even bringing in 30,000 a month, much less 45,000, the Lords States steeled themselves for a drastic step: from now on, cities in Holland south of the IJ would be entitled to keep only one-third of the urban beer and wine excise taxes that had long been their principal source of revenue. The remaining two-thirds was to be pooled with the provincial beer and wine excises.¹³ This unprecedented appropriation of city revenues by the provincial States was not universally accepted. Brill, with the islands of Voorne and Putten, could not be persuaded to accept the innovation for six months. North of the IJ, the seven cities of the Noorderkwartier, having been cut off from the south by the Spanish conquest of Haarlem (July 1573), had their own States assembly. Here the change decreed for South Holland was never accepted, at least not on the de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden, iv: Holland (1572–1795) ( The Hague: Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, 2004), table III.1.1, p. 220. ¹¹ RSH 1573, 22–3: 15 February 1573; RSH 1574, 37–40: 10 May 1574; RAZH 3.01.13, no. 20, bordereel of Valkensteyn’s second account as receiver-general. ¹² RSH 1574, 37–40: 8–10 May 1574; Orange to Jan van Nassau, 7 May 1574, Groen, Letter 491, iv. 395–8. ¹³ RSH 1574, 206, 239–41: 25 November, 10 December 1574. SH voor 1572, 3.01.29, no. 757, an eighteenth-century memorandum on Holland’s ﬁscal history, cites the States of Holland resolution of 25 November 1574. Liesker and Fritschy, Geswestelijke ﬁnanciën, Holland, table II.2.1, p. 165, date the appropriation of urban excises from 1572. But cf. J. H. van Dijk, ‘De geldelijke druk op de Delfsche burgerij in de jaren 1572–1576’, Bijdragen voor Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde, 7e Reeks, 5 (1935), 169–86, here 174–6: the city’s groot accijns (mainly the beer and wine excises) brought in 21,276 pounds for ﬁscal year 1573/4, but only 5,670 for the year 1574/5. This necessitated suspension of payments on urban renten: RSH 1575, 113: 4 March 1575.

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same terms; North Holland’s towns insisted on keeping half their excise revenue, provided they used it for fortiﬁcations.¹⁴ Nonetheless, the appropriation of urban excises enabled the States south of the IJ to approve a new budget for the whole package of provincial excises, henceforth known as the ‘common means’ or gemene middelen. The beer and wine excise in the walled towns was expected to bring in 20,000 of the needed 45,000 pounds a month, with estimates ranging from 600 to 9,000 pounds for other excises that were now reintroduced.¹⁵ Once again, however, projections were too optimistic. By 1575 the gemene middelen yielded a bit more than 30,000 pounds a month, counting what town magistrates held back to pay their garrisons.¹⁶ Totals collected by the receiver-general—not including what was expended locally—increased from 111,498 for the year ending 31 July 1574 (less than 10,000 pounds per month) to 407,058 for the period from August 1574 to December 1575 (about 24,000 per month).¹⁷ Yet in April 1575 South Holland raised its monthly quota once more, to 55,000 pounds. This was part of the overall agreement between Holland and Zeeland for 100,000 a month to respond to the attacks led by Hierges and Mondragon; Holland’s total of 77,500 per month (counting 22,500 from North Holland) was to support sixty companies distributed over both parts of the province.¹⁸ Finally, for Orange’s counter-offensives, at Krimpen and Zierikzee, Holland and Zeeland jointly agreed in March 1576 to raise their total contribution to 210,000 pounds a month, to support a hundred mercenary companies and a hundred warships. Excise rates now had to be raised to unprecedented levels, e.g. twenty-one pounds per barrel of Jopenbier, a luxury import from Hamburg, and 30 pounds per aam of Spanish or Rhine wine.¹⁹ ¹⁴ RSH 1575, 272: 11 May 1575; RANH 14 December, 11 May 1575. ¹⁵ RSH 1574, 240–1: 10 December 1574; above, n. 10. ¹⁶ RSH 1575, 78–82: 19 February 1575, the ﬁve receivers (see below, n. 17) have collected only 23,799 pounds for January, not counting an estimated 7,465 that some towns have withheld to pay their garrisons; RSH 1575, 149–56: 16 March 1575, the Council of Finance report that the gemene middelen for January have brought in only 33,000, leaving a 12,000-pound shortage in what the States have promised to His Excellency. A total of 33,000 a month for twelve months would mean 516,000 pounds for the year. Cf. the estimates of Liesker and Fritschy, Gewestelijke ﬁnanciën, Holland, table II.1.2, p. 160: 71,000 for the gemene middelen in 1571, 166,000 in 1573, 294,000 in 1574, 540,000 in 1575, 630,000 in 1576, 720,000 in 1577. ¹⁷ The ﬁrst ﬁgure is taken from RAZH 3.03.13, no. 21, Niclaas van der Laan’s account as receiver-general, subtracting from Van der Laan’s total the 6,360 for ‘imposts and excises in Zeeland’. The second comes from RAZH 3.01.13, no. 21, ‘Recueil van de eerste groote rekening van Jacob Muys als ontvanger generaal’, from the revenue section entitled ‘from the hand of the ﬁve receivers’ (the collectors of the gemene middelen). The dates for this account are not given, but under the heading of quotisatiën (that is, repartitiën) it includes levies up to November 1575. ¹⁸ RSH 1575, 78–82: 17 April 1575; cf. RSH 1575, 414, 418 ff.: 20 June, 22 June–6 July 1575, South Holland’s quota was apparently reduced to 50,000. I assume the total of sixty companies does not count those stationed in Zeeland. At an average of 1,300 pounds per company per month, a total of 77,500 pounds a month for all of Holland would support sixty companies. ¹⁹ RSH 1576, 17–19, 23–8: 15, 23 March 1576.

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Even before this last rate increase, the gemene middelen brought in more revenue than the pre-1572 provincial excise and land tax had ever done. (There were other levies that had been introduced since 1572, notably the licence fees or licenten that merchants paid for the privilege of exporting goods to enemy territory,²⁰ but these were not nearly so important for the war budget as the gemene middelen.) Yet 400,000 pounds a year was a mere pittance when measured against the demands of the war. The ‘more than 25,000 men’ that Orange claimed to have under his command in May 1573 would have been equivalent to 153 companies, with annual wages of something like 2,400,000 pounds.²¹ From other sources, it seems he had about 12,000 infantry at his disposal during the siege of Haarlem,²² not counting units on garrison duty in Holland’s towns and sconces. In May 1574 he had sixty-one companies in South Holland, and twenty in North Holland; if these had only 150 men each (many would have had more), infantry wages alone would have been about 1,260,000 pounds a year.²³ A few months later, South Holland cut back to forty-six companies of 150 men, meaning perhaps sixty-one companies for all of Holland, with annual wages of about 950,000 pounds. When Orange had to counter the offensives of Mondragon in Zeeland and Hierges in Holland, the hundred companies that Holland and Zeeland promised to support (March 1576) would have required annual wages of about 1,560,000 pounds. Finally, in addition to infantry wages, one has to reckon about as much again for all the other expenses of warfare on land, including ofﬁcers’ pay, artillery and munitions, fortiﬁcations, and the costs of resisting sieges.²⁴ ¨ A N D OBLIGATIËN H O L L A N D ’ S N EW D E BTS : REPARTITITEN The difference between gemene middelen receipts and the costs of war had to be made up by borrowing on a massive scale. Since the province had suspended payment on its pre-1572 debts, new borrowing was only possible if the town corporations stepped in as ﬁscal intermediaries. This the magistrates of rebel towns had in fact already done, in connection with the 500,000-pound obligatie ²⁰ In Jacob Muys’s ﬁrst account as receiver-general (cited above, n. 17), the total for licenten was 67,549. Licenten and the related konvooien are not discussed in this book, because little information has survived. Liesker and Fritschy, Gewestelijke ﬁnanciën, do not offer serial data for licenten or knovooien (e.g. table II.1.2, p. 160). ²¹ Orange to Louis of Nassau, Delft, 5 May 1573, Groen, Letter 413, iv. 88–9. When the infantry was reorganized into companies of 150 men, annual wages, not counting ofﬁcers’ pay, averaged about 1,300 pounds a month, or 15,600 a year ²² That is, Muller’s ten companies (3,000 men?), Lumey’s 4,000, and Orange’s eighteen companies (about 5,000?) at Sassenheim. ²³ Orange to Jan van Nassau, Dordrecht, 7 May 1574, Groen, Letter 491, iv. 395–8; in Zeeland he had at this time fourteen companies. ²⁴ Wijn, Beleg van Haarlem, 156–7: in 1577, Haarlem seeks reimbursement for 520,000 spent during the seven-month siege (1572–3); the amount seems credible, even if some items may be questioned.

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for the Mons campaign, issued by the States but guaranteed by thirteen towns.²⁵ Now, to induce their fellow-burghers to lend, town governments again acted as guarantors for debts charged to the States.²⁶ With Amsterdam remaining loyal to Spain, Delft was the largest and wealthiest town under Orange’s rule. For the Mons campaign Delft had raised a loan for 21,827 pounds, by subscription from wealthy burghers. When Orange arrived in Delft he asked for a further loan to help him form a strike force at Sassenheim; Delft raised 13,020, this time with subscriptions as low as two pounds, and made further payments of 3,348 and 12,560 to the companies mustering at Sassenheim. For the ﬂotilla sent to relieve Haarlem, Delft paid 4,159 for ships on the Haarlemmermeer, plus a further 27,183, including 16,180 from wealthy peasants in Delﬂand and 1,873 from Delfshaven In October 1573 a new loan for 6,856 was to be repaid from a sixth penny levied by the States on land rents. For a ‘voluntary loan’ that did not have to be repaid (February 1574), Delft promised 10,000 pounds, of which 8,843 was actually subscribed. In April, another 10,000-pound loan, of which 8,335 was subscribed, was to be reimbursed from ‘excises and other gemene middelen’.²⁷ In all, Delft’s burghers provided some 106,131 pounds for the cause between August 1572 and April 1574. If one assumes that this was about 35 per cent²⁸ of burgher loans in Holland’s Orangist towns, the total may have been 300,000 pounds.²⁹ To regularize the making of ‘repartitions’ (repartitiën) for assessing loans on the towns, Orange himself had to resolve the nettlesome issue of setting quotas for each city. For the relief of Leiden, the States agreed in July 1574 to a collective subscription or repartitie for 60,000 crowns, or 120,000 pounds; Delft’s quota was set at 35 per cent, as against 25.8 per cent for Dordrecht, 15.8 per cent for Rotterdam, and 10.8 per cent for Gouda.³⁰ The next year (1575) there were seven more repartitiën totalling 173,000. Counting the loans negotiated individually and those imposed by repartitie, it seems the towns undertook to raise about 600,000 pounds between August 1572 and November 1575.³¹ Yet ²⁵ Prologue to Part II, n. 25. ²⁶ The relation between the corporate credit of the towns and that of the province is discussed further in Chapter 8 and Chapter 11. ²⁷ J. H. van Dijk, ‘Rekeningen betreffende het ﬁnancieel aandeel van Delft aan den Vrijheidsoorlog 1572–1577’, Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap te Utrecht, 55 (1933), 43–124, here 48–52. ²⁸ For my assumption that Delft may have raised about 35% of all loans during this period, see n. 30 ²⁹ Liesker and Fritschy, Gewestelijke ﬁnanciën, Holland, table II.1.2, p. 160, propose larger estimates for the repartitiën: 200,000 for 1572, 190,000 for 1573, 380,000 for 1574, 260,000 for 1575, and 100,000 for 1576. ³⁰ RSH 1574, 90: 13 September 1574, the quotas for a levy of 60,000 crowns (120,000 pounds) for the relief of Leiden. RAZH 3.01.13, no. 21, Van der Laan’s account for the period ending 31 July 1574 mentions another repartitie for 24,200. Cf. Liesker and Fritschy, Gewestelijke ﬁnanciën, Holland, 177–82. ³¹ RAZH 3.01.13, no. 22, ‘Recueil van der eerste rekening van Jacob Muys als ontvangergeneraal’: the eight subscriptions (with each city’s quota, and how much it actually raised) are listed under quotisatiën (repartitiën). Though 173,000 was due, Muys reports collecting only 142,836.

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even if all the towns had met all their loan quotas,³² 600,000 pounds would not have been enough to cover Holland’s deﬁcit. One could raise money in other ways, for example, by turning to men of wealth willing to take a risk on Holland obligatiën, provided the Lords States agreed to rates of 30 per cent or 40 per cent.³³ On the whole, it was better to induce those who provided services to Holland—ofﬁcials, purveyors, and mercenary captains—to wait a bit longer for settlement of their debts. Like all governments of the era, the new regime in Holland presumed shamelessly on the good will of its ofﬁcials. For example, Orange called on functionaries of the Provincial Court (formerly the Court of Holland) to provide a loan in October 1573. When charged to oversee the process by which unwanted mercenary companies were paid off and mustered out the following year, Paulus Buys (advocate of the States of Holland) and Hendrik Duyst (often a burgomaster of Delft) borrowed in their own names to serve the common cause,³⁴ and many other provincial ofﬁcials and town magistrates did the same. In Haarlem, during the siege, some 33,000 pounds was raised on the credit of burgomaster Pieter Janszoon Kies, together with Jan van Vliet, a member of Holland’s college of nobles.³⁵ Just as wealthy burghers before the Revolt signalled their support of the government by investing in Holland renten, patriots of the new order—like Jean Tafﬁn, Orange’s court preacher—voluntarily invested in Holland obligatiën.³⁶ Merchants too extended credit, from sympathy with the Revolt, or merely as a business opportunity.³⁷ One could also buy, at a discount, obligatiën held by military commanders, in hopes of eventually getting something closer to the face value of the debt.³⁸ England’s merchant community made corporate investments in the Revolt. The ‘merchants of Ipswich’, a North Sea port where many Netherlands refugees had settled, provided 50,000 pounds. London’s Merchant Adventurers traditionally had their staple for the wool cloth trade in Antwerp. Following a victory by the rebel ﬂeet in the Scheldt estuary (April 1573), they ³² RSH 1575, 78–82: 19 February 1575: many towns have still not met their quotas for the 60,000 crowns for the relief of Leiden, approved in July 1574. ³³ RSH 1575, 414: 20 June 1575. ³⁴ Orange to Barthold Ernst, secretary (grifﬁer) of the Court of Holland, 9 October 1573, INGWVO, no. 9820; RSH 1574, 66, 139: 30 August, 13 October 1574. Cf. RSH 1574, 94: 15 September 1574, Hendrik Duyst and Willem Janszoon van Heemskerk use their own money to buy 2,000 to 3,000 pounds worth of beer for Leiden; RSH 1574, 136: 8 October 1574, another loan by Duyst; SH voor 1572, 3.01.13, no. 23, Van der Laan’s account as receiver-general for year ending 31 July 1574, expense rubric for ‘interest’ ( Jan Cinq, a magistrate of Gouda). ³⁵ RSH 1575, 289: 16 May 1575. ³⁶ SH voor 1572, 3.01.13, no. 21, p. 20 ( Tafﬁn). ³⁷ e.g. RSH 1575, 644: 19 September 1575, a loan by one Cornelis Lambrechtszoon to Captain Maarten Ruychaver for two months’ wages for his two companies. ³⁸ SH voor 1572, 3.01.14, no. 231, the 1582 summary of debts: Willem Aerts Bouman has bought ‘certain States’ obgliatiën’ for 6,000 pounds; Pieter Bom has an obligatie for 2,500 once held by Barthold Entens, Lumey’s erstwhile second in command (d. 2 May 1580): F. J. G. Ten Raa, J. W. Wijn, and, Franc¸ois de Bas eds., Het Staatsche Leger, 1568–1795 (10 vols., Breda: Koninklijke Militaire Academie, 1911–18), i. 173.

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bargained with Orange and his supporters for safe passage of their goods to and from Antwerp; at the same time they provided a loan for 100,000 pounds.³⁹ In a separate transaction, Hugo Gibbon, a merchant of London, contracted with Colonel Edward Chester to sell ‘certain silk cloths’ to pay for equipping and transporting Chester’s companies of English mercenaries to Holland.⁴⁰ Finally, an untold number of merchants accepted States of Holland obligatiën because they had no choice. In 1575, Hans Basse of Hamburg claimed he was still owed 3,605 pounds for eighty-one last of rye seized by Lumey de La Marck when he conquered Brill in April 1572.⁴¹ Merchants doing business in Holland could also exchange (at a favourable rate) taxes they owed for debts owed by the province. For example, Holland obligatiën were traded for credits on what merchants owed for licenten. Jan Ten Broek of Dordrecht asked for and received a credit of 239 pounds for licenten to export herring, in satisfaction of a Holland obligatie he had acquired from another merchant. For money he gave Holland’s receiver-general for wages of the Zeeland sailors involved in the relief of Leiden, Nicolaes van Haest had his bill for licenten to export herring to Cologne or Cleves reduced by 1,800 pounds. For a loan of 1,600 pounds to pay the wages of a mercenary company, Gerrit Danckemann, a merchant of Riga, was promised a credit of 2,000 pounds for licenten when he sent his goods back to the Baltic. In North Holland exchanges of this kind were regularized: collectors for the licenten were instructed to accept, in lieu of cash, any payment order that was addressed by the States of North Holland to Hans Colterman, the receiver-general.⁴² Unless large debts were involved, like those owed to the Merchant Adventurers or the merchants of Ipswich, merchants were probably not the most difﬁcult of Holland’s creditors. Military commanders, whether of noble rank or not, were even more pliable. Custom dictated that men of rank and inﬂuence should put their resources to public use, as Orange himself had done in full measure. Those who fought under his banner were expected to be patient in collecting their debts. In 1575, Lazarus Muller was still owed 40,000 pounds for money he had raised to pay the wages of the ten companies of Low Germans he had brought to Enkhuizen in 1572. Colonel Chester, who stood surety for two years’ wages for his ﬁve companies, claimed debts of 14,000.⁴³ In 1582, Philip von Hohenlohe, who signed on in ³⁹ Governor of Flushing to Orange, May 1573, report of the naval victory (22 April 1573), INGWVO, no. 1272; Orange to the Merchant Adventurers, Delft, 25 May 1573, INGWVO, no 12030. The loans by the Ipswich merchants and the Merchant Adventurers are both mentioned in SH voor 1572, 3.01.14, no. 231, together with other loans still outstanding in 1582. ⁴⁰ For transactions involving Col. Chester, below, nn. 43, 50; for the undistinguished record of his men in their initial engagement, Chapter 4 n. 43. ⁴¹ RSH 1575, 268: 9 May 1575. ⁴² RSH 1574, 111, 137–8, 94: 25 September 1574, 9 October 1574, 18 October 1574; RANH 4 March 1575. ⁴³ RSH 1575, 153, 175: 16, 22 March 1575 (the 40,000 owing to Lazarus Muller); RSH 1574, 65, 154, 199–200, 213–14: 28 August, 23 October, 23, 26 November 1574 (Chester).

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1575 as Orange’s ﬁeld commander for South Holland, had unpaid debts of 30,554 pounds, while the heirs of Louis of Nassau, slain at Mook (1574), were owed 30,358. Willem van Dorp held an obligatie for 18,000 pounds, and four Walloon company captains were owed 49,400.⁴⁴ Though ﬁscal ofﬁcials kept their own accounts, the creditor’s legal record was his debt recognizance or obligatie. Thus a creditor receiving part-payment brought his obligatie, to have the payment noted thereon. Obligatiën were also negotiable, at a discount.⁴⁵ To guarantee this option, the States occasionally speciﬁed that an obligatie was payable to the creditor ‘or to the bearer’ (toonder).⁴⁶ Most high-ranking military men seem to have hung on to their obligatiën, despite the fact that such debts apparently had a low priority for the Lords States. Especially if they were no longer under contract to Holland, like the German cavalry commanders from the Mons campaign of 1572, they were told again and again to habere patientiam. A ‘state of arrears’ drawn up in 1582 lists debts of 1,157,641 pounds, mostly in obligations to commanders, including 368,465 pounds representing what Holland still owed from the 500,000-pound obligatie that Orange transferred to these German ritmeesteren for their service in 1572.⁴⁷ Holland’s burgher-lenders were not so patient. Since the repartitiën were justiﬁed as necessary to supply what was lacking to the war effort from the gemene middelen, lenders expected repayment from future gemene middelen income.⁴⁸ But, as always, precious cash receipts were diverted to more pressing needs; burgher loans, usually contracted for a six-month term, had to be ‘continued’ into an indeﬁnite future. Yet burghers, unlike merchants or military men, could exert pressure on the town governments that guaranteed their loans; they also knew that the Lords States would have to keep coming back to them for new loans. Absent any real prospect of repayment, burghers knew how to keep their purses closed. Thus if the province’s credit was to be maintained, at last some of Holland’s new debt had to be settled.

A S A F E T Y VA LV E F O R H O L L A N D ’ S D E BT: E C C L E S I A S T I C A L A N D A N N OTAT E D P RO PE RT Y Prior to 1572 the States retired short-term loans through issues of long-term, lowinterest renten. But since payment on the pre-1572 renten had been suspended, ⁴⁴ SH voor 1572, 3.01.14, no. 231, summary of debts outstanding in 1582, mainly but not exclusively to military men. ⁴⁵ RSH 1574, 67–8, 184–5: 1 September, 9 November 1574. ⁴⁶ RSH 1575, 17–18: 9 January 1575, for his payment of 4,302 pounds in wages to two English companies, Joachim Ortel, Orange’s commissioner of war, was promised 600 pounds in cash, a pension of 300 pounds a year, and an obligatie for 2,000 pounds; RSH 1575, 67–9: 14 Febrary 1575, evidently at Ortel’s request, the States ordered that the obligatie be made out to the bearer. ⁴⁷ SH voor 1572, 3.01.13, no. 231. ⁴⁸ e.g. RSH 1573: 15 February 1573.

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Hollanders were not interested in more of the same.⁴⁹ Colonel Chester accepted a new States of Holland rente to settle his debt, but even as a foreigner he knew enough about the province’s credit history to demand an unprecedented rate of interest.⁵⁰ In June 1576, when 100,000 pounds was desperately needed for Krimpen and Zierikzee, burghers of all the towns were constrained to invest in redeemable Holland renten at 1 : 12 or lijfrenten at 1 : 6—but on the proviso that the sums they had to invest were to be diminished either by their contributions to a repartitie decreed in August 1575, or by any money spent for the purchase of lands that had been part of Holland’s princely domain, and were now to be offered for sale.⁵¹ Lenders could thus avoid the unpleasant necessity of putting money in Holland securities by buying domain land instead. The best alternative sources of money for debt payments were ecclesiastical properties (geestelijke goederen), and the ‘annotated’ properties of those who had migrated to provinces loyal to Spain (geannoteerde goederen). Holland’s new government, upholding the promotion of the ‘evangelical religion’, had declared that all corporate entities of the Catholic Church were dissolved, and their properties forfeit. Also, just as the duke of Alba’s ofﬁcials had inventoried and sold the property of Hollanders condemned in absentia by the Council of Troubles, the goods of all Hollanders who had ﬂed ‘to the enemy’ were to be inventoried and administered for the common cause.⁵² Special ‘receivers of ecclesiastical and annotated property’ soon assumed their duties in Dordrecht and the surrounding region (9 January 1573), Delﬂand (27 February 1573), and The Hague (May 1573).⁵³ Initial collections were disappointing in Delﬂand and The Hague, but better in the fertile agricultural zones on either side of the Maas.⁵⁴ The receivers for favoured districts—like Overmaas, near Geertruidenberg—thus had cash on ⁴⁹ Commissioners of accounts (rekening) in Holland to Orange, Delft, 13 June 1573, INGWVO, no. 4580: a proposal (the outcome of which is unknown to me) to constrain wealthy Hollanders to buy renten charged against the corporate credit of leading villages in the Rijnland drainage district. ⁵⁰ RSH 1574, 213–14: 26 November 1574, in settlement of 11,000 in obligatiën held by Col. Chester, plus a further 2,000 for wages he paid to the troops, Chester and his 1-year-old son Robert are given a lijfrente of 2,600 pounds a year, payable over two lives; the interest rate was thus 20%. ⁵¹ RSH 1576, 83–5, 87, 100–2: 4, 10, 23 June 1576. ⁵² For sequestrations in Holland under Alba, GRK 4856, 4868, 4870; for the administration of ecclesiastical and annotated property after 1572, Liekser and Fritschy, Gewestelijke ﬁnanciën, Holland, 52–5. ⁵³ SH voor 1572, 3.01.28, no. 4543 (account of Willem Dionysi, burgher of Dordrecht, for 9 January–31 October 1573), no. 4542 (account of Jacob Cornelis van Moerkerke for Beijerland and Strijen, in the Dordrecht region, from 10 April 1573 apparently until the end of 1573); no. 4544 (account of Pieter van der Goes, bailiff and dijkgraaf of Delﬂand, for 27 February 1573–31 December 1574), and no. 4547 (account of Cornelis van der Wolff for The Hague, from May to 31 December 1573). ⁵⁴ Totals for the accounts listed in the previous note are: Willem Dionysi, 13,883 pounds; Jacob Cornelis van Moerkerke, 19,694; Pieter van der Goes, 7,132; and Cornelis van der Wolff, 2,159.

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hand to support various assignations, like paying for grain that been delivered to Leiden during the siege.⁵⁵ On behalf of their burgher-creditors, town magistrates demanded access to this same pool of resources; revenues from the properties of urban monasteries, familiar to townsfolk, seemed especially appropriate. Thus Delft’s magistrates requested that the properties of the former St Agatha’s convent be placed in their hands (September 1573); in October 1574, the States ordered that the magistrates of Delft be given a copy of the register of ecclesiastical properties in Delﬂand, so as to assure the city’s burghers concerning what was in effect the ultimate security (hypotheek) for their loans to the States. In Brill, subscribers still awaited repayment for loans totalling 10,000 pounds: 4,000 for the relief of Haarlem in 1572/3, and 6,000 for Brill’s quota in the repartitie for 60,000 crowns. In November 1574, magistrates were authorized to cover these debts by issuing life-term renten at 1 : 12, funded by revenues from the properties of the former monastery at Rugge, just outside the walls of Brill.⁵⁶ In June 1575, Alkmaar asked for a rente of 400 pounds a year on the goods of nearby Egmond Abbey, to repay a loan of 5,000 pounds provided by its burghers in 1572. By this time, the States of North Holland had made a distinction among different kinds of ecclesiastical property. While certain former parish endowments were earmarked for the upkeep of the Reformed clergy, other kinds of church income—and likewise the income from refugee property—could freely be applied to the clearance of old debts.⁵⁷ Full settlement of debt often required liquidating property, not just using the income. The 10,000 pounds that Arend van Dorp brought to Dillenburg in May 1572, important in helping Orange mobilize an army, was important also in setting a precedent for the outright sale of monastic lands. In September 1574, Van Dorp was still owed 8,000, plus another 6,470 for two deliveries of sulphur for making gunpowder. In settlement of all his claims, he accepted 130 morgen of land formerly belonging to the Augustinian canons regular at Leiderdorp, outside Leiden, valued at 15,000 pounds.⁵⁸ The property of exile nobles and burghers was treated more carefully, since these men and women might one day return to add their wealth and connections to Holland’s economy, as many eventually did. Nonetheless, in July 1575, the States authorized the printing of ‘bills of sale’ for the houses and lands of certain fugitive persons, in hopes of thereby enticing burghers to lend enough money to cover a recently decreed repartitie for 50,000 pounds.⁵⁹ ⁵⁵ RSH 1574, 151, 216–17: 25 August, 8 October 1574. ⁵⁶ Delft to Orange, 8 September 1573, INGWVO, no. 4656; RSH 1574, 151, 216–17: 22 October 1574, 27 November 1574. ⁵⁷ RANH 3, no. 236, 24 January 1575 (‘Richard Barton the Englishman’ is to receive 1,951 pounds for his arrears, from the income of refugee properties), and 23 October 1575 (reserved for the Reformed clergy were the so-called pastoriegoederen, or endowments speciﬁcally created to support the pastors of former Catholic parishes). ⁵⁸ Prologue to Part II; RSH 1574, 117: 28 September 1574. ⁵⁹ RSH 1575, 494–5: 14 July 1575.

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There is no record of how much debt was cleared off the books in this way; indeed, the sum total of Holland’s short-term debt is a mystery. The largest single debt—had it really been accepted as a debt by the States—would have been for compensation of the tenant-farmers and landholders whose ﬁelds were set under water for purposes of defending Leiden and other cities. Six million pounds was possibly too high an estimate for the damage caused by the massive ﬂooding that made possible the relief of Leiden,⁶⁰ but it would seem a conservative ﬁgure for the damages of all the military inundations decreed by Orange and the Lords States between 1572 and 1576. From the sources I have used, however, there is no indication that compensation was ever paid for crop losses. Once the Spanish army had evacuated rural Holland, the States did assume responsibility for repairing the broken dykes, so as to make the land once more productive.⁶¹ The States of North Holland decreed a levy of six stuivers per morgen for the same purpose.⁶² The cost of dyke repair in Waterland, the one small district for which both parts of the province made contributions, was estimated at 50,000 pounds.⁶³ Debts owed to military commanders (including the German ritmeesters) and to the burghers who participated in repartitiën organized by their magistrates may each be estimated at 1,000,000 pounds; debts to purveyors, more readily cancelled through the kind of exchanges mentioned above, were perhaps about half as much. Finally, Holland’s pre-1572 renten debt⁶⁴ was certainly in excess of 1,000,000 pounds.⁶⁵ All together, but not counting anything for the consequences of strategic ﬂooding, Holland’s outstanding debts were probably in the vicinity of 3,500,000 pounds. By contrast, annual income was certainly less than 1,000,000 pounds. Holland’s most important revenue, the gemene middelen, will have yielded about 450,000 pounds for the year ending 31 December 1576,⁶⁶ and it is doubtful that all other sources of income combined brought in as much. ⁶⁰ RSH 1574, 10–11, 30 July 1574: expected damage to crops and rural property estimated at 3,000,000 crowns, or 6,000,000 pounds. ⁶¹ RSH 1575, 165: 5 October 1576, one stuiver per barrel of beer from the urban beer excise revenue was to go for dyke repair; cf. RSH 1577, 53, 16 April 1577; RSH 1578, 15–16: 8 September 1578. ⁶² RANH 21 May 1577. ⁶³ RANH 15–16 April 1577. ⁶⁴ RSH 1577, 132: 3 July 1577, all unpaid interest ( July 1572 through June 1577) is to be capitalized at 1 : 16 (cf. RANH 8, 26 January, 27 April 1577). For renten-holders in enemy country, interest for the years 1572–6 was forfeit as a cost of war; they could claim interest only starting in 1577. ⁶⁵ SH voor 1572, 2305, Coebel’s account for the provincial excise and land tax for the year ending 30 April 1567, shows payments of 59,685 pounds in renten interest; at 1 : 16 this would mean an outstanding debt of 954,960. RAZH 3.01.14, no. 342, payments of interest on Holland renten (1593): for renten issued up through 1572, the total was 61,735 pounds, or, at 1 : 16, 987,760. ⁶⁶ An extrapolation based on RAZH 3.03.13 (351,503 or 20,676 per month for the seventeen months to the end of 1575) and RAZH 3.01.14, nr. 99B (818,497 or 68,208 per month for the year ending 31 December 1578). Liesker and Fritschy, Gewestelijke ﬁnanciën, Holland, table II.1.2, p. 160, estimate gemene middelen income for 1576 at 630,000 pounds.

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Moreover, key taxes could not be used to retire debt because they were earmarked for military use: the gemene middelen for the town garrisons, and the licenten for the admiralty. In other words, Holland’s ﬁnances resembled, albeit on a smaller scale, the tottering ﬁnances of the Spanish monarchy. In 1560, in the wake of the last Habsburg–Valois war, Philip II had debts estimated at 29,000,000 Spanish ducats, or about 40,000,000 Holland pounds. The income side of the ledger showed no revenue at all for 1560 that was not pledged already, and for 1561 only 1,320,000 ducats.⁶⁷ But state solvency was not the primary consideration in sixteenth-century warfare. Rather, the objective was to postpone the day of reckoning, and keep one’s troops at their posts just a bit longer than the enemy could. In this contest, historians have long understood that Spain had the great disadvantage of operating at a distance; money to pay the troops came from Philip II’s Genoese bankers, whose charges for interest and remittance could as much as double the cost of using Iberian revenues for war in the Low Countries.⁶⁸ What is less commonly realized is that the nascent Dutch Republic had the luxury of operating within what one may call interior lines of ﬁscal supply. This was not merely a question of geography. Holland’s leaders maximized their advantage with a de facto system of accounting that made the primary collectors of revenue responsible for keeping the nearest garrisons contented.

F RO M P ROV I N C E TO TOW N S : A F U RT H E R D EVO LU T I O N O F F I S C A L R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y Prior to 1572, Holland’s receiver for the common territory supervised collection of the provincial excise and land taxes. In each of twenty-nine walled cities, plus The Hague,⁶⁹ the excises were farmed out to the highest bidder for six months or a year. In rural Holland, the ‘particular receivers’ of the seven domainrevenue collection districts were responsible for collection of the land tax.⁷⁰ Surviving account summaries of the receivers-general—successors to the receiver for the common territory—indicate that the same pattern was followed after ⁶⁷ Modesto Ulloa, La hacienda real en el reinado de Felipe II (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Espa˜nola, 1977), 761–2; on Spain’s war budget during the 1570s, Parker, Spanish Road, 137–141. ⁶⁸ e.g. Henri Lapeyre, Simon Ruiz et les ‘asientos’ de Philippe II (Paris : A. Colin, 1953). ⁶⁹ ‘Staten van Holland voor 1572’, no. 2295, Coebel’s account for 1 May 1556–30 April 1557: Dordrecht, St. Geertruidenberg, Gorinchem, Heusden, Zevenbergen [South Holland]; Haarlem, Alkmaar [Kennemerland]; Hoorn, Medemblik, Enkhuizen [West Friesland]; Amsterdam, Edam, Monnickendam, Naarden, Weesp, Muiden [Amstelland]; Leiden, Woerden, Oudewater [Rijnland]; Delft, The Hague, Rotterdam, Schiedam, Vlaardingen [Delﬂand]; Gouda, Schoonhoven, Heukelom, Asperen, and Leerdam [Gouda]. The Hague counted as a city, though it was not walled. ⁷⁰ Names of collection districts given in brackets, above, n. 69.

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1572.⁷¹ Accounts were heard by ad hoc committees appointed by the States, together with auditors of the chamber of accounts (rekenkamer), based in Delft.⁷² Holland’s creditors typically presented their obligatiën in Delft, or, for North Holland, in Hoorn; if ofﬁcials decided the debt was important enough to be satisﬁed at least partially, they wrote out for the creditor a payment order (ordonnantie) addressed to one or another receiver.⁷³ It was thus imperative for States committees and auditors to have a clear picture of what revenues were available, or could be expected.⁷⁴ In June 1573, for example, the States of North Holland ordered all revenue collectors (rentmeesteren) to bring in, within a week, all their accounts for the period since May 1572.⁷⁵ In North Holland again, collectors were also instructed (August 1574) to bring the balance of their receipts to the ofﬁce of the common land in Hoorn.⁷⁶ These tidy arrangements were upset by the impatience of garrison soldiers, unwilling to be paid only once a month; to satisfy them, town and even village magistrates provided weekly ‘loans’ based on local taxation.⁷⁷ If magistrates sent claims to Delft or Hoorn, getting these loans repaid would take time. Unofﬁcial methods were quicker: magistrates seem to have gone directly to the ‘particular receivers’ who now oversaw the farming out and collecting of the gemene middelen.⁷⁸ These men always lived in their largest town of their district, and were usually burghers of the town. This procedure was not exactly regular, but the Lords States came to accept the idea that at least some local resources would go for local needs. In October 1574 Brill’s request to apply its quotas in two repartitiën to use monthly wages for its garrison companies was turned down. ⁷¹ RAZH 3.01.13, no. 21, ‘Recueil ende sommier’ of Nicolaas van der Laan’s account as Holland’s receiver-general for the year ending 31 July 1574: under ‘income’, in the subsection for ‘imposts’, some farmers of particular excises are mentioned by name. For the receiver-general and receivers-particular after 1576, Liesker and Fritschy, Gewestelijke ﬁnanciën, Holland, 33–5. ⁷² Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand, 139–41: members of the rekenkamer appointed between 1572 and 1576 included Nicolaes van der Laen of Haarlem (d. 1584), Engelbrecht Cornelisz. of Maasland (d. 1575), Cornelis Harmensz. van Naarden of Delft, Pieter van der Goes of Delft (the son and grandson of former advocates of the States), and Dirk Jorisz. de Bye (d. 1591), also of Delft. ⁷³ e.g. RSH 1574. 65: 28 August 1574. ⁷⁴ RANH, 3, no. 237, 22–4 February 1575: no payment order from Hans Colterman (receiver-general for North Holland) is valid unless co-signed ‘by the two deputies then serving’. ⁷⁵ RANH, 3, no. 235, 7 June 1573. ⁷⁶ RANH, 3, no. 236, 23 August 1574. ⁷⁷ Orange to Cornelis Joostenssoon van Zundert et al., Dordrecht, 2 September 1573, INGWVO, no. 2798, instructions for levying a weekly tax in the surrounding district to support the garrison in Geertruidenberg; RSH 1574, 61–2: 27 August 1574, Captain Macjan is to stop bothering the villagers of Nieuwekerk for his weekly loans, for the receiver-general will not repay such loans; RSH 1574, 82: 9 September 1574, ‘Captain Vlieger is to stop molesting the villagers of Waddinxveen and Moordrecht for his week money’; RANH 3, no. 237, 3 February 1575, Colterman is instructed to honour Monnickendam’s claim concerning the loan for Mathys van Noir’s company; RANH 3, no. 237, 20 February 1575, Colterman is to pay weekly wages for Johan Robart’s company in Enkhuizen. ⁷⁸ e.g. RSH 1575, 78–9: 19 February 1575, for the gemene middelen of January, the ﬁve receivers have collected only 23,799 pounds.

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But two repartitiën decreed by the States for the following year were to ‘pay the soldiers’, with each city presumably taking care of its own garrison. In May 1575, when four companies were thought necessary for protection of the small town of Gorinchem, Delft and Rotterdam were instructed to pay monthly wages for these companies, ‘just as if they were quartered in your own cities’.⁷⁹ Clearly, there were strong pressures for disposing of revenues locally. To put matters a bit differently, if town magistrates could be trusted to extract repartitie loans from their burghers, they could also be trusted to ensure that capital from the loans would be used to pay the local garrison. In effect, Holland was embarked on a second phase of ﬁscal devolution, in which responsibility for the disposal of ready money was shifting from the province to the towns. ⁷⁹ RSH 1574, 122–3: 2 October 1574; RAZH, 3.01.21, ‘Recueil’ of Jacob Muys’s ﬁrst account as receiver-general, repartitiën for 45,000 (March) and 10,000 (May); RSH 1575, 263: 7 May 1575.

6 Holland’s Rulers: The Urban Oligarchies Holland’s craft guilds, unlike those of Flanders and Brabant, generally did not participate in choosing town magistrates. Instead each town—and many villages¹—had a body of councillors usually known as the vroedschap, whose members were co-opted and chosen for life.² This oligarchical form of town government, dating in most places from the ﬁrst half of the ﬁfteenth century, had been promoted by Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy (d. 1466).³ Every town also had a college of burgomasters (usually four) and a board of aldermen or schepenen (usually seven); the latter, with the government-appointed sheriff, made up the town court. The degree to which the permanent council controlled the selection and the activities of these annually chosen magistrates varied considerably. Also, though members of the vroedschap were thought to embody the ‘wealth’ (rijkdom) of the town, there was never an exact correspondence between wealth and ofﬁce-holding.⁴ Rather, as elsewhere in Europe,⁵ men of wealth and standing who aspired to public honours formed a political elite within a larger socio-economic elite. As was likewise true elsewhere, ⁶ the more prestigious magistrate families formed part of a provincial elite, with marriage connections to the nobility, and to ofﬁcials at the Court of Holland. Many long-term ofﬁce-holders gave up their posts at the beginning of the Revolt, or were forced out, but others remained to help govern their towns under the new regime. In Gouda, nearly half the members of the vroedschap either ¹ The best study of how a Holland village worked (albeit for a slightly later period) is A. T. Van Deursen, Een dorp in het polder: Graft in de zeventiende eeuw (Amsterdam: B. Bakker, 1994). ² For a collective biographies of Amsterdam’s patriciate, J. E. Elias, De Vroedschap van Amsterdam, 1578–1795 (2 vols., repr. Amsterdam: N. Israel, 1963). ³ H. P. H. Jansen, ‘Holland en Zeeland, 1433–1482’, in AGN, vol. iv (Amsterdam, 1980), 271–91, here 280. Philip began his reign in Holland as chief of the Kabeljauw (Codﬁsh) faction in a long civil war against the Hoeken (Hooks): Michiel Brokken, Het Onstaan van de Hoekse en Kabeljauwse Twisten (Zutphen: Walburg, 1982). ⁴ For example, when Leiden imposed a forced loan in 1584, only ten of twenty-two men assessed for ﬁfty pounds or more are identiﬁed as town magistrates or provincial ofﬁcials: Stadsarchief Leiden, no. 10159. ⁵ E.g. Gene Brucker, The Civic World of Renaissance Florence (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977), 270: ‘The correlation between wealth and political status was not very close.’ ⁶ Heinz Schilling, ‘The Rise of Early Modern Burgher Elites during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in his Religion, Political Culture and the Emergence of Early Modern Society (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 135–88.

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ﬂed to Catholic-royalist strongholds, or were expelled from ofﬁce. In Leiden, only twenty-ﬁve of sixty-nine families that had men serving in the vroedschap before 1572 were still represented after 1574. In Amsterdam, only one member of the old vroedschap remained in ofﬁce after the Alteratie of 2 May 1578—the bloodless coup by which the city passed under Orange’s banner.⁷ Men newly chosen to the vroedschap in rebel cities were more sympathetic to Protestantism than their predecessors, though not to the degree one might think.⁸ All in all, the change in personnel is less impressive than the continuity in what ofﬁce-holding meant. New or old, magistrates were unwilling to suffer any diminution of their prerogatives. For the tumultuous early years of the Revolt, this chapter examines relations between the town corporations and the various groups or individuals that were in a position to challenge their authority.

T H E C L E RG Y O F T H E R E F O R M E D C H U RC H In medieval political theology, Church and state were dual aspects of the corpus Christianum, the Christian body politic; all persons born of Christian parents were members of the universal Church as well as subjects of the local ruler. Instead of shattering this pattern of thought, the Protestant Reformation created multiple versions of it, through new forms of State–Church collaboration.⁹ In Germany, the public law of the empire granted Lutheran as well as Catholic governments the right to determine, within their boundaries, which religion was to practised by all Christians; dissenters had only the right to relocate to another territory (Peace of Augsburg, 1555). Though Reformed Protestantism was excluded from this agreement, there were Calvinist states whose universities or theological academies trained future leaders of Holland’s Reformed Church, both within the empire (Emden, capital of East Friesland, and Heidelberg, capital of the elector palatine, Frederick III) and beyond its borders (the Geneva of John Calvin, and the Zurich of Heinrich Bullinger).¹⁰ That Reformed teaching would play a leading role in the new order was clear from the outset, for Reformed Christians were numerous and easily identiﬁable ⁷ Hibben, Gouda in the Revolt, 72; Stirling Lamet, ‘The Vroedschap of Leiden, 1550–1600: The Impact of Tradition and Change on the Governing Elite of a Dutch City’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 12 (1981), 15–41, here 19. Amsterdam’s Alteratie is discussed in Chapter 9. ⁸ Lamet, ‘The Vroedschap of Leiden’, 25–6: of thirty-two new members of the vroedschap appointed between 1572 and 1574, nine are known to have been Protestant, or of Protestant leanings. ⁹ Many scholars—especially those working on Germany during the era of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations—use the term ‘confessionalization’ to describe these new forms of collaboration: Heinz Schilling, ‘Confessional Europe’, in T. A. Brady, H. A. Oberman, and J. D. Tracy, eds.) Handbook of European History, 1400–1600, (Leiden: Brill, 1995 ii. 641–82. ¹⁰ Differences between Bullinger (the successor of Huldrych Zwingli, d. 1531) and Calvin would play a role in later disputes within the Dutch Reformed Church (see Chapter 9).

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among partisans of the Revolt. In August 1572, William of Orange, though of Lutheran sympathies himself, commissioned a well-known Calvinist preacher to represent him in discussions with the States of Holland concerning religious affairs.¹¹ But giving pre-eminence to Reformed theology did not mean that all who swore allegiance to Orange would be expected to adopt the new creed. One could ﬁnd, in the Europe of the 1570s, exceptions to the rule of confessional uniformity. Some German free imperial cities had a special legal regime that secured the rights of a Catholic minority alongside a Lutheran majority. In the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, Catholic nobles joined their Protestant peers in preventing the episcopal courts from conducting trials for heresy. No one could say whether such arrangements were possible in the provinces that rebelled against Philip II. But many leading Orangists favoured a religious peace, ¹² and Orange himself ordered his largely Protestant soldiers not to molest Catholics or their churches. But men like Lumey could not imagine giving idolatry any quarter; having seized Brill, his Beggars plundered the churches, and rounded up seventeen priests for torture and execution.¹³ If Delft and other towns made freedom of worship for Catholics a condition of their adhesion to the Revolt, iconoclastic soldiers and burghers refused to abide public ambivalence about which was the true religion. On his arrival in Delft, Orange insisted that some Catholic churches be reopened, making this city a temporary haven for Catholic clergy who remained in Holland. But in April 1573, following the defeat of rebel forces before Haarlem, ardent Calvinists sought to appease the evident wrath of God by smashing the ‘idols’ once more; the town council closed the churches, for good.¹⁴ At about this time, the mass was prohibited throughout Holland, by order of the States.¹⁵ Holland Catholics were suddenly thrust into the status of a minority, whether they were in fact a minority or not. Many who could afford to do so responded by taking leave of their country. When Fernando de Toledo pulled his men out of The Hague in July 1572, in keeping with Alba’s orders, he was followed by 700 wagons carrying 4,000 ‘clerics, gentlemen, ladies, and burghers of his ¹¹ Petrus Dathenus, a native of Ieper in Flanders, was then in exile, at the court of Elector Frederick III in the Palatinate: Orange to Dathenus, from his camp near Neeritter, 8 August 1572, INGWVO, no. 12155. For Dathenus see the brief sketch in Biographisch anthologisch en critisch woordenboek der Nederduitsche dichters, on-line at www.dbnl.org/text/wits004/biog02. ¹² On Augsburg, Paul Warmbr¨unn, Zwei Konfessionen in einer Stadt (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1983); cf. Peter Wallace, Communities and Conﬂict in Early Modern Colmar, 1575–1730 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1995). For Poland-Lithuania, Tazbir, A State without Stakes. On the Netherlands, Woltjer, ‘De Vredemakers’. ¹³ Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 367; Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, i. 465. ¹⁴ For Delft, Orange to the inhabitants of Delft and troops stationed there, Delft, 23 April 1573, INGWVO, no. 6903; Bor, Oorsprong, vi. 380–1, 386, 389; and Van Dijk, ‘Bedreigd Delft’, For Haarlem, Spaans, Haarlem na de Reformatie, 55–60. Cf. Van Nierop, Verraad, 154; Swart, Willem van Oranje, 43–4. ¹⁵ For the ban on the mass, Duke, Reformation and Revolt, 207, citing Wouter Jacobsz., Dagboek van Broeder Wouter Jacobsz. (Gualtherus Jacobi Masius) Prior van Stein: Amsterdam 1572–1578 en Montfoort 1578–1579, ed. I. H. van Eeghen (2 vols, Groningen: J. B. Wolters, 1959–60), i. 250.

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majesty’s party’. Holland’s administrative capital was a natural stronghold of loyalty ‘to the faith and to his majesty’; among nine councillors of the Court of Holland, only one agreed to serve on the successor body, known as the Provincial Council.¹⁶ Loyalist Catholics who ﬂed Holland and Zeeland at this time have been little studied,¹⁷ but surviving records for exile properties annotated by the new government in the fertile Maas delta read like a roster of notables for the old regime.¹⁸ Deprived of their natural leaders, and no doubt deeply demoralized, Catholics offered little resistance to the new order.¹⁹ Disestablishing Catholicism meant privileging ‘the Reformed evangelical religion’, albeit not in the usual sense of a religious establishment.²⁰ All churches not torn down or converted to secular use were reserved for the exclusive use of the Reformed Church; all other property formerly belonging to the Catholic Church was to be administered by the Lords States, for the support of erstwhile monks and nuns, for the salaries of Reformed dominees who replaced Catholic pastors, and for the common cause. The new Church, led by a cadre of dedicated dominees and lay elders (many of them returning exiles), was strongly represented among ardent patriots in the towns. Across Holland as a whole, however, full members of the Reformed Church were thought to be no more than 10 per cent of the population as late as 1587. In fact, serious Calvinists were not looking to build a ‘people’s Church’ that would include all believers; the true Church must be a veritable communion of saints, in which none but men and women of spotless reputation were admitted to the Lord’s table.²¹ Notwithstanding its minority status, the Reformed Church, as the ‘public Church’ of the new government, claimed a monopoly on any and all public expressions of religious belief. In 1575, the ﬁrst draft of Orange’s Instructions as ‘Head and High Authority’ charged him to ‘cause the exercise of the Catholic religion to cease.’ Because of the prince’s objections, the ¹⁶ Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand, 134–41; in the rekenkamer, all the auditors were new after 1572. Most local judicial ofﬁcers—town sheriffs and rural bailiffs—also chose the path of exile: Van Nierop, Van ridders tot regenten, 203. ¹⁷ For the 40,000 to 70,000 mainly Protestant refugees who ﬂed the southern Low Countries, J. G. C. A. Briels, Zuidnederlandse Immigratie, 1572–1630 (Haarlem: Fibula van Dishoek, 1978). ¹⁸ RAZH, 3.01.28, no. 4542, ﬁrst and last account of Cornelis van Moerkerke for sequestered church property and annotated secular property in Beijerland and Strijen, April 1573–April 1575, and no. 4543, account of Willem Dionysi for annotated property in Zwijnrecht and Ridderkerk, 9 January–31 October 1573. ¹⁹ The reaction of Catholics in France was very different: J. J. Woltjer, ‘Violence during the Wars of Religion in France and the Netherlands: A Comparison’, Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, 76 (1996), 26–45. ²⁰ For this paragraph, save as noted, Tracy, ‘Begrenzter Dissens: Die rechtliche Stellung nichtcalvinistischer Christen in Holland, 1572–1591’, in Hans-J¨urgen Goertz and James Stayer, Radikalit¨at und Dissent im 16en Jahrhundert/Radicalism and Dissent in the Sixteenth Century = Zeitschrift f¨ur historische Forschung, 27 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2002), 221–32. ²¹ The notion of full membership excludes those called ‘hearers’ who attended services, but were not communicants, because they had not submitted themselves to the moral scrutiny of the elders. One of the reasons for Calvinist selectiveness was competition with Mennonite congregations, whose strict discipline was attracting some converts from the Calvinist camp.

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wording was changed, so as to have him ban ‘religions contrary to the gospel’.²² In practice, Lutherans and Mennonites had freedom to worship in private, so long as their houses of prayer did not resemble churches. Catholics had freedom of conscience—no small thing in sixteenth-century Europe—but no freedom of worship; their house-churches were periodically raided by local sheriffs. The process by which Reformed dominees replaced Catholic priests in the active churches of the country left important questions unanswered. In particular, by whom were the new preachers to be appointed, and to whom were they answerable? In the Calvinist conception of an independent church polity—accepted by many dominees, but, importantly, not by all—decisions respecting the Church had to be made only by church ofﬁcials, not by the civil government. Town magistrates tended to see things differently. In their view, a church chartered by the civil government, and paid for from public funds, had to be subject to public authority.²³ In the chaotic early years of the Revolt tension along these lines was not an issue. It will, however, come up for discussion in subsequent chapters.

H O L L A N D ’ S V I L L AG E S Holland’s villages, with no voice in the States, had often complained about how provincial affairs were managed in the interest of the towns.²⁴ During the continuing military crisis of the years 1572—6, village magistrates had new grounds for complaint. That a rural area had to join in the defence of its main town was hardly a new idea, but Orange and his backers were unusually thorough in exploiting the countryside for protection of their urban strongholds. As has been noted, their best tactic for holding off Spanish sieges was to ﬂood the surrounding ﬁelds, sometimes at a great distance; possibly as much as half of Holland’s farm and pasture lands were under water at some point between 1572 and 1576, for reasons not related to the weather. There were also demands for rural capital, and rural labour. Town militia companies—those rock-ribbed defenders of urban privilege—got orders for getting peasants to bring in their grain, or taking bells from their church towers, to be melted by cannon-founders.²⁵ Throughout Holland, new taxes were levied on the countryside to help pay for improvements in town fortiﬁcations; at Schoonhoven, the town militia companies were called ²² RSH 1575, 297: 17/18 May 1575, the original proposal: ‘Ende aangaande de Religie, sal sijne Excellentie admitteren ende handhouden de oeffeninge van de Gereformeerde Evangelische Religie, doende surcheeren ende ophouden de exercitie van de Roomsche Religie.’ This wording is retained in a revision of 20 July 1575 (523), but a resolution of 30 July 1575 (542) states that if His Excellency ‘persists in objecting’, the wording may be changed to read, ‘doende surcheren de Religien den evangelio contrariende’. For the ﬁnal text, with this latter wording, RSH 1576, 67: 28 April 1576. ²³ For conﬂicts of this kind, see Chapter 9. ²⁴ See Chapter 3. ²⁵ Orange to the militia companies of Delft, 16 December 1572 (have farmers bring in their grain), 20 January 1573 (collect village church bells, save for one tocsin bell [slagklok], for cannon-founding), INGWVO, nos. 2811, 2812.

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upon for assistance in getting peasants to pay.²⁶ Levies of peasant labour to work on town fortiﬁcations were perhaps even more of a burden, until, following the relief of Leiden, Orange appointed a ‘colonel of pioneers’ whose task was to recruit volunteers for tasks of this kind.²⁷ Protests against these policies were heard now and then, especially from the Noorderkwartier.²⁸ At the same time, tenant-farmers and smallholders were called upon to take arms to help drive out the Spaniards, and they often did. When Rodrigo de Zapata made his march from The Hague to Amsterdam and back again (July 1572), he was twice beset by large companies of armed peasants.²⁹ But in land divided by war, rural communities often could not afford to take sides. Instead, they followed the traditional practice of buying protection from commanders on both sides.³⁰ Though the States sometimes tried to prohibit local ‘safeguards’ of this kind,³¹ the deputies more commonly endorsed them,³² provided that villagers recognized the authority of His Excellency.³³ The nature of this contact between rural folk and the enemy was more troublesome—especially in light of new religious differences. While ardent patriots in the towns were often full members of the Reformed Church, Calvinists were rare in many parts of the countryside. In villages where zealous Protestant nobles had imposed preachers of their own choosing, peasants made their Catholic sympathies evident by ejecting the newcomers when they could.³⁴ Thus doubts about the loyalty of the ²⁶ Orange to Nicolaas van Valckesteyn, 1 January 1573, orders for taxes in Voorne and Putten for fortiﬁcations at Brill; to Matheus Franss. van Hove, 2 February 1573, a commission to compel ambachtsheren around Delfshaven to contribute to its fortiﬁcation; to Jacob Oem van Wijnaerden and Jacob van der Does, 6 March 1573, authorization to have Rijnland villages contribute to the fortiﬁcation of Leiden; to Gerrit Aertss. et al., 5 April 1573, and then to the militia captains of Schoonhoven, 13 May 1573, authorization to have those living within the ressort of Schoonhoven contribute to its fortiﬁcation; to the magistrates of the island of Overﬂakkee, 13 June 1573, an ordinance to have inhabitants help pay for the fortiﬁcation of Brill: INGWVO, nos. 2788, 2719, 6832, 2715, 2716, and 6846. ²⁷ Orange to the magistrates and ofﬁcers of Enkhuizen, 7 February 1573, and to the magistrates of Medemblik, 20 February 1573: INGWVO, nos. 9285, 9313. Orange to Jacques le Ducq, 2 October 1574, his commission as colonel of the pioneers, INGWVO, nos. 3543, 2578. ²⁸ Magistrates of Broek op Langedijk, Warmenhuizen, Zuid-Scharwoude, and six other villages in the vicinity of Enkhuizen and Medemblik, 4 February 1573, a protest against the heavy burdens and the demands for labour; magistrates of the villages of Barsingerhorn, Nieuwe Niedorp, Schagen, and Winckel to Orange, 6 June 1573, a request not to have to contribute to the fortiﬁcation of nearby Alkmaar, INGWVO, nos. 11758, 6912. ²⁹ Orange to the dyke counts, ofﬁcers, and sheriffs of the Noorderkwartier, 29 August 1573, INGWVO, no. 9370; Mendoza, Commentaires, i. 300–8; cf. Van Nierop, Verraad, 78–9. ³⁰ For earlier private truces (sauvegardes or stillsaeten) made by nobles on either side of a war frontier, Tracy, Holland under Habsburg Rule, 85–7. ³¹ RSH 1572, 13–15: 29 November 1572; RSH 1574, 73: 3 September 1574. ³² RSH 1574, 65: 29 August 1574; RSH 1575, 282–3, 534, 713: 13 May, 28 July, 26 October 1575; RSH 1576, 69, 75, 113: 28 April, 11 May, 10 July 1576. ³³ RSH 1576, 711: 26 October 1576; cf. RANH 3, 236, 15/16 March 1575. ³⁴ Tracy, ‘Lords, Peasants, and the Introduction of Calvinist Preaching in Holland’s Noorderkwartier’, in Tracy, ed., The Law Countries in the Sixteenth Century (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); Van Nierop, Verraad, 58–61.

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country cousins came readily to the fore. In September 1574 the States revoked all existing ‘safeguards’ for Alblasserwaard (near Dordrecht), because of reports that local peasants would help Spanish companies winter in the area. In February 1574, during Chevreux’s attack at Het Kalf and Ilpendam sconces, villagers ‘helped the enemy across’ cuts in the ice that had been made at Sonoy’s orders. In July 1575, Orange reported that ‘a great number of peasants and villagers’ had helped the foe cut through a dyke and bring in ships from deep water at Gastel, a part of the bridgehead rebels were making on the south bank of the Maas.³⁵ These instances of actual collaboration were no doubt magniﬁed in the minds of anxious town-dwellers. Thus when Valdez abandoned his positions in rural Holland to set off for Maastricht (March 1574), villages and farmsteads were plundered by rebel soldiers. On 1 August of that year, because peasants were providing food and lodging to the enemy, and ‘one must assume they do so deliberately’, all peasants in Rijnland, Delﬂand, Schieland, and Ablasserwaard were commanded to bring their animals inside the walls of the nearest rebel town within eight days. Peasants who complied with the order were often maltreated at the town gates by garrison troops.³⁶ When sconces were built in the countryside, to guard communication between the towns, peasants were subjected to further exactions, like ad hoc land taxes for soldiers and sconce-building, occasionally at very high rates.³⁷ Some captains pestered village leaders for their weekly loans, even though the States did not recognize loan claims submitted by rural magistrates.³⁸ Others threw villagers in jail, or extorted money from them to make up for the fact that their wages were in arrears.³⁹ Rural labour was regularly pressed into service for building sconces or for cutting dykes to ﬂood the countryside, as when, during the siege of Leiden, eighty turf-ships were detained at the Gouda sluice, until ﬁfty men agreed to bring their spades and their ﬂat-bottomed boats to Rotterdam, to serve at His Excellency’s orders.⁴⁰ Peasants surely had similar complaints against the demands of Spanish soldiers, but the Catholicism of the Spaniards counted ³⁵ RSH 1574, 75–6, 220: 4 September, 2 December 1574; Bor, Oorsprong, vii. 488; RSH 1575, 525: 21 July 1575. ³⁶ Bor, Oorsprong, vii. 493; RSH 1574, 11: 30 July 1574; cf. RSH 1574, 82, 85, 101: 9, 11, 19 September 1574, and RSH 1575, 343, 519, 702: 31 May, 20 July, 19 October 1575. For a ﬁne discussion of wartime paranoia, directed against the countryside, Van Nierop, Verraad, chapter 8, ‘Boeren’, 150–81. ³⁷ Orange to his commanders on land and sea, 9 December 1573, INGWVO, no. 6915: the villages of Poortugaal, Pernis, and Rhoon are to be exempted from the obligation of billeting soldiers, provided they pay the taxes that have been imposed on them; RSH 1574, 77: 7/9 September 1574, eighteen stuivers (0.9 pounds) per morgen (the rate for the pre-1572 provincial land tax was seven stuivers); cf. RSH 1574, 158, 224–5, 236–41: 26 October, 4, 10 December 1574, and RSH 1575, 104–5: 28 February 1575. ³⁸ RSH 1574, 61–2, 82–3: 27 August, 9 September 1574. ³⁹ RSH 1574, 176: 18 October 1574 ( Texel); RSH 1575, 204: 21 March 1575 (Lekkerkerk). ⁴⁰ RSH 1574, 60: 26 August 1574; cf. RSH 1574, 65, 68: 29 August, 1 September 1574; RSH 1575, 684: 8 October 1575; and RSH 1576, 4–5, 7–8: 10, 28 February 1576.

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for something, and the king also had a propaganda advantage. While rebel commanders repeatedly ﬂooded the countryside, despite local opposition, his Catholic Majesty rejected proposals to subdue Holland by bringing the country under water: this would be ‘cruel’ to his vassals, despite their faults.⁴¹ Was the countryside overburdened, in areas controlled by the States? The question is no easier to answer for these years than for the Habsburg period. In South Holland, the college of nobles, in its traditional role as the protector of rural interests, presented Orange with a list of complaints against attempts by the towns ‘to deprive the countryside of its ancient freedoms, customs, and trades’ (July 1574). His Excellency replied that one must have patience in time of war, and not fall into a ‘contention’ between the countryside and the towns.⁴² In the Noorderkwartier, villages that approximated the size and organizational capacity of towns faced off against towns that were not much larger in population. The best way to even things out was to gain voting rights in the new States of North Holland; Purmerend, which had a wall to back its claim to urban status, won Orange’s permission to send deputies to all meetings of the Noorderkwartier cities.⁴³ In March 1574, deputies from West Friesland—ﬁve districts at the northern tip of the Noorderkwartier, near Enkhuizen—petitioned His Excellency for the right to name a total of six deputies to the States of North Holland. Their claim was that the Noorderkwartier’s rural areas paid ‘two-thirds of the taxes’ (in addition to land-taxes collected only in the countryside, they were subject to the same excises as the towns). Moreover, while the towns could use half the excise receipts for their own fortiﬁcation, village lands were ‘outside the defensive perimeter’ (buiten defentie), and thus exposed to enemy attack; thus while urban commerce ﬂourished the countryside was being ruined. Commissioners named by Orange, having heard both sides, agreed with the towns. ⁴⁴ Grootebroek, the largest village or rural town in West Friesland, did not give up; deputies sent south of the IJ won recognition for Grootebroek as a city from the States there (March 1575). Accordingly, Orange ‘earnestly entreated’ the States of North Holland to accept a deputy from Grootebroek. They did for a time, but this effort at broader representation was soon squelched by the ⁴¹ For debate about Philip’s letter of 22 October 1574, and supplementary references conﬁrming its tenor, Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 161, and 300–1 n. 44, and Grand Strategy of Philip II, 136–8. The propaganda value of this policy may be inferred from its treatment by Mendoza, Commentaires, ii. 285–6 (the king’s letter), and 272–4 (quoting a report from Valdez (September 1574) in which the author claims to have seen an autograph letter of Orange to Marnix, countermanding his order to cut through the Maas dyke, because the States have decided that the land, once ﬂooded, can never be recovered). ⁴² Cf. Oorsprong, vii. 571–2; discussed by Van Nierop, Van ridders tot regenten, 216. ⁴³ Orange to the magistrates of Purmerend, 2 July 1573, INGWVO, no. 11219; cf. Prologue to Part I, n. 32. ⁴⁴ The deputies of Drechterland and four other districts in West Friesland to Orange, March 1574, INGWVO, no. 11125; Diederik Aten, ‘Als het gewelt comt . . . ’: Politiek en economie in Holland benoorden het IJ 1500–1800 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1995), 287–94; Bor, Oorsprong, viii. 659–60; Bor puts the West Frisian petition in 1575, but I follow Aten’s dating.

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determined opposition of Grootebroek’s rival, Enkhuizen. The countryside was not to be allowed to break into the charmed circle of urban power.⁴⁵

C I V I C M I L I T I A C O M PA N I E S Within the walls of the towns, the only social group possibly strong enough to challenge the oligarchy was formed by the solid burghers who occupied the next rung of the social ladder. As town citizens—burghers in the proper sense⁴⁶—they manned the civic militia companies, making up perhaps 10 per cent of the adult male population.⁴⁷ Though many of them were masters of their respective crafts, they represented a wide occupational diversity. What they had in common was a ﬁerce loyalty to the ‘body of the city’; they would not willingly suffer any abridgement of town privileges, or see burgher set against burgher. In fact, because of their notorious refusal to ﬁre on fellow-townsmen during the iconoclastic riots, the militia companies were disarmed by Boussu (June 1567), as one of his ﬁrst acts as Holland’s new stadtholder. Accordingly, in the spring and summer of 1572, militiamen joined forces with the Beggars in some towns, and in others abetted their ultimate triumph by refusing to intervene. Once their privileges were restored by the new government,⁴⁸ the companies gave stalwart service to the Revolt, as in Haarlem, where they helped prevent a pro-Spanish coup, or at Leiden, where they helped ﬁght off Valdez and his siege army for seven long months. William of Orange sought to involve representatives of the militia representatives in provincial decision-making. But if Orange thought that the militiamen he summoned to the States (June 1574) would back him in giving priority to a ﬁeld army, he was mistaken. When magistrate-deputies voted to concentrate Holland’s scarce resources on the defence of the towns, they were doing exactly as the militia companies back home would have wished. There is no evidence that the militia companies ever intended a challenge to the power of the oligarchy, except insofar as magistrates collaborated in the persecution of fellow-burghers, or showed a faint heart in support of the Revolt. Magistrates were no less determined after 1572 than before to guard the ⁴⁵ Orange to the magistrates and inhabitants of Grootebroek, 1 June 1573, INGWVO, no. 6807; magistrates of Enkhuizen to Orange, 6 June 1573, INGWVO, no. 11296: a request that ‘in light of the dangerous times’, the annual hearing of accounts for het grootslag, traditionally held in the village of Bovenkarspel by the burgomasters of Enkhuizen and Grootebroek, now be held in Enkhuizen instead; RSH 1575, 137, 176, 183: 10, 22, 26 March 1575, and RANH 22 April 1577. ⁴⁶ To be a poorter, with full rights of citizenship, one had to be born of citizen parents, or pay a hefty fee. ⁴⁷ For this paragraph, Grayson, ‘Civic Militia’, and Paul Knevel, Burgers in het geweer: De schutterijen in Holland, 1550–1700 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1994), especially chapter 2, ‘Tussen beeldenstormers en Geuzen’, 62–91. ⁴⁸ Orange to the vroedschap of Leiden, 14 June 1572, INGWVO, no. 10577, a memorandum on restoration of the militia companies, and transfer of the main churches to the Reformed.

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economic interests and the special privileges of their town. Dordrecht protected its ‘staple right’, while Enkhuizen claimed the right to collect ‘stake money’ (paalgeld)—a fee for upkeep of the navigable channels through the Zuider Zee that had hitherto been collected by Amsterdam—and Delft made sure that The Hague would not be counted as a city, meaning it could have breweries.⁴⁹ If anything, newly appointed ofﬁce-holders were even more tied to urban interests than their predecessors; there are some indications to suggest they were more likely to be active in trade, and less likely to have extensive investments in land.⁵⁰ Individually, these men applied some of their wealth to the beneﬁt of a government desperate for credit, in the form of weekly loans to garrison captains, or repartitie loans for military needs beyond the walls. Collectively, they stood for a rijkdom and a city treasury whose back-up guarantees encouraged other burghers to extend credit to the government. Thus if these men on occasion opposed His Excellency’s will—as when they allowed gemene middelen receipts to go directly into the hands of garrison captains—one has to presume that the men of the militia companies approved of their actions.

T H E LO R D S S TAT E S By the terms of what was called the Union of Dordrecht (March 1576), the States of Holland and Zeeland recognized His Excellency ‘as our sovereign head’, and pledged to ‘obey his commands without subjecting them to deliberation’.⁵¹ In fact, Orange did not exercise sovereignty. While he resided in Holland the States took no important action without getting his approval, but they had little hestitation about blocking decisions of which they disapproved.⁵² In virtually every sphere of activity the States now assumed responsibilities that had formerly been reserved to the central government. Holland before the Revolt occasionally sent emissaries abroad, but from 1572 to 1576 it had a foreign policy. The pre1572 States had at times mobilized war ﬂeets; now Holland had an admiralty, issuing letters of marque. Against abuses by the clergy of the Catholic Church the pre-Revolt States lodged protests now and then; now the Reformed Church was ⁴⁹ Pieter Schotel, ‘Strijd om de macht’, in Willem Frijhoff, Hobert Nusteling, and Marijke Spies, eds., Geschiedenis van Dordrecht van 1572 tot 1813 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1998), 17; Orange to the magistrates of Enkhuizen, 9 February 1573, INGWVO, no. 11297; Orange to the magistrates of Delft, 30 July 1574, INGWVO, no. 11766. ⁵⁰ Lamet, The Vroedschap of Leiden’, 20–1, ﬁnds, for the period 1560–1600, a gradual shift among vroedschap members from production-related occupations to service-related occupations, including merchants; cf. Tracy, ‘Premature Counter-Reformation’, 158–9, and Hibben, Gouda in the Revolt, 267. ⁵¹ RSH 1576, 28–31: 23 March 1576. ⁵² Swart, Willem van Oranje, 54–6, ‘Dualistisch Regeringsstelsel’, citing the contrary view of H. G. Koenigsberger, ‘Why did the States-General of the Netherlands Become Revolutionary in the Sixteenth Century?’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation, 2 (1982), 103–11.

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funded by the States, and under management of the States—or so the deputies thought. Before 1572 the States had commissioners of muster, to make sure mercenary companies were formed according to expectations; now their voice was decisive on strategic decisions, like whether there was to be a strike force.⁵³ Accordingly, the town councils that sent deputies to the States had a different kind of agenda. Leaving issues like the grievances of local cloth workers to the college of burgomasters or the town court, the vroedschap deliberated on questions of great moment, such as whether sovereignty over Holland should be offered to the duke of Alenc¸on (soon to become duke of Anjou) or to the queen of England.⁵⁴ In light of these greater responsibilities, it was fortunate that the States of the post-1572 era were more broadly representative of urban interests across Holland. After thirteen cities pledged their corporate credit in Orange’s hour of need (July 1572), it was harder to sustain the idea that only the six great cities should have the right of summons to the States. In South Holland, Rotterdam was the ﬁrst to demand inclusion in the States assembly, followed by Gorinchem; what was to become the deﬁnitive list of eleven cities south of the IJ with voting rights dates from 1579: the six great cities, plus Rotterdam, Gorinchem, Brill, Schiedam, and Schoonhoven. In Holland north of the IJ, cut off by the siege of Haarlem, Sonoy summoned ﬁve other towns to send deputies to Hoorn in February 1573: Alkmaar, Edam, Enkhuizen, Medemblik, and Monnickendam; Purmerend was added to the list a few months later. These seven towns made up the States of North Holland; when they met in conjunction with their confreres south of the IJ, as they regularly did after 1576, the full States of Holland had nineteen votes, eighteen for the towns, and one for the college of nobles. Even though the eighteen towns often sent different men as deputies to successive sessions or dagvaarten, continuity was not a problem. The advocate of the States, with the receiver-general, formed the nucleus of a permanent bureaucracy, normally resident in Delft (1572–6), and thereafter in The Hague. Moreover, there was a small core group of deputies who came again and again. Of the ten dagvaarten held during 1575, Job Pietersz. of Gorinchem (the only man sent by his town this year) attended all ten, while Meester Paulus Vos of Leiden attended nine, as did two members of the college of nobles, Floris van Pallandt, count of Culemborg, and Otto van Egmond, lord of Kenenburg. Those who attended at least ﬁve meetings included Adriaan Dirksz. van der Heuvel and Dirk Jansz. of Rotterdam, Jacob Pauli of Dordrecht (the town secretary), Abraham van Almonde of Delft, and Adriaan Cornelisz. van Swieten, a nobleman who served for a time as Gouda’s military governor.⁵⁵ ⁵³ Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand, chapter III, ‘Taken van de Staten in de landsheerlijke periode’, 65–86, and chapter 6, ‘Taken van de Staten tijdens de Opstand’, 145–78. ⁵⁴ Lamet, ‘The Vroedschap of Leiden’, 23–4. ⁵⁵ 1575 is the ﬁrst post-Revolt year for which RSH gives attendance lists. For information on these men, see the indices of Van Nierop, Van ridders tot regenten; Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand; and Hibben, Gouda in the Revolt.

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To keep affairs in hand between dagvaarten, the States of North Holland had, from 1573, ‘deputed councillors’ (gedeputeerde raden), a rotating college of at lest two deputies who kept residence in Hoorn; South Holland had ‘deputed councillors’ from about the same time.⁵⁶ In May 1575 deputies took up a proposal for a permanent ‘territorial council’ for the States of both provinces, with seven representatives from Zeeland, seven from the Noorderkwartier, and, for Holland south of the IJ, ten deputies from the towns, and four from the college of nobles. South Holland agreed on a slate of fourteen prospective councillors, but both Zeeland and the Noorderkwartier signalled a lack of interest.⁵⁷ This was not the outcome His Excellency had hoped to see. In frustration, he asked the States of Holland to take over ‘the governance of affairs’ (‘het bewint van zaken’) but with a crucial condition: deputies from the towns ‘shall have full authority, without contradiction, including the authority to levy a tax of 50,000 pounds as often as they like, without having to seek the consent of magistrates and vroedschappen, so as to gain the time that is lost in seeking such consent’.⁵⁸ What Orange wanted was governance not by eighteen bodies of urban magistrates, but by one body of provincial magistrates. In fact, the key question was whether the towns would grant ‘full authority’ in ﬁnancial matters to their deputies, meeting collectively as the States of Holland.⁵⁹ The post-1572 States did resolve on one occasion that deputies should have the freedom to decide matters as they came up at the dagvaart, but whether this resolution applied to ﬁnancial matters was not entirely clear. In the course of negotiations leading up to the 1576 Union of Dordrecht, the towns showed themselves unwilling to relinquish the habit of holding their deputies to strict mandates on issues of taxation.⁶⁰ In other words, what the States represented in ﬁnancial matters was not so much the interest of the whole province as the several interests of the eighteen towns with voting rights. The college of nobles might be expected to take a wider view. But though the nobles were indeed not bound by a narrowly urban perspective,⁶¹ the ‘interest’ of Holland they stood for involved a practical sense of how things worked best. It is thus particularly ⁵⁶ Orange to the deputed councillors of the Noorderkwartier, 10 February 1573, and to the deputed councillors of [South] Holland, Leiden, 12 June 1573, INGWVO, nos. 3285, 9399. ⁵⁷ Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand, 187; RSH 1575, 300–3, 536–7, 553–4: 19 May, 29 July, 9 August 1575. ⁵⁸ RSH 19 September 1575. ⁵⁹ The best discussion remains that of H. G. Koenigsberger, ‘The Powers of Deputies in Sixteenth Century Assemblies’, in his Estates and Revolutions, 176–210. At one end of a scale of possibilities, members of Parliament in England had plena potestas to decide issues as they saw ﬁt; at the other end, deputies to the Cortes of Castile and the provincial States of the Low Countries were bound by the mandates of their principals. ⁶⁰ Koenigsberger, ‘The Powers of Deputies’, 199–200, citing Bor. Town councils typically gave their deputies arguments that could be used in trying to get quotas reduced: e.g. Stadsarchief Leiden, Inventaris Van Manen, no. 44, ‘Geregtsdagboek A’, ‘Vroedschapsresoluties’, 3 November 1574, 17 November 1574. ⁶¹ Van Nierop, Van ridders tot regenten, 215–20.

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instructive that in debates about how spending from the gemene middelen should be controlled, the college of nobles took the side of the towns; in their view, if a city paid its own garrison, the money should simply be deducted, after the fact, from the sum for which the particular receiver in question was responsible.⁶² Orange was right to say, in reference to the States General a few years later, that the deputies gathered together not as councillors having authority to consider the common weal, but as advocates of their provinces and their towns. Yet the argument for centralization, compelling though it may seem in abstract terms, did not ﬁt this war. From 1572 to 1576, only the towns in Holland could be defended, and only by their individual garrisons—men who would not ﬁght unless paid more or less regularly. In these circumstances, a regime in which town magistrates gradually assumed control of key revenues was, as Holland’s nobles seem to have thought, the most effective form of government.

H I S E XC E L L E N C Y As a sovereign prince, Orange was the centre of his own court.⁶³ But a prince of Orange did not have the weight to be regarded as sovereign in the Low Countries, even if only for two provinces. Already in September 1572 Orange sent Boisot to England, offering to recognize Elizabeth I as protector of Holland and Zeeland if she would agree to send troops for the duration of the war; but the queen had no wish to antagonize Spain. In the autumn of 1575, after the failure of peace negotiations, the States thought it was time to renounce Holland’s allegiance to Philip II, but would not do so without ﬁrst ﬁnding another sovereign.⁶⁴ Orange would have preferred to open negotiations with the duke of Alenc¸on, King Henri III’s younger brother, but the prince’s pro-French orientation was opposed by key advisers, including Boisot, Floris van Pallandt, count of Culemborg, and Meester Paulus Buys, advocate of the States of Holland. Hence the States sent Marnix and Buys to England (January 1576), only to learn that Elizabeth was no more interested in sovereignty than a protectorate.⁶⁵ Upon his arrival in Holland, Orange chose, from names submitted by the States, three nobles and seven burghers for His Excellency’s Council (Raad nevens sijne Excellentie); the council met sometimes as a body, and sometimes in separate groups devoted to matters of state, ﬁnance, and the admiralty.⁶⁶ If the prince’s key advisers from south of the great rivers were strong Calvinists, like Marnix, or Jean Tafﬁn, his chaplain, the Hollanders he worked with most closely were men ⁶² RSH 18 March 1575. ⁶³ Marie-Ange Delen, Hof en Hofcultuur rondom Willem van Oranje (1533–1584) (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2001). ⁶⁴ RSH 1575, 692–3: 13 October 1575. ⁶⁵ Swart, Willem van Oranje, 54–6, 75–7, 102–4. ⁶⁶ Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand,188–9.

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Fig. 4 William, Prince of Orange (1533–1584), stadtholder of Holland and Zeeland, 1558–1568, 1572–1584. Christoffel van Sichem, ‘William of Orange’, in Emmanuel van Meteren, Belgica: Historie der Nederlandsche ende haerder naburen oorlogen ende geschiedenissem (4 vols., The Hague: van Wouw, 1614), James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota Libraries.

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who shared his aversion to confessional dogmatism, like Paulus Buys (1531–94) and Arend Cornelisz. van der Mijle (c.1501–1580). Support from Orange may have helped Buys, the former town pensionary of Leiden (1531–94), become advocate of the States. Van der Mijle, from Dordrecht, was a member of the Raad nevens sijne Excellentie, and, by Orange’s choice, Buys presided in his absence. Making good use of his considerable personal charm, Orange regularly entertained, at his well-stocked table, deputies who were not part of his inner circle.⁶⁷ But good cheer did not disguise serious disagreements. During the ﬁrst siege of Leiden (January 1574), Orange could not contain his anger when the States rejected his plan to open the dykes to save the city: ‘the burghers’, he said, ‘worship their cows like idols, and will rebel if they cannot send them out to the hay this spring.’ During the second siege, Buys, in his position as advocate, helped overcome resistance among the deputies to Orange’s belief that Holland was better ﬂooded than lost to Spain. On 3 August 1574, he stood beside the Prince at Capelle aan den IJssel, overseeing the ﬁrst of sixteen cuts in the IJssel dyke.⁶⁸ For Orange and his advisers, what historians call ‘particularism’ was a problem at various levels. Not only did burgher-deputies ‘worship their cows’, North Holland and South Holland seemed to have increasingly less to do with each other, and neither of these quasi-separate provinces showed much concern for events in Zeeland. To promote the broader interests of the Revolt—and, not incidentally, to enhance his own authority—Orange put forward the idea of a union between Holland and Zeeland. Terms of the Union of Dordrecht were worked out between delegates from the two provinces during the course of 1575, and formally approved in March 1576; one difﬁcult but essential part of the agreement was that the gemene middelen would be collected throughout the territory of the Union ‘on the same footing’. The ‘States General’ of the two provinces declared that North Holland, South Holland, and Zeeland ‘shall be accounted as one body’.⁶⁹ This was a noble idea, but also an old idea; as an erstwhile member of Margaret of Parma’s Council of State, Orange knew from experience how hard it was to persuade Low Countries provinces to act as ‘one body’. In regard to ﬁnancial matters, Orange had neither the leisure nor the inclination to intervene directly, except when called on by the States to solve political problems they could not handle, like setting the quotas for each town in a repartitie. He did, however, stand for the principle that the allocation of funds should not be captive to local interests. When the States of North Holland summoned collectors to bring in their balances, they asked Sonoy to procure a ⁶⁷ For Buys and Van der Mijle, Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand, and Swart, Willem van Oranje, sub nomine; for the prince’s table, Swart, 55. ⁶⁸ Swart, Willem van Oranje, 63 (this may be the occasion to which Valdez refers in the letter cited by Mendoza, above, n. 41). ⁶⁹ RSH 1575, 245–7, 349–54, 359–62, 20 April, 2, 4 June 1575; RSH 1576, 3. 11–15, 22–31: 30 January, 13 March, 23 March 1576 (the quotes).

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letter to this effect from His Excellency, fearing they would not otherwise be obeyed. In fact, orders of this kind were frequently disregarded; in Enkhuizen, the burgomasters closed the local ofﬁce of North Holland’s receiver-general, and instructed local collectors not to deliver their receipts to provincial ofﬁcials in Hoorn.⁷⁰ In South Holland, where the towns were often cut off from one another, there was no question of having receipts brought to a central place. Instead, the issue was central oversight of local disbursements. Payment orders were issued with at least two signatures, one by a member of the States committee deputed for ﬁnance, the other, in Orange’s name, by a member of the Council of Finance, that is, the ﬁnancial section of the Raad nevens sijne Excellentie. In addition, the receiver-general was to provide the local revenue ofﬁcer with a ‘discharge’ for funds disbursed, meaning that he would not be liable for that portion of his receipts. But town magistrates were not always willing to submit to these traditional controls. One of the members of the Council of Finance was Jacob Muys van Holy (c.1540–1592), a cousin of Arend Cornelisz. van der Mijle, who had been a leading ﬁgure in Dordrecht’s adhesion to the Revolt. When his name was proposed for the post of receiver-general (October 1574), Muys did not accept appointment until the States assured him that town magistrates would no longer be allowed to spend provincial revenues without ﬁrst obtaining a discharge from the receiver-general. Yet in January 1575, about a quarter of the gemene middelen income was paid directly to local garrisons, without passing through the hands of the particular receivers who were responsible to the receiver-general. In March Muys and his colleagues on the Council of Finance sent the States a formal remonstrance: magistrates were taking money from the particular receivers and paying their garrisons directly, without beneﬁt of payment orders from the Council of Finance; this usually meant that magistrates paid soldiers as they wanted to be paid, by the week, and thus paid them too much.⁷¹ To say that magistrates in the larger towns had gained control of the gemene middelen by 1576 would be saying too much. But it does seem that Orange’s loyal partisans, Jacob Muys and the Council of Finance, were ﬁghting a rearguard action.⁷² This was a polity in which sovereignty, not quite offered to His Excellency, and not quite claimed by the States, was in practice exercised by oligarchic town corporations.

⁷⁰ RANH, 3, no. 237, 23, 26 August, 19 September 1574. ⁷¹ RSH 1574, 172–4: 1 November 1574 (a ‘discharge’ from a higher ofﬁcial absolved the collector of responsibility for the sum in question); RSH 1575, 78–82: 19 February 1575, 23,799 pounds collected by the ﬁve receivers, 7,465 paid to the garrisons; RSH 1575, 154–5, 73–7: 8 March and 18 February 1575. For Jacob Muys, Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand, sub nomine. ⁷² Muys’s subsequent complaints against the States (and theirs against him) are discussed in Chapter 8.

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PART I I I H O L L A N D A N D T H E ‘ C LO S E R U N I O N ’ , J U LY 1 5 7 6 – D E C E M B E R 1582

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Prologue: The States General at War with Spain On the very day that Zierikzee surrendered (2 July 1576) Mondragón’s Spanish veterans mutinied, demanding two years’ back pay. There was as yet no governorgeneral to replace Requesens,¹ who had died in March 1576, and since Philip II had empowered the Council of State to rule in the interim, the mutineers set off for Brussels. On 25 July they attacked and brutally sacked the town of Aalst. In Brussels, less than twenty miles east, burghers took to the streets crying ‘Death to Spaniards!’ Under pressure, the Council of State declared the mutineers rebels, and authorized the States of Brabant to raise troops, under William of Hornes, lord of Hèze, and his deputy, Jacques de Glimes. Meanwhile, the States of Hainaut, where light-cavalry units were also in a state of mutiny, sent deputies to confer with the States of Brabant. This the Council of State would not allow, mindful of the king’s ban on joint meetings of the States assemblies. On 4 September, Glimes and some of his men broke into the meeting chamber of the Council of State; six councillors were detained, and two others (including the duke of Aerschot) put under house arrest. This coup was the work of Orange’s partisans in Brussels, with the prior knowledge of the prince himself,² and possibly the States of Holland.³ Deputies of the States of Hainaut and Brabant, meeting jointly, summoned thirteen other provinces to send their delegates to Brussels for a States General. Holland and Zeeland, rebels against the king, were not invited. But the rout of Hèze’s volunteer companies by the mutineers (at Tienen, east of Brussels) showed how badly professional soldiers were needed. Orange, still in Middelburg, agreed to send men to Flanders, where his communication with Zeeland would be assured by a seaport (Nieuwpoort) now placed in his custody. Colonel Olivier van den Tympel landed his regiment at Sas van Ghent (24 September). Aerschot (as governor of Flanders) and the ¹ Philip II had chosen his illegitimate half-brother, Don Juan of Austria, the victor of Lepanto, then in Italy, as the new governor-general, but Don Juan would not take up his duties before travelling to Spain for a personal meeting with the king. ² The godfather of Hèze, Glimes’s commander. Historians think that Aerschot, Orange’s erstwhile rival on the Council of State, was also in on the plan. ³ Gordon Grifﬁths, William of Hornes, Lord of Hèze, and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1576–1580 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1954), Janssens, Brabant in het Verweer, 291–7.

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States assemblies had misgivings about these Protestant soldiers, harbingers of religious and political upheaval,⁴ but they were warmly received by Orange’s partisans in Ghent, led by François van de Kethulle, lord of Ryhove, and Jan van Hembyze, a former magistrate. The idea of a States General of loyalist provinces had now given way to reopening the peace talks broken off at Breda a year earlier; at Orange’s insistence, Ghent was the meeting point for delegates from the States of Brabant and Hainaut, the Four Members of Flanders, and, in time, other provinces.⁵ The delegates in Ghent agreed (29 October) on a ‘Paciﬁcation’ that called for removing all Spanish troops from the Low Countries, and left all other questions, including the sensitive matter of religion, to the disposition of a future States General. In the interim, the Reformed cult would retain its monopoly in Holland and Zeeland; there was to be no infringement of the Catholic religious establishment in the other provinces, but all prosecution for heresy was to cease (would-be iconoclasts could be punished as disturbers of the peace). In Holland and Zeeland, properties of the Catholic Church seized in Holland and Zeeland were to remain conﬁscated, but towns still loyal to the king were again to be admitted to the States assemblies, and come under Orange’s government as stadtholder, following ‘Satisfaction’ of their grievances against the new order. Orange was promised payment for some 2,000,000 pounds in debts he had contracted during the war against Spain.⁶ The country’s antiSpanish mood was solidiﬁed by the terrible events of 4 November, when Spanish mutineers, joined by a few German companies, overwhelmed States General forces guarding Antwerp, and fell on one of Europe’s greatest cities; by the time the ‘Spanish Fury’ died down, several days later, some 8,000 burghers had paid with their lives for the king of Spain’s insolvency.⁷ Orange’s troops were thus urgently demanded in Brussels, where burghers remembered him as a gallant and free-spending lord of the Nassau family palace, and a determined foe of the inquisition.⁸ Van den Tympel’s regiment, ten companies, entered the city on 22 November.⁹ Meanwhile, Requesens’s successor, Don Juan of Austria, had arrived in Luxembourg (3 November). The States General, meeting now in Brussels, sent word that they would prefer some other ‘prince of the blood’ from the House of ⁴ Orange to Van Dorp and De Rycke in Ghent, from Middelburg, 3 October 1576, Gachard, Letter DLV, iii. 121–2: Van den Tempel is to withdraw his men from Ghent, unless Ghent or one of the other Four Members of Flanders wishes to keep them. ⁵ Save as noted, this paragraph is based on Parker, The Dutch Revolt. ⁶ Michel Baelde and Paul van Peteghem, ‘De Paciﬁcatie van Gent (1576)’, in Opstand en Paciﬁcatie in de Lage Landen (Ghent: Snoek-Ducaju, 1976), 1–62; Juliaan Woltjer, ‘De Vredemakers’. ⁷ For background, Parker, Spanish Road, chapter 8, ‘Mutiny’. ⁸ Swart, Willem van Oranje, 135: ‘Orange could count on the full support of the Brussels populace, who treated him like a god. In no other city was he ever so idolized; women fell on their knees as he rode through the city, and men stood watch at his palace night and day’ (my translation). ⁹ Van den Tympel to Orange, 23 November 1576, Groen, Letter 568, v. 540–1.

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Austria as their governor-general. Yet, as the king’s chosen representative, Don Juan had in his purse the precious coin of legitimacy. Orange’s partisans worked to convince the deputies in Brussels that Don Juan’s mission was to gather the means to strike back at all who had challenged the king’s authority. But the States General, unsure of their own authority, sent emissaries to Luxembourg, offering to recognize the new governor-general if he endorsed the Paciﬁcation of Ghent, and agreed to send all Spanish and other foreign troops out of the country. Don Juan professed willingness to send the foreign soldiers home, but had doubts about adhering to the Paciﬁcation. To ease his mind, the deputies in Brussels arranged publication of a statement by church ofﬁcials and Leuven theologians, asserting that the Paciﬁcation contained nothing contrary to the Catholic religion, nor to the sovereignty of the king. The way was now clear for the Perpetual Edict, signed by Don Juan on 12 February 1577. In return for his promise to send the troops home, and to uphold the Paciﬁcation, the States General agreed to raise 600,000 pounds to pay off the Spaniards, Italians, and Burgundians; to recognize Don Juan as governor-general once they were gone; to raise further sums to pay off the king’s German regiments; and to maintain the Catholic religion ‘everywhere and in perpetuity’. This was a clariﬁcation in a Catholic sense of what the Paciﬁcation of Ghent had left ambiguous.¹⁰ But did it mean only that (as the king’s moderate advisers seem to have intended) Catholics in Holland and Zeeland would have their freedom of worship restored?¹¹ Or did it mean that the Reformed cult in Holland and Zeeland must eventually be suppressed, a point on which Philip himself seems never to have wavered?¹² Anticipating the worst from negotiations with Don Juan, Holland and Zeeland had already withdrawn their deputies from the States General; on 4 January 1577 Orange asked the States assemblies of the two provinces to tell him if they were prepared to ‘ﬁght another war’ if they could keep all their traditional liberties, but had to abandon the Reformed religion.¹³ The two provinces gave their reply by formally rejecting the Perpetual Edict, asserting that approval of the Paciﬁcation ought to have been ‘simple and categorical’.¹⁴ Don Juan indeed got the Spaniards out of the country (they departed from Maastricht on 28 April), but though he was then duly recognized as governor-general, he ¹⁰ Helmut G. Koenigsberger, ‘Rule by the States General: Myths and Realities (1576–1581)’, in his Monarchies, here 273: ‘In October 1576 the States General had deliberately fudged the question of religion in Holland and Zeeland—the words they used were glisser ce point.’ ¹¹ As suggested by Woltjer, ‘De Vredemakers’ (1994 ed.), 75. Cf. Escovedo to Philip II, 6 April 1577, as citied by Bor, Oorsprong, x. 844–5: his majesty must understand there can be no peace in the Netherlands without ‘freedom of conscience’. ¹² Woltjer, ‘De Vredemakers’, 76: on 15 May 1577 a tailor of Mechelen, who had attended a Protestant sermon outside the city, was arrested for disturbing the peace; but Don Juan, then in Mechelen, insisted that he be executed as a heretic (15 June). ¹³ Bor, Oorsprong, x. 776: Orange wanted answers in writing by 9 a.m. the next morning, but the deputies ‘hesitated’, having no instructions on this point. ¹⁴ RSH 19 February 1577, as given by Bor, Oorsprong, x. 790–2. Cf. Swart, Willem van Oranje, 125.

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could not govern without coming to terms with Orange, whom he distrusted as much as Orange distrusted him, and with equal justiﬁcation. Talks between their emissaries (Geertruidenberg, 13–27 May) only made it clear that one side would not abandon the Perpetual Edict, nor the other accept it. In Brussels, with its Orangist garrison and Orangist populace, Don Juan feared for his safety. A visit to Spa by Marguerite de Valois, daughter of France’s King Henri III, gave him the pretext for a visit to Namur, where on 27 July he occupied the citadel; he made his intentions clear by a failed attempt on Antwerp a week later. Deputies from Holland and Zeeland now returned to the States General. In Brussels, Orangist sympathies were strongest among the magistracy chamber chosen by the nine ‘nations’ (groupings of guilds). Now calling itself the Committee of Eighteen, this body pressured the States General into inviting Orange to Brabant; as the prince’s barge made its way south from Antwerp, thousands of Brusselaars lined the canal to cheer him (23 September). Meanwhile, and without Orange’s knowledge, Aerschot and his allies had found another prince of the blood who would be more palatable than Don Juan as governorgeneral; accepting an offer from for the States General, Archduke Matthias, the younger brother of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II,¹⁵ crossed the Low Countries frontier on 20 October. Two days earlier, the Committee of Eighteen organized an occupation of the chambers of the States of Brabant by a mass of burghers, forcing the unwilling deputies to bestow on Orange the traditional title of protector (Ruwaard) of Brabant. In response, Aerschot set off for Ghent, where, as stadtholder of Flanders, he persuaded the Four Members to vote a resolution deploring the election of a Protestant to high ofﬁce. But Ryhove, in Brussels, got Orange’s permission for a coup in Ghent. On the night of 28 October, Hembyze and a band of burghers, marching to a roll of drums, arrested Aerschot and ﬁfty other ‘gentlemen’—deputies to the Four Members, provincial ofﬁcials, and town magistrates. From 31 October 1577, Ghent was ruled by its own Committee of Eighteen.¹⁶ Working through the States General, Orange imposed strict limits on the powers of the new governor-general, so that Matthias wielded no independent authority—in fact, he would eventually resign (spring 1581). But if Matthias did not actually govern, neither did anyone else. The anti-Spanish movement was divided among four centres of power, each with the ﬁnancial and military resources to pursue a distinct agenda. William of Orange hoped to lead the entire ‘fatherland’ in the struggle against Spanish tyranny. He had a capable entourage, and a strong base of popular support in key areas of the country: in the great cities of Brabant, ¹⁵ Philip II’s ﬁrst cousin once removed. ¹⁶ Swart, Willem van Oranje, 137–58; Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 181–6; Woltjer, ‘De Vredemakers’, 314–15.

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especially Brussels and Antwerp, in Holland and Zeeland; and in Flanders, especially in Ghent. But while Orange hoped to keep religious differences in the background, many among his ardent supporters were unwilling to suffer the practice of ‘idolatry’, and suspicious of provinces or towns where government remained in the hands of Catholics. Moreover, Brabant, the historic centre of uniﬁed government in the Low Countries, was the only province that strove to meet its obligations to the States General’s war budget. As of late 1578 neither Flanders nor the Walloon provinces (Artois, Hainaut, and Walloon Flanders) had sent any money at all to the States General’s treasurer of war.¹⁷ Holland and Zeeland, not consulted about Matthias’s appointment, never recognized him as governor-general. As the following chapters will show, the States, while not ignoring events in Brabant and Flanders, devoted most of Holland’s resources to building up the provinces’s outer defences to the east, north of the great rivers; this plan was consolidated when Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht joined together in the Union of Utrecht (January 1579; Gelderland joined a few months later). Guildsmen in Ghent, solid burghers and militiamen devoted to the privileges of their town, were Orange’s natural constituents, as they were in Brussels.¹⁸ Ghent was special: not only were many of its guildsmen favourable to Calvinist preaching, they also had bitter memories of the suppression of their privileges by Charles V. Orange played to this sentiment by persuading the States General to accept Ghent’s request for restoration of its former constitution (October 1577); in December burghers gave him a joyous welcome in Ghent. Yet by authorizing the coup of 28 October 1577, Orange unleashed a force he could not control, for what Ghent’s Committee of Eighteen represented was not so much patriotism in an Orangist sense, but their city’s historic ambition for hegemony in Flanders. Thus after Don Juan’s victory over the States General army in January 1578 (see below), militiamen and soldiers in the pay of Ghent occupied Oudenaarde, Kortrijk, Bruges, and Ieper. Meanwhile, Calvinist dominees who had been ministering to house-churches in Ghent began preaching openly; uneasy about reactions among the Catholic majority, Orange had the States General reafﬁrm the Paciﬁcation’s ban on Protestant services (2 May 1578).¹⁹ When this resolution was published in Ghent, the Council of Eighteen sanctioned an outbreak of iconoclasm; ﬁrst in Ghent, then in the cities under Ghent’s control, cloisters were pillaged, Catholic clerics were expelled, and churches were ¹⁷ Orange to the States General, 23 May 1579, cited by Swart, Willem van Oranje, 174. ¹⁸ Orange to his deputies in Ghent, Middelburg, 29 October 1576, Groen, Letter 638, v. 468–9; Swart, Willem van Oranje, 119–25, citing a letter of Orange to the States General in late January 1577. ¹⁹ Cf. Orange to the magistrates of Bruges, 14 June 1578, Gachard, Letter 643, iv. 511: we hear those of the Reformed religion are causing scandal there, let them not go beyond what is permitted by the Paciﬁcation.

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given over to the Reformed cult. To make the best of a bad situation, Orange proposed to the States General (9 June 1578) a ‘Religious Peace’, inspired by the example of German towns like Augsburg, where Catholics and Lutherans each had their own churches.²⁰ Orange got this proposal accepted by Ghent during a personal visit (December 1578), but the alliance of guildsmen and Calvinists soon reasserted itself, culminating in a second outbreak of iconoclasm (March 1579).²¹ The Walloon nobility. These were men whose families, with a core of professional civil servants, had formed the backbone of the government for generations. Many nobles and high ofﬁcials supported freedom of conscience for Protestants, possibly even freedom of worship,²² but they cared even less for Calvinist dictatorship than for Spanish tyranny. If Aerschot and his Croy kinsmen refrained from breaking with Orange, others were more restive. In Grevelingen (Gravelines) on the Flemish coast, the garrison commander, Valentin de Pardieu, lord of La Motte, declared for Don Juan in March 1578. In Brussels, Frédéric de Granvelle, lord of Champagney (the cardinal’s brother), organized a league of nobles to defend the Catholic religion; their march on the city hall provoked a riot, after which Champagney and his companions were for a time under arrest. In Hainaut, Count Philippe de Lalaing, governor of Hainaut, spoke openly of calling on the duke of Anjou, younger brother of France’s King Henri III, to come to the aid of the Catholic Netherlands. On 1 October 1578, the count’s half-brother Emmanuel-Philibert de Lalaing, lord of Montigny, seized the town of Menen, on the border between Flanders and Artois, both as a surety for his States General regiment, unpaid for several months, and as a bulwark against the further spread of heresy. In fact, seditious ideas were already percolating across the border into Artois: coalitions of guildsmen and Calvinists seized power in Douai, then (17 October) in Arras. But the militia companies of Arras, not party to the coup, struck back, placing the insurgents under arrest; their counterparts in Douai did the same. Montigny and his commanders—the Malcontents, as they were now styled—opened negotiations with the States of Artois and Hainaut. By late October, this Catholic but still anti-Spanish front was openly at war with the Calvinist towns of Flanders; each side henceforth ²⁰ On Augsburg, Warmbrünn, Zwei Konfessionen in einer Stadt. The Peace of Augsburg (1555) sanctioned the practice of Lutheranism in the Holy Roman Empire, but not Calvinism. There was no German town where Calvinist and Catholic churches coexisted, as they would have under Orange’s proposal. For a later (albeit not lasting) example in France, Gregory Hanlon, Confession and Community in Seventeenth-Century France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993). ²¹ Swart, Willem van Oranje, 152–7; Johan Decavele, ‘Gent, het ‘‘Genève’’ van Vlaanderen’, in Decavele, ed., Het Eind van een Rebelse Droom: Opstellen over het Calvinistische Bewind te Gent, 1577–1584 (Ghent: Stadsbestuur, 1984), 32–62; Janssens, Brabant in het Verweer, 353–6; Woltjer, ‘De Vredemakers’, 81–3. ²² In his essay on the moderate party, Woltjer, ‘De Vredemakers’, mentions by name two noblemen (Aerschot and Champagney), three civil servants (Morillon, Leoninus, and Hopperus), and Jan van der Linden, abbot of St Geertrude in Leuven.

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claimed for its own needs funds that might otherwise have gone to the States General.²³ These were the forces, contending against one another, that Orange vainly strove to hold together. Meanwhile, Don Juan had received good news from Spain: negotiations with the king’s bankers, together with prospects for a truce between Spain and the Ottoman Empire, permitted Philip to send three regiments of Spanish and Italian veterans back from Italy, led by Alexander Farnese prince of Parma.²⁴ By January 1578, Don Juan and Parma were skirmishing, north of Namur, against a States General army of roughly the same size, led by the count of Boussu. Seeing the enemy execute a poorly organized withdrawal toward Gembloux, Parma led a cavalry charge that routed them (31 January). Don Juan’s troops moved north to take Jodoigne and Diest, while Leuven’s burghers opened the gates to him after ejecting their Scottish garrison. With Brussels threatened from three sides, the States General relocated to Antwerp, where they accepted Orange’s proposal to add to their forces. Johann Casimir, the Calvinist count palatine of the Rhine,²⁵ was engaged to recruit 5,000 cavalry and 6,000 infantry, with the ﬁrst month’s pay to come from a subsidy of 20,000 pounds sterling granted by Elizabeth I. At the same time, to forestall any agreement between the Malcontents and the Duke of Anjou, Orange arranged for the recognition of Anjou as ‘Protector of the Liberties of the Netherlands’, in return for the 10,000 French troops he would bring to join the ﬁght against Spain. To strike before these reinforcements arrived, Don Juan attacked Boussu’s camp at Rijmenam, near Mechelen, only to see his men rush past a hastily abandoned position into withering ﬁre from Boussu’s well-prepared entrenchments (1 August 1578). To preserve his army, Don Juan fell back to a defensive position at Bouges (Hainaut), whose refortiﬁcation was nearly complete at the time of his death (10 October 1578). Anjou’s and the count palatine’s troops were now in the Low Countries, but neither commander could control his ill-paid and ill-disciplined troops. Anjou returned to France, and Johann Casimir betook himself to England, for a visit to the queen’s Calvinist councillor Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. While some of Anjou’s men joined the Malcontents in defence of the Catholic faith, the count palatine’s units either went to Ghent, to serve the cause of true religion in Flanders, or set off on a leisurely tour of pillage through Brabant.²⁶ Having nothing to fear from Anjou or the count palatine, Parma led the main body of his men north and east, aiming to secure a jumping-off point for an eventual assault on Holland and Zeeland. His initially hoped to relieve ²³ L. van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse (Brussels: Litrairie Nationale de (‘Art et d’Historic, 1933–8), ii. 98–102; Grifﬁths, William of Hornes, Lord of Hèze, chapter 5. ²⁴ The son of Margaret of Parma, Charles V’s illegitimate daughter. ²⁵ Younger brother of Elector Ludwig VI. ²⁶ Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnése, i. 210–38, 270–8, ii. 44–5, 87–9; Swart, Willem van Oranje, 166–71.

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the siege of Deventer, a town on the IJssel, where a German garrison had declared for Don Juan. But Deventer’s garrison surrendered to Georges de Lalaing, count of Rennenberg, who was governor for the States General of the provinces of Overijssel, Groningen, and Friesland (3 December 1578). Hence Parma turned his attention to Maastricht, where a stone bridge across the Maas afforded passage from Germany into Gelderland and other provinces further downstream. Parma spent months occupying positions that would block any relief armies coming from the east, south, or north. To break up the enemy’s ﬁeld army, he then advanced west into Brabant, where his Spanish, German, and Walloon regiments overwhelmed Boussu’s fortiﬁed camp at Borgerhout—a scene observed by Orange and his entourage from the walls of nearby Antwerp (3 March 1579). Only now did he begin siege works before Maastricht, a city of 30,000, defended by 1,200 Scots and Englishmen and a burgher militia of 4,000. Orange took men from the garrisons to rebuild a ﬁeld army, with 3,000 cavalry and 15,000 to 20,000 infantry, but when Jan van Nassau led this force within sight of Maastricht (June 1579), he saw no hope of breaking through Parma’s contravallation, with sconces at regular intervals. On their own, Maastricht’s defenders repulsed two assaults before Parma’s men broke in on 29 June. Since Parma was then grievously ill, and his two deputies quarrelled over who was in charge, no one stopped the men from slaughtering civilians right and left.²⁷ During the campaign Parma was also negotiating with the Walloon States assemblies. By the Union of Arras (January 1579), Artois, Hainaut, and Walloon Flanders (Lille–Douai–Orchies) agreed to act in common, in defence of the Paciﬁcation. By the Treaty of Arras (17 May 1579) they submitted to the king, and to his governor-general, in return for Parma’s promises to send all foreign troops home once again; to use native troops only, unless the signatory provinces were threatened by foreign invasion; not to impose a garrison on any town save by consent of its magistrates; and to respect all privileges as in the reign of Charles V, levying no new or unfamiliar taxes. By this agreement, Catholic moderates of the Walloon provinces achieved the purposes for which they had taken up arms against the king.²⁸ Parma was loath to renounce the use of foreign troops, but by accepting this restriction he gained a loyal, nearly compact bloc of territory, to serve as a base for rebuilding the king’s authority.²⁹ North of the great rivers, the States assemblies were discussing the creation of a rival bloc of territory, to serve as a base of power for the Revolt. William of Orange saw Gelderland as Holland’s outer bulwark (propugnacule), for whoever ²⁷ Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, ii, 70–6, 82–94, 150–92. ²⁸ Cf. Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 205: ‘If these men valued provincial liberties, the defence of private property, and the free exercise of Catholic worship above all else in the Netherlands struggle, then there can be no doubt that in 1579–1580 the king offered the best guarantee for the achievement of these aims.’ ²⁹ Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, ii. 95–149, 196–223.

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controlled this province would be master of the four main rivers of the northern Netherlands.³⁰ Just after the Paciﬁcation he sent a trusted friend, Jacob Muys of Dordrecht, to Gelderland to explore a union with neighbouring provinces.³¹ Meanwhile, Orange also claimed the stadtholderate of Utrecht on the basis of a 1534 ‘union’ between Holland and Utrecht, a claim recognized by the States General in May 1577.³² In summer 1578 Floris Thin, pensionary of the city of Utrecht, proposed a union among the four provinces (Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, and Gelderland) on the basis of Orange’s plan for a Religious Peace. Jan van Nassau, at Orange’s urging, had just agreed to serve as stadtholder of Gelderland. A memorandum written at his direction argued that Gelderland’s only security against attack lay in a union with other provinces having ‘common waters and streams’. Moreover, as ﬁefs of the Holy Roman Empire, these four lands were ‘of the same origin’, and ‘almost of the same speech and laws’. Some might grumble, he admitted, that union would make Gelderland nothing but a ‘sconce’ for Holland, but one could not make the landscape ‘any different from how God has already made it’; when the provinces had formed such unions in the past, Holland had not demanded ‘sovereignty’.³³ Meeting in Arnhem (Gelderland, September 1578), deputies from the four provinces accepted a revision of the Religious Peace proposed by Jan van Nassau: both religions were to have rights only where Catholicism was the dominant religion, that is, in Gelderland and Utrecht, not in Holland and Zeeland. In the Union of Utrecht, adopted in that city on 23 January 1579, Jan van Nassau’s revision of the Religious Peace remained in the ﬁnal text, despite Orange’s objections. As in Holland and Zeeland in previous years, Protestant garrisons were already forcing towns in Utrecht and Gelderland to accept a Reformed monopoly on public worship. When a Gelderland magistrate complained of this violation of the rights of Catholics, Jan van Nassau bade him to bind up his wounds ‘with the balm of the Paciﬁcation’.³⁴ From this point on it made little sense to speak of a united fatherland. Still, moderates on both sides pushed through a plan for renewed peace talks, held in Cologne. Philip II’s emissaries insisted that only the Catholic religion be lawful, even in Holland and Zeeland; the most the king allowed was that ‘heretics’ ³⁰ The Rhine (toward Katwijk, beyond Leiden), the Waal (to Dordrecht), the IJssel (to the Zuider Zee), and the Maas (to Rotterdam). ³¹ Bor, Oorsprong, xiii. 17; cf. RSH 4 October 1576, seven men named to meet in Gouda with deputies from Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Gelderland. ³² Paulus Buys to Orange, Utrecht, 16 March 1577, Groen, Letter 706, vi. 11–12; van der Mijle to Orange, Delft, 19 March 1577, Groen, Letter 729, vi. 17, enclosing a certiﬁed copy of the 1534 Union, by which Holland and Utrecht were always to have the same stadtholder. ³³ Swart, Willem van Oranje, 161; anonymous memorandum, ‘inspired’ by Jan van Nassau: Groen, Letter 869, vi. 539–60, esp. 555–60. ³⁴ Swart, Willem van Oranje, 161–3, 185. Swart notes that since the Union of Utrecht was opposed by important population groups in each of the other signatory provinces, it might better be styled the Union of Holland.

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would have four years to sell their property and emigrate. In response, the States General delegation offered a Religious Peace that Holland and Zeeland had already rejected. Though discussions dragged on for months (May–November 1579), the Gordian knot of religion blocked any chance of agreement.³⁵ For the next two years, military action was limited to surprise attacks by one side or the other on small or medium-sized towns, abetted by conspirators within. The reason was simple: neither Parma nor Orange could put into the ﬁeld an army large enough for a major offensive. At the end of 1579, Parma, having sent home his Spanish and Italian units, as required by the Union of Arras, had under his command ninety-three German or ‘native’ (Low Countries) infantry companies, of which ﬁfty-seven were posted to garrison duty. This left thirty-six companies (5,400–7,200 men) available for ﬁeld action. But Spanish military doctrine presumed that one could not overwhelm a well-defended walled town without the bravado of Spanish and Italian infantry.³⁶ On paper, the army supported by provinces loyal to the States General was twice as large. According to Orange’s war budget of December 1579, listing which provinces were responsible for paying which units, there were to be 101 infantry companies available for action in the ﬁeld, plus ninety-six on garrison duty.³⁷ In practice, the number of units at Orange’s disposal was much smaller, because the provinces were, as ever, loath to support military action beyond their borders: companies nominally on the quota (repartitie) of one province, but posted elsewhere, were paid irregularly at best. Thus four companies of Colonel Edward Norris’s English regiment caused ‘trouble’ in Tournai, a vital enclave separating Walloon Flanders from Hainaut, because the Four Members of Flanders had not paid their wages. Bouchain, a key outpost bordering Parma’s Walloon enclave, fell in September 1580, partly because the Union of Utrecht had ‘too much to do’ within its own borders to send any money. Also, towns sometimes refused to admit garrison companies assigned to them, just as companies on garrison duty were often unwilling to report for duty in the ﬁeld. If companies not suited for ﬁeld action could not be introduced into towns, and reliable units would not venture beyond the safety of town walls, what was a commander to do?³⁸ ³⁵ Koenigsberger, ‘Rule by the States General’, 285–8. ³⁶ Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, ii. 264; Parker, Spanish Road, 271: Parma had 8,680 German infantry and 9,692 Netherlanders in February 1578, 13,000 Germans and 26,978 Netherlanders in September 1580. ³⁷ Ten Raa, De Bas, and Wijn, Het Staatsche Leger, i. 57–8; cf. the war budget for May 1580 (i. 61–5), listing 237 companies, without distinguishing between garrison and ﬁeld units. On the war budget or staat van oorlog, a Habsburg practice systematically employed by Orange and his successors, A. T. van Deursen, ‘Staat van Oorlog en Generale Petitie in de Vroege Republiek,’ BMGN Bijdragen en, 91 (1976), 44–55. ³⁸ Orange to the Four Members of Flanders, Antwerp, 22 January 1580, Gachard, Letter 714, iv. 213–14; Orange to the Union of Utrecht, Ghent, 20 August 1580 (just prior to the fall of Bouchain), Gachard, Letter 730, iv. 242–7; Orange to the Landraad, Antwerp, 7 December 1581, Gachard, Letter 810, iv. 387–90.

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Parma could not open a second front in the north because he could not ask loyalist States assemblies for a recall of foreign soldiers—not yet, at least. But dominant Calvinist minorities continued to cause political problems for the Revolt by suppressing Catholic worship, as now in Gelderland and Utrecht, the still mainly Catholic lands that had adhered to the Union of Utrecht. Rennenberg, a Catholic, watched from Groningen in dismay. After thwarting an attempted Calvinist coup in Groningen, he proclaimed his loyalty to the king (3 March 1580), followed by three important towns in the province of Groningen.³⁹ To prevent Rennenberg from gaining a foothold on the Frisian coast of the Zuider Zee, or attempting to bridge the gap between Groningen and Spanish-held Maastricht, Holland and the Union of Utrecht reacted quickly. While the English and Walloon regiments of Edward Norris and Michel Caulier were shipped across the Zuider Zee to Friesland, Orange’s nephew, Count Willem Lodewijk van Nassau, took most of his regiment to begin siege works before Groningen. Count Philip of Hohenlohe, Orange’s lieutenant for Holland, was to bring his cavalry to join in the siege, after putting down a peasant uprising against the States troops in Overijssel. En route, he was routed by a party of royalist exiles from Groningen, sent by Parma; at this news, Willem Lodewijk’s men mutinied, and insisted on withdrawing to Friesland. Rennenberg now took the offensive, setting his troops down before Steenwijk, the ﬁrst walled town in northern Overijssel. But the Union of Utrecht got men and supplies into Steenwijk; Rennenberg abandoned the siege (March 1581) and died a few months later. His successor as the king’s commander in this region, Francisco de Verdugo, took Steenwijk in 1582. Parma’s allies in the north were keeping the Union of Utrecht fully engaged in its own backyard.⁴⁰ For Orange, it seemed impossible to mobilize the resources of the States General provinces for an offensive without solving the problem of ‘particularism’. In a speech presented on his behalf to the States General (24 November 1579), he berated the deputies for acting ‘like advocates for your principals in the provinces’, rather than ‘taking to heart the common cause’. Ten days later he proposed creation of a new Council of State, or National Council (Landraad ), whose members, appointed by the States assemblies, would have full power to act on behalf of the Generality, without consulting their principals. But in Holland, where he went to drum up support, he saw that no such plan was acceptable ³⁹ What nineteenth-century historians writing in a Dutch-patriotic vein viewed as Rennenberg’s ‘treason’ is seen quite differently by twentieth-century revisionist scholars: contrast Geyl, Revolt of the Netherlands, 175–7, with Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, ii. 823–4. The basic modern work is F. U. Ros, Rennenberg en de Groningse Malcontenten (Groningen: Van Gorcum, 1964). ⁴⁰ Ten Raa, De Bas, and Wijn, Het Staatsche Leger, i. 166–7, citing resolutions of the States of Holland (2, 4 April 1580), and the States General (2, 5, 20 July, 15 August 1580); Willem Lodewijk to his father, Jan van Nassau, 20 June 1580, Groen, Letter 985, vii. 369–73; Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, ii. 304; Swart, Willem van Oranje, 227.

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without recognition of the de facto division between the lands north and south of the rivers. Thus he now proposed two Landraden, for the provinces ‘East’ and ‘West’ of the Maas respectively.⁴¹ Though asked to respond by 1 February 1580, the States General did not begin discussion of the Landraad proposal until June; by December, most provinces approved the formation of two such bodies. Since three provinces that were now included in the Union of Utrecht (Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel) at ﬁrst refused to participate, the Landraad east (that is, north) of the Maas did not begin to function until July 1581; even then, it lacked the authority and prestige Orange had wished it to have.⁴² Since the States General did not provide Orange with a ﬁeld army, he turned again to the duke of Anjou. On 31 March 1580 the States of Holland and Zeeland had renounced their allegiance to Philip II, and acclaimed the prince of Orange as their count and ‘sovereign’ (‘hoge overheid’). Orange insisted that this decision be kept secret; he agreed to function as count in Holland and Zeeland, but only after Anjou had been accepted as ‘sovereign’. In the Treaty of Plessis-les-Tours, accepted by six of ten provinces represented in the States General (August 1580), Henry III of France promised to declare war on Spain, and to provide his brother, Anjou, as sovereign of the Netherlands, with whatever he needed to prosecute the war, beyond a subsidy of 2,400,000 pounds from the States General.⁴³ Paradoxically, Anjou’s intervention strengthened Parma’s hand in negotiations with the States assemblies of his power base. The Walloon lands, threatened in the north by Tournai, were now threatened in the south when supporters delivered into Anjou’s hands the capital city of the prince-archbishopric of Cambrai, bounded by France, Artois, and Hainaut (February 1580). Even though the Union of Arras allowed the recall of Spanish troops in the event of foreign invasion, a States General of the loyalist provinces (Mons, February 1581) rejected Parma’s plea to be allowed to recruit foreign soldiers for a ﬁeld army. Thus when Anjou crossed the frontier with 8,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry (August 1581), Parma could not prevent his bringing men and supplies to strengthen Cambrai’s defences. He did, however, station his army along the Flemish coast, so as to block Anjou’s more important objective, which was to link up with a States General army waiting to meet him at Dunkirk. Anjou now dismissed his men and turned his attention to other matters.⁴⁴ With one enemy force disbanded, and the army at Dunkirk too far away to intervene, Parma set his men down before Tournai, which capitulated after two months (31 November 1581). Following this victory, the Walloon lands were more amenable to his proposals. In February 1582, the States General of the Union of Arras authorized ⁴¹ East of the Maas meaning also north of the point at which the Maas turns west—thus, the provinces comprised in the Union of Utrecht. ⁴² Swart, Willem van Oranje, 205–208. ⁴³ Ibid, 210–11. ⁴⁴ He went to England, to court Queen Elizabeth.

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Philip II to send to the Netherlands such troops as he deemed ﬁt, provided that no foreign soldiers were quartered in Artois, Hainaut, or Walloon Flanders. In August, two Spanish tercios arrived from Italy, with two more of Italians, and by the end of 1582 Parma had some 60,000 men, about half of them available for duty in the ﬁeld. With an army of this size, and a leaven of Spanish veterans, Charles V’s grandson was ready to take the offensive.⁴⁵ ⁴⁵ Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, ii. 293–301, 307–20, iii. 9–22, 44–51, 81–3. Parker, Spanish Road, 271, counts Parma as having 45,435 men (and no Spaniards) in September 1580, and 61,162 men (with 4,636 Spaniards) in October 1582.

7 Holland’s Garden

Following the collapse of Spain’s military position in 1576, the Lords States expected nothing more than a respite, to be used in preparing for the attack that must come again. This chapter describes how Holland consolidated its defences. The ﬁrst imperative was to secure the perimeter—in Bor’s terms, ‘to round off ’ or ‘close Holland’s garden’.¹ This meant (a) improving town fortiﬁcations and rural sconces, especially on the frontier, and (b) persuading Holland towns at present loyal to the king to accept ‘Satisfactions’ reducing them to the obedience of William of Orange. Second, the province’s military budget had to be cut back to a sustainable level. But mustering out unwanted companies meant paying off their arrears. Sending them out of Holland was easier—the army of the States General needed men—but it also prepared the way for disputes about whether Holland was still responsible for their pay. Finally, Holland could not be secure without securing its natural hinterlands in Utrecht, Gelderland, and Overijssel—upstream along the Maas, the Waal, and the Rijn (Rhine).² In the Union of Utrecht (January 1579), Holland in effect agreed to pay for the defence of these neighburing provinces.³ ¹ Bor, Oorsprong, x. 758: with Orange in Middelburg (February 1577), Holland does not cease thinking of its security, ‘en haren thuyn in’t geheel te brengen’; xi. 921–4, the States of Holland are anxious to secure the adhesion of Amsterdam, ‘om haren thuyn dicht te houden’. Since the fourteenth century, the heraldic shield of the counts of Holland had featured a young women seated in a fenced-in garden, the ‘Hollandse tuin’. ² Bor, Oorsprong, xiii. 17: already in 1576, Orange saw Gelderland as a bulwark (propugnacule) of Holland, for an enemy controlling the four streams passing through Gelderland could do great harm to Holland, as was clear from the previous war. ³ RSH 1581, 209–10, 229–30, 238–9: 24, 31 May, 2 June 1581: Holland’s quota is to be 83,000 pounds per month, Zeeland’s 17,000; Utrecht is to provide 10% of Holland’s quota and Friesland 20%, while Gelderland is assessed 8,333 per month. Thus of a total of 153,233, Holland’s share was 62.3%. This ratio would not change much during the subsequent history of the United Provinces: Marjolein ’t Hart, The Making of a Bourgeois State: War, Finance and Politics during the Dutch Revolt (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1993).

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F O RT R E S S H O L L A N D

Fortiﬁcations Holland’s towns had been improving their fortiﬁcations since the Revolt began; during the summer of 1576 major work was under way at Brill.⁴ At the beginning of 1577, amid growing suspicion of Don Juan’s intentions, the States of Holland and Zeeland approved ﬁfteen projects, at an estimated cost of 126,000 pounds.⁵ Cities had to pay or at least help pay for the improvement of their own fortiﬁcations.⁶ As Schoonhoven was told in 1582, the States of Holland could not afford to pay for urban defence works, for priority had to be given to ‘the outer frontier’.⁷ In the countryside, landholders and tenant-farmers were ‘constrained’ to pay special taxes for improved sconces.⁸ Holland had no military architects with experience in Italy,⁹ home of the bastion-trace, but Adriaan Anthoniszoon, Alkmaar’s erstwhile master of works, and Holland’s ‘master of fortresses’ from early 1579, proved an apt student of the new fortiﬁcation methods.¹⁰ East of Amsterdam, at Muiden and Naarden, Anthoniszoon’s

⁴ RSH 1576, 104: 26 June 1576; Floris van Culemborg to Orange, Brill, 13 July 1576, Groen, Letter 602, v. 377–8. ⁵ Bor, Oorsprong, x. 753. Ten sites were in Holland: Spaarndam (12,000), Zaandam (6,000), Muiden (8,000); Worcum (10,000), Loevestein Castle (3,000), Woerden (5,000), Oudewater (5,000), Brill (6,000), Zevenbergen Head (8,000), and Vieu Gastel (15,000). The other ﬁve were in Zeeland: Vossemeer (10,000), Venusdam (16,000), Vlissingen (10,000), Veere (6,000), and Arnemuiden (6,000). RSH 1577, 21–2: 20 February 1577, lists nine sites whose works are to be supported by a sixteenth penny on land rents, including ﬁve mentioned by Bor, plus four others: Land van Altena, Gorinchem, Sint Geertruidenberg, and the Gouda sluice. ⁶ RSH 1579, 233–6: 26 September 1579, Amsterdam is authorized to issue city renten to pay for its fortiﬁcations. For new defence works, starting in 1585, Vier Eeuwen Herengracht: Geveltekeningen van alle de huizen aan de gracht (Amsterdam: Stadsdrukkerij, 1978). ⁷ RSH 1582, 292, 395, 406–8: 14 June, 20, 26 August 1582: having spent 2,500 of its own revenues for its defence, in addition to 1,000 pounds borrowed by the nearest receiver of the gemene middelen (in Gouda), Schoonhoven was authorized to deduct up to 5,000 more from future contributions to complete the work. ⁸ RSH 1576, 104: 26 June 1576 (farmers on the island of Voorne must pay for works at Brill); RSH 1576, 117–18: 19 July 1576 (a sconce at Strijen is to be paid for by land holders); Orange to the Gecommiteerde Raden of the Noorderkwartier, 30 July 1567, INGWVO, no. 9237, work must continue on the fortiﬁcations at Medemblik, despite the objections of nearby village magistrates; RSH 1577, 21–2: 20 February 1577, to pay for works at ten sites named (above, n. 5), tenant-farmers in all of Holland south of the IJ must pay a tax equal to one-sixteenth of their annual rent. ⁹ Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, ii. 38–48: the fortress at Bouges, occupied by Don Juan after his defeat at Rijmenam, was brought up to date by two famous Italian military architects, Scipio de Campi and Gabrio Serbelloni. ¹⁰ Koopmans, De Staten van Holland, 148; his predecessor as fortiﬁcatiemeester was Gerrit Adriaenszoon van Nispen of Dordrecht, who died late in 1578.

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bastion-trace walls dwarfed the small towns they defended, and served as a model for the ‘Netherlands fortiﬁcation style’, as described in a treatise of 1590 by the mathematician-engineer Simon Stevin, an adviser to Orange’s son, Maurits of Nassau.¹¹ Holland’s frontier was most vulnerable in the south-east, where the Maas and Waal, running virtually parallel through rich farmland dotted with small towns, emptied into the Hollands Diep, a wide estuary extending westward to Dordrecht. The northern shore of this estuary was not guarded by any towns. Hence from the beginning of the Revolt Orange kept an opportunistic eye on the eastern and southern shores of the Hollands Diep. To anchor Holland’s defences along the Waal, his troops occupied Bommel, a Gelderland town, in 1573.¹² Heusden, a Brabant town on the Maas, was persuaded at the end of 1577 to accept a ‘Satisfaction’ bringing it under Orange’s rule; thereafter, it was a subject of frequent rumours of possible enemy invasion.¹³ Of the fourteen sites targeted for work at the beginning of 1577,¹⁴ three anchored Holland’s disputed frontier on the south bank of the Hollands Diep: Sint Geertruidenberg, a town that had been part of Brabant prior to occupation by Orange’s men in 1573,¹⁵ Zevenbergen Head (protecting the town of that name), and a fortress on the New Gastel, just to the west. Four other sites guarded the Waal downstream from Bommel. One was Gorinchem, on the right or north bank, where the Lingen enters the Waal. Along the opposite bank, Loevesteyn Castle and Woudrichem faced each other across the Maas as it entered the Waal, while Altena lay south of Woudrichem, on the Hollands Diep.¹⁶ To the north, the frontier along the Hollandse IJssel was protected by improving the defences at Woerden, Oudewater, and the Gouda sluice. Yet further north, there were new works at Spaarndam and Muiden, controlling the IJ dyke roads west and east of still-Spanish Amsterdam, and at Zaandam, guarding the main channel by which ships from Amsterdam might penetrate the ‘ring’ of North Holland.¹⁷ Holland’s defensive works aroused suspicion. In April 1577, Escovedo, Philip II’s factor in Antwerp, complained to the Council of State that nothing in the Paciﬁcation of Ghent authorized the new fortress that Orange was building at ¹¹ For Holland’s military architecture in the early years of the Revolt, Edward Taverne, In ’t Land van Belofte: In de nieuwe stad: Ideal en werkelijkheid van de stadsuitleg in de Republiek (published dissertation: Rijksuniversiteit te Groningen, 1978). ¹² Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand, 121–2. RSH 1580, 194: 12 September 1580, the Holland company on garrison duty in Bommel is commanded by Jaspar van Poelgeest. ¹³ The magistrates of Heusden to Orange, 24 November 1577, and Orange to the magistrates of Heusden, 3 December 1577, INGWVO, nos. 12242, 12271; RSH 1579, 232: 26 September 1579; RSH 1580, 95–6: 4 June 1580; RSH 1582, 384–5: 18 August 1582. ¹⁴ Above, n. 5. ¹⁵ Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand, 31; for Geertruidenberg, as well as the nearby villages of Klundert, Rugenhil, and Fijnaart, Chapter 4 n. 42. ¹⁶ I have not found a reference to a speciﬁc site for works in the Land or feudal enclave of Altena. ¹⁷ The last of the ﬁfteen sites was Brill, at which work had been in progress for some time.

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Spaarndam, or closing off roads and streams leading to Amsterdam.¹⁸ In June 1577, Elbertus Leoninus and Gaspar Schetz, as emissaries of the States General, requested Orange to ‘disburden’ peasants near Heusden and in the villages of Klundert, Rugenhil, and Fijnaert from paying for the support of Hohenlohe’s troops quartered along the New Gastel; they also asked him to tear down the fortress there, since it had been built ‘during the Troubles’. Orange conceded that the fortress could eventually be torn down, but the States General had no business enquiring about ‘Heusden, etc.’, because the places in question had always been ‘under Holland’.¹⁹ In fact, Heusden and at least one of the three villages just mentioned had been part of Brabant prior to 1572, just like Sint Geertruidenberg.²⁰ Orange and the Lords States espoused a maximal understanding of Holland’s boundaries. They wanted not just everything within the historic borders—including towns that were still loyal to the king—but also what had been added by conquest, along the strategic south-eastern frontier.

Satisfactions The Paciﬁcation of Ghent envisioned that loyalist towns in Holland would accept Orange as their stadtholder in return for a negotiated ‘Satisfaction’ of their grievances. Among these towns Haarlem was the most vulnerable to pressure, owing to tensions between the burghers and the royal garrison of Walloon companies. The burgomasters sent an emissary to ask for a ‘Low German’²¹ garrison under a Catholic captain, lest the ‘Consistorialists’ gain control of Haarlem and ‘entirely extirpate our Holy Catholic Religion’; but Hierges, Philip II’s stadtholder of Holland, was not to be found. Haarlem also sent deputies to sit with Holland’s delegation at the States General, but they were refused admission. There was thus no alternative to negotiations with Orange, then in Zeeland. Under the terms of a ‘Satisfaction’²² signed on 22 January 1577, Haarlem’s deputies swore allegiance to Orange as stadtholder, and were readmitted to the States assembly. One of Haarlem’s churches²³ was set aside for the use of Reformed burghers, but anyone who sought to injure or hinder the ‘Roman ¹⁸ Bor, Oorsprong, x. 844–6, reproducing letters to Philip II from Escovedo (6 April 1577) and Don Juan (7 April 1577). ¹⁹ Bor, Oorsprong, x. 814. Klundert, Fijnaart, and Rugenhil, lying on an island in the Hollands Diep west of Zevenbergen and north of the village of Gastel, were, like Sint Geertruidenberg, claimed by Brabant but occupied by Holland. ²⁰ Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand, 31–2 (Heusden); Jacob van Deventer, a loyal Hollander, shows Heusden and Sint Geertruidenberg as part of Holland on his maps (Holland, Zeeland, and Brabant), but puts Fijnaart in Brabant. Klundert and Rugenhil are not shown. Cf. RSH 1579, 281–2: 19 November 1579, a report that the three villages plan to seek sauvegarde from the enemy; and RSH 1582, 23–4: 22 January 1582, Holland asserts, contrary to the States of Brabant, that the island containing these villages has always been part of Holland. ²¹ ‘Nederduits’, possibly meaning Dutch, not Low German. ²² As provided by the Paciﬁcation of Ghent: see the Prologue to Part III. ²³ The Bakenesser kerk.

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religion’ would be punished ‘rigorously’ as a ‘disturber of the common peace’. Orange and the States of Holland promised not to post a garrison of professional soldiers in Haarlem save in time of great need.²⁴ Boussu, a supporter of the Paciﬁcation, was commissioned by the States General to arrange an orderly withdrawal of the companies of his former regiment that occupied Schoonhoven and Nieuwpoort as well as Haarlem. The States of Holland south of the IJ promised him a bonus of 15,000 pounds as soon as the men were gone. North Holland promised a further 20,000 pounds for the withdrawal of men stationed in Weesp and Muiden, though Boussu claimed these units were not mentioned in his commission from the States General. Getting the soldiers out of these cities was not easy, partly because the men demanded settlement of their arrears, and partly because North Holland had to persuade Boussu to accept a promissory note (obligatie) in lieu of cash.²⁵ Meanwhile, Schoonhoven and the three smaller towns accepted terms of Satisfaction similar to Haarlem’s. Unlike Haarlem or Schoonhoven, Amsterdam’s magistrates had both the will and the resources to maintain a royalist policy. Though the Paciﬁcation called for reconciliation of former enemies, Amsterdam and its neighbours had fought one another with enthusiasm for four years. Now, Amsterdam kept up correspondence with Don Juan, and Herman van der Helling, commander of Holland’s infantry south of the IJ, posted units of his regiment around Amsterdam.²⁶ The States General sent emissaries to Orange to protest North Holland’s hostile treatment of Amsterdam’s seaborne trade, and admitted deputies from Amsterdam to their deliberations, despite the protest of Holland’s representatives.²⁷ Unable to ignore these complaints, Orange wrote the States of Holland south of the IJ, who in turn contacted their confreres in North Holland. The men of the Noorderkwartier complained that when their merchants ventured to Amsterdam they were forced to swear ‘a false oath to the popish religion’; nonetheless, they agreed to dismiss the freebooters they had hired to harass Amsterdam shipping.²⁸ Yet a month later Don Juan complained to Orange about armed vessels keeping station in ‘the canal of Amsterdam’,²⁹ blocking the city’s trade; these may have been the two ‘convoy ships’ that North Holland kept before the boom of Amsterdam’s harbour, to collect the convoy duties that, in their view, shippers in Amsterdam ought to pay.³⁰ ²⁴ Bor, Oorsprong, x. 755–7; Spaans, Haarlem na de Reformatie, 49–52. ²⁵ Bor, Oorsprong, x. 754 (Boussu’s commission), 778 (settlement with soldiers of his former regiment, 10 January 1578); RSH 1577, 19: 18 February 1577; RSH 1578, 21: 12 September 1578; RANH 238, 31 January, 14, 18 March 1577. ²⁶ Helling to Orange, Haarlem, 17 March 1577, Groen, Letter 707, vi. 13–14; Bor, Oorpsrong, xi. 874. ²⁷ States General to Orange, 31 December 1576, 16 January 1577, and 13 February 1577, Gachard, Letter 571, 572, and 585, iii. 177–8; 180, and 208–9. ²⁸ RANH 238, 17 March, 5 April 1577. ²⁹ Presumably the IJ. ³⁰ Don Juan’s instructions for Aerschot, 15 May 1577, as cited by Gachard, iii. 440–1; RANH 238, 30 July 1577, reporting a letter from Amsterdam saying the two ships have withdrawn, possibly because of threats from the city.

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With Don Juan ensconced in Namur, far to the south, Amsterdam expected no help from the king’s forces any time soon. Hence in September 1577 the city sent a delegation to Orange in Brussels, offering to open negotiations. Next came a delegation from the States of Holland, asking his permission for an all-out assault on Amsterdam. Orange preferred a peaceful settlement; the text of a Satisfaction was concluded by 10 October, and sent to the States for ratiﬁcation. The deputies rejected the agreement, citing a formal protest by Amsterdam’s inﬂuential exile community, who said they could never go home under the terms proposed. Orange requested that the States at least cease their ‘hindrances’ to Amsterdam’s trade, so negotiations might continue. Instead, without consulting His Excellency, the States voted (1 November 1577) to take Amsterdam by force. Sonoy and Helling worked out a plan involving ten companies of infantry. Aided by confederates who entered Amsterdam in disguise, Helling got four companies into the city early on the morning of 23 November, only to be set upon by armed burghers, as well as the two companies in the pay of the city; with the other six companies of attackers nowhere to be seen, Helling and his men were cut down.³¹ Orange was not happy the Hollanders had acted on their own, but the States vowed, through their emissaries, to subdue the enemy city by force, ‘cost what it may’; they estimated the expenses of a full-scale assault at 150,000 pounds. Thus even while Amsterdam and the States reopened negotiations in The Hague, as Orange insisted, Sonoy sent men from the Noorderkwartier to occupy positions outside the city walls, and South Holland sent eight companies from a new regiment organized by Christoffel van IJsselstein, the military governor of Geertruidenberg. Commanders on both sides agreed to a truce (27 January 1578) to await any news from The Hague; in fact, delegates sent by the States of Utrecht were instrumental in brokering a Satisfaction, signed on 8 February. Exiles were allowed to return, but with no concessions for the exercise of the Reformed cult, save for a burial place; though no Calvinist was to be forced to live as a Catholic, only the Catholic religion was to be practised—a mirror image of religious conditions elsewhere in Holland. The old civic militia companies were to be re-established, and Orange would choose men from among the burghers to form a garrison. Finally, Amsterdam was not liable for any debts contracted by Holland or Zeeland during the war.³² Could a Catholic Amsterdam have formed a single polity with the rest of Holland? It seems unlikely. In any event the now-returning exiles, led by Willem Bardesius, Sheriff Baerdes’s son, arranged things differently, with the aid of local Calvinists and men from the revived civic militia. In a bloodless coup (24 May 1578) most of Amsterdam’s serving magistrates and leading clerics were bundled into barges and sent off toward Utrecht. This ‘alteratie’ was ‘certainly not a spontaneous uprising of the populace’, but it aligned Amsterdam with the rest ³¹ Bor, Oorsprong, x. 896, xi. 906–8.

³² Ibid., xii. 921–6.

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Fig. 5 Holland’s Garden: ‘Mark the wisdom famed of Holland’s housekeeping, and see the leopard’s kind, not to be trusted.’ While an ‘Orange tree’ grows in the carefully cultivated garden, Holland’s heraldic lion keeps the Spanish leopard at bay. Willem Buytewech, Allegory of the Deceitfulness of Spain and the Liberty and Prosperity of Republic. Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

of the province.³³ Some thorny issues remained—how could Holland pay off its debts from 1572–6, without help from its largest city?³⁴—but Holland’s Garden was now closed.

H O L L A N D C O M PA N I E S A N D T H E S TAT E S G E N E R A L The Paciﬁcation made a large military establishment seem unnecessary. In December 1576, Orange proposed that Holland and Zeeland maintain ﬁfty companies, reduced from 150 to 113 men. There were also to be 200 cavalry, 300 pioneers, and 45 warships, all for an estimated 100,000 pounds per month. Zeeland, defended from the sea, had no more than four to six companies over ³³ Bor, Oorsprong, 952–3; Van Nierop, Het Foute Amsterdam, 20 (the quote). ³⁴ See Chapter 9.

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the next several years.³⁵ The States of Holland agreed in April 1577 to support forty-four companies of 113 men, including fourteen for the Noorderkwartier.³⁶ Two and a half years later, according to a war budget for the Union of Utrecht, Holland was to pay for forty-six companies, with, it seems, twenty-four stationed outside the province.³⁷ Thus no more than twenty-two companies were thought necessary for duty along Holland’s frontiers or elsewhere within the province, a ﬁgure that remained constant for several years.³⁸ As needed, one could add men to each company to strengthen Holland’s defences. After Rennenberg’s change of allegiance, for example, Orange ordered that companies have 150 men, with a ﬁxed number of musketeers and spear-bearers to support the pikemen.³⁹ The mustering out of unwanted companies started with the ‘least suitable’, like the two companies of Captain Wouter Hegeman, who had appropriated for himself the ofﬁce of sheriff on the island of Texel.⁴⁰ By ‘the ancient law of war’ companies were to be cashiered⁴¹ ‘according to the muster-rolls’, with the men paid their due ‘head by head’, in the presence of muster commissioners. For dealing with arrears, Orange urged Hollanders to do as was done ‘in the time of Emperor Charles’: if the men have four months’ wages coming, see if ³⁵ Bor, Oorsprong, x. 760–1. Ten Raa, Wijn, and De Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, i. 162–3, 65–7: Zeeland was responsible in 1579 for four companies of 113 men, and in 1582 for ﬁve companies of 150 men plus one of 200. Eric Swart, ‘From ‘‘Landsknecht’’ to ‘‘Soldier’’: The Low German Foot Soldiers of the Low Countries in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century’ International Review for Social History, 51 (2006), 75–92. I am grateful to Dr Swart, a recent Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam, for a copy of his article. ³⁶ RSH 1577, 47–8: 13 April 1577; RANH 238, 19 March 1577, North Holland will maintain thirteen companies, plus one at Muiden. ³⁷ Ten Raa, Wijn, and De Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, i. 54: according to a staat van oorlog for the Union of Utrecht (end of 1579), Holland is to have forty-six companies of 113 men and four of 150 men, or 5,346 men in all, at a cost of 51,000 pounds per month, or slightly over 9.5 pounds per month per man. With ofﬁcers’ pay, the total would be closer to the 60,000 pounds that Holland’s deputies refer to as paying for ‘our companies’ (RSH 1579, 154: 8 July 1579). Of the forty-six companies, one regiment with ten companies is identiﬁed by the editors as that of Col. Arent van Duivenvorde, who participated (1578) in the conquest of Kampen and Deventer for the States General. Four other companies are listed as holding positions in Gelderland, while ten make up the regiment of Count Willem Lodewijk, which generally operated outside Holland. There is no reference to Van den Tympel’s regiment in Brussels. ³⁸ Het Staatsche Leger, i. 54162–3, twenty-two companies for ‘garrisons in Holland.’ RSH 1582, 12–18: 20 January 1582, a staat van oorlog lists twenty-three companies stationed within Holland (ﬁfteen of 150 men, seven of 200, one of 50). Cf. RANH 239, preceding the entry for 23 September 1580: North Holland pays for ten companies, plus garrisons in Nijmegen (Gelderland) and Harlingen and Kampen (Overijssel); if North Holland was responsible for thirteen or fourteen companies, the rest of the province was probably responsible for thirty, or a few more. ³⁹ Cited in RANH 239, 12 November 1580: each company should have forty-ﬁve spears, nine halberds, six bondatsiers, and twelve musketeers, the rest presumably being pikemen. ⁴⁰ RSH 1576, 112: 10 July 1576; RANH 238, 7 December 1576, 5 March 1577, and 3 August 1577, Hegeman is to arrest those of his men who have murdered Sebastiaan Craanhals (on this incident, see Bor, Oorsprong, xi. 869–70); RANH 238, 11, 27 October 1577, difﬁculty in mustering out three companies, including Hegeman’s two. ⁴¹ The Dutch word used is casseren.

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they will take two months or six weeks, promising to reward the captains and subalterns; debts might be settled half within six months, and half within the next six months.⁴² ‘Discounting’ soldiers’ pay was not to the liking of the men, the more so because, again at Orange’s recommendation, arrears were to be reckoned only from 13 May 1573.⁴³ Since soldiers would not leave their quarters without having at least some cash, ofﬁcials had to ﬁnd money somehow, by selling warships, or halting work on fortiﬁcation projects.⁴⁴ Some companies refused to muster out on the grounds that they were being discriminated against because of their ‘nation’; others delayed turning in the accounts listing their claims to back pay. Even if ofﬁcers were duly ‘rewarded’, they could not always control their men, for soldiers observed among themselves a rough democracy. During a tour of North Holland Orange issued an ordinance governing the process of mustering out (Alkmaar, July 1577); the captains of local companies duly afﬁxed their seals, but they later had to explain to provincial ofﬁcials that their signatures were not binding on ‘the community of soldiers’.⁴⁵ Finally, for arrears not paid in cash, the companies would not always accept new-style promissory notes, or obligatiën; they sometimes demanded old-style instruments of debt or verbantbrieven, to which town seals were afﬁxed. Much against their will, Holland’s towns thus had to add to the burden of such debts that had accumulated since 1572. In October 1579, three years after the mustering out had begun, North Holland alone still owed 37,000 pounds for back wages of its erstwhile garrisons.⁴⁶ Sending superﬂuous companies off to serve the States General was sometimes the easiest way of getting them out of Holland. For example, Colonel Henry Balfour’s Scottish regiment, mustered out in Holland but recommended by Orange, was taken on by the States General in January 1577.⁴⁷ Indeed, the States had given Orange full powers to station Holland’s companies where he thought best,⁴⁸ and, as noted, roughly half the companies the States agreed to support in December 1576 were meant for service outside the province. But there was at ﬁrst no clear understanding as to which ‘Holland’ companies should remain on Holland’s payroll. In 1577 the ten Holland companies of Van den Tympel’s regiment were posted to Flanders, along with three others sent to Nieuwpoort, ⁴² RANH 238, 23 March, 15 April 1577; the latter resolution refers to the advice of Orange, probably the text of April 1577 given by Groen, Letter 722, vi. 64–6. ⁴³ Orange to the States General, Alkmaar, 20 July 1577, Gachard, Letter 619, iii. 313, uses the word ‘descompter’ to describe how Holland and Zeeland are mustering out unneeded companies. RANH 238, 21 January 1579. ⁴⁴ RANH 238, 2 April 1577. ⁴⁵ Ibid., 19 December 1577, ‘gemeene soldaten’. ⁴⁶ RANH 239, 9, 11 July 1577: the Noorderkwartier’s deputies are to explain to the States of Holland and Zeeland why North Holland has had to issue verbantbrieven. RANH 238, 23 October 1579. ⁴⁷ Orange to James Milford Douglas, count of Morton, regent of Scotland, 3 November 1576, Groen, Letter 673, vi. 551–4; RSG, i, no. 290, p. 327; and the references in Het Staatsche Leger. ⁴⁸ In his ‘Instructions’ as Holland’s ‘Head and High Authority’ (1575); see Chapter 5.

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Orange’s surety town.⁴⁹ After Gembloux (January 1578) Brabant became the principal theatre of war. Though Orange and the States General relocated to Antwerp, further from Don Juan’s troops, Brussels, the historic capital, and the epicentre of Orangist sentiment among the common people of the country,⁵⁰ could not be abandoned to the enemy.⁵¹ Brussels had already agreed to pay taxes to support the army of the States General, but by popular demand units of this army were ejected to make room for Van den Tympel’s regiment,⁵² still on Holland’s payroll. For the protection of Brussels and Antwerp, Boussu got a few States General companies into Mechelen, halfway between the two larger cities. These units gave way, eventually, to companies from Holland, probably from IJsselstein’s regiment.⁵³ Mechelen was expected to share in the cost, but in November 1578 the magistrates wrote to Orange that they could not afford to maintain either the two companies commanded by the city’s governor, Pontus de Noyelles, or the two stationed at Vilvoorde, between Mechelen and Brussels.⁵⁴ In January 1579 the magistrates wrote again, to explain that two of the six ‘Holland’ companies had been ordered away by Archduke Matthias, to help defend Maastricht against the attack that Parma was clearly planning. Growing tensions in the city—associated also with the introduction here of the Religious Peace sponsored by the States General—culminated in a street battle between armed Catholic burghers and the Holland mercenaries, supported by local Calvinists (29 May 1579). Mechelen and its governor now made their peace with Alexander of Parma, and the magistrates politely thanked Orange for acquiescing in the withdrawal of the Holland companies.⁵⁵ Mechelen was not Spanish for long; on 9 April 1580, ⁴⁹ Orange to Henry of Navarre, Middelburg, 14 November 1576, Groen, Letter 661, v. 520–2; States General to Orange, Brussels, 3 July 1577, Gachard, Letter 617, iii. 308–10. ⁵⁰ Prologue to Part III, n. 8. ⁵¹ Cf. Orange to cities and provinces loyal to the Union, c.1 August 1579, Gachard, Letter 701, iv. 167–79: after Gembloux, when Leuven, Diest, and Tienen fell to the enemy, ‘God assured me of Brussels.’ ⁵² Alexandre Henne and Alphonse Wouters, Histoire de la ville de Bruxelles (3 vols., repr. Brussels: editions Libro-Sciences, 1968), i. 445–7. ⁵³ Orange to the States of Holland, Antwerp, 4 August 1578, INGWVO, no. 12070, a request to keep IJsselstein’s companies on their payroll for the month of August; RSH 1578, 4, 12, 20, 21: 23 August, 2, 11, 12 September 1578, Holland wanted IJsselstein’s companies mustered out after 31 August, but agreed to support them until 15 October; Orange to provinces and cities loyal to the Union, c.1 August 1579, Gachard, Letter 701, iv. 167–79: after the defeat at Gembloux, the States General got garrisons from Holland and Zeeland into Mechelen and Lier. Cf. Guido Marnef, Het Calvinistisch Bewind te Mechelen, 1580–1583 (Kortrijk-Heule: UGA, 1987), 144. ⁵⁴ Marnef, Het Calvinistisch Bewind te Mechelen, 91–2; Mechelen to Orange, 2 November 1578, and Orange to the States General, Dendermonde, 26 November 1578, Gachard, Letters 670, 672, iv. 103, 107. ⁵⁵ Mechelen to Orange, 25 January (reference to six Holland companies as having been in the area for six months) and 4 June 1579, Gachard, Letters 682, 694, iv. 137–8, 154–5; Bor, 31 December 1578: Holland and Zeeland’s commitment for twenty-ﬁve companies does not include IJsselstein’s six companies ‘in Brabant’, nor the ﬁve at Deventer; Marnef, Het Calvinistisch Bewind te Mechelen, 117–18, withdrawal of ‘drie Hollandse vendels’.

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companies from the regiments of Olivier van den Tympel, William Stuart, and Edward Norris stormed the city just before dawn. As friction developed among the conquerors, all bent on plunder, Tympel’s Walloons and Stuart’s Scots joined forces to drive out Norris and his Englishmen. Thereafter, some of Mechelen’s garrison companies, possibly of Tympel’s regiment, remained at the charge of the States of Holland. Under Calvinist magistrates, Mechelen continued under the banner of the States General until July 1585, not long after Tympel, as governor of Brussels, surrendered his city to Parma (10 March 1585).⁵⁶ Brabant was not the only province that needed troops from Holland. Hierges, who was for a time stadtholder of Gelderland in the name of the States General, declared for Don Juan after his seizure of Namur (July 1577); so did the High German regiment of Nicholas von Polweiler, veterans of the Low Countries wars since 1572. Five of his companies were based at Roermond (Gelderland), upstream along the Maas, and two on the IJssel, in Deventer and Kampen (Overijssel). The States assemblies of both provinces sought to hem in Polweiler’s men by posting armed peasants in makeshift sconces, but these untrained men were of limited use. When Sonoy asked Orange’s approval for a plan to seize Elburg or Harderwijk (both on Gelderland’s Zuider Zee shore) as a base for an attack on Amsterdam (September 1577), Orange responded that such an initiative would be ‘badly interpreted’; rather, he suggested, let these towns be persuaded to ask for Holland companies, to guard against the High Germans in Deventer.⁵⁷ A formal request for troops, from the States of Gelderland to the States of Holland, soon arrived. Three companies sailed from North Holland (October 1577), under Gijsbrecht van Gouwenberg; near Roermond, Gouwenberg joined forces with Philip von Hohenlohe, commanding nine Holland companies and 150 cavalry. But at the arrival of a troop of veterans sent by Don Juan, under Hierges and Mondragón, Roermond’s garrison sallied forth and drove off the attackers (January 1578). With difﬁculty, Hohenlohe got nearby towns to take in his men for the remainder of the winter.⁵⁸ Despite this initial setback, Holland’s companies were to remain a vital part of Gelderland’s defences.⁵⁹ Gelderland’s ⁵⁶ Marnef, Het Calvinistisch Bewind te Mechelen, 144, 162–3, 167, 200. For the regiments of Stuart and Norris, see the references in Het Staatsche Leger. I assume Tympel’s men were Walloons because most of his captains had French names: see RSH 1581, 396: 29 July 1581, and RAZH, 3.01.14, no. 231. ⁵⁷ Bor, Oorsprong, xi. 874, xii. 966–7; Rients Reitsma, Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces in the Early Dutch Republic.: The States of Overyssel, 1566–1600 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1982), 151–2. Rolf Glawischnig, Niederlande, Kalvinismus und Reichsgrafenstand 1559–1584: Nassau-Dillenburg unter Graf Johann VI (Marburg: Hessisches Landesamt für geschichtliche Landeskunde, 1973), 160; Parker, Spanish Road, 54. ⁵⁸ Bor, Oosprong, xi. 874, 897; RANH 238, 11 October 1577. ⁵⁹ Ibid., xiii. 573–4, six Holland companies in Gelderland must swear a new oath, to the Union of Utrecht (March 1579); RSH 1579, 717–18: June 1579, Holland accepts responsibility for a company of 100 men in Tiel; Het Staatsche Leger, i. 53–5, after the fall of Maastricht ( July 1579), two Holland colonels, Christoffel van IJsselstein and Jacob van Steinbach, are entrusted with the defence of Upper Gelderland, especially Nijmegen.

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dependence on Holland companies explains why Catholic Gelderland voted (10 March 1578) to accept the staunchly Calvinist Jan van Nassau as its new stadtholder.⁶⁰ In neighbouring Overijssel, two of the three cities that controlled decisions in the States assembly,⁶¹ Deventer and Kampen, were garrisoned by Polweiler’s High Germans, and had not even accepted the Paciﬁcation of Ghent. Captain Wouter Hegeman, now in the service of Gelderland, brought men up to Kampen, but failed to make headway.⁶² Rennenberg, as the States General governor for Overijssel, wrote for help to Orange, who passed on the request to Sonoy. With two of his companies from North Holland and three from the regiment of Colonel Arent van Duivenvoorde in South Holland, Sonoy set down before Kampen (31 May), and was given command of operations by Rennenberg. Gelderland promised to send seven more companies, but what induced Polweiler’s men to accept honouable terms (20 July) was the reported approach of a much larger force led by Johann Casimir, the count Palatine.⁶³ Posting three of the Holland companies as a garrison in Kampen, Rennenberg took personal charge of operations at Deventer, starting in August; six more companies from Holland joined him, while the States of Overijssel raised what was, for this province, a large sum. Demoralized by the death of Don Juan, and by a raid into Germany (organized by Jan van Nassau) that captured supplies meant for their use, Polweiler’s men in Deventer accepted terms on 18 November. This was not a great military victory, but it showed how the authorities of four different provinces⁶⁴ might collaborate, and thus provided impetus for the idea of a separate union among the northern provinces.⁶⁵ At the same time, however, Holland and Zeeland were under pressure to divert resources from their now well-established revenue systems to the war budget of the States General, whose priorities lay south of the great rivers, in Brabant. In Haarlem (August 1577), emissaries from Brussels asked the States of Holland and Zeeland for 100,000 daalders in cash (c.150,000 pounds) on the spot—and this as a mere down payment on their share in several large subsidies already approved by the States General. Instead, Holland and Zeeland offered the Generality 150,000 pounds spread out over eight months; they were already contributing to the war effort, they said, by paying for their own warships and garrisons, as well as ‘eight or ten’ companies stationed in Brabant.⁶⁶ In the wake ⁶⁰ A suggestion by Glawischnig, Niederlande, Kalvinismus and Reichsgrafenstand, 161. ⁶¹ Reitsma, Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces, chapter I. ⁶² For Captain Hegeman or Hageman, above, n. 40. ⁶³ Bor, Oorsprong, xii. 966–77; Reitsma, Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces, 129–30, 155. ⁶⁴ Groningen (capital of Rennenberg’s stadtholderate), Holland, Gelderland, and Overijssel. ⁶⁵ Bor, Oorsprong, xii. 948, six companies under IJsselstein sent from Holland to join in the siege of Kampen and Deventer; Ros, Rennenberg en de Groningse Malcontenten, 101–5; Reitsma, Centrifugal and Centripeltal Forces, 155–60. ⁶⁶ Bor, Oorsprong, xi. 870–1; cf. RSG, i, no. 460a, p. 496: in a war budget of 2,780,000 pounds, Flanders was assessed for one-third, Brabant for one-quarter (695,000), Holland for half of Brabant’s

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of Don Juan’s victory at Gembloux (January 1578) the States General adopted a war budget of 600,000 pounds per month; Holland was assessed for 60,000, and made at least one partial payment.⁶⁷ In June 1578 Holland and Zeeland promised to maintain twenty-ﬁve companies of infantry and 100 cavalry for the Generality, over and above the garrison companies for their own defence, and as many warships as His Excellency thought necessary. But Holland and Zeeland would not agree to ‘fellowship’ with the other provinces in paying for the war, for this would mean surrendering control over disbursement of their funds.⁶⁸ It seems that the promise to maintain twenty-ﬁve companies was simply a statement of what Holland and Zeeland were already doing for the Generality, not an engagement to do more. In June 1578 Zeeland was maintaining three companies beyond its borders,⁶⁹ while Holland was responsible for Tympel’s ten companies in Brussels and Mechelen, plus the twelve that had been sent for the failed siege of Roermond, most of which remained on garrison duty in Gelderland. Yet Orange believed that his powers of command gave him the capacity to make Holland do more. Thus the ﬁve Holland garrison companies he had ordered to Overijssel (for the siege of Kampen and Deventer) were to remain in Deventer, at Holland’s expense. IJsselstein’s regiment of six companies, formed (it seems) for a purpose of which Orange did not approve,⁷⁰ were redeployed in the service of the Generality, apparently at Lier and Mechelen. The Lords States did not fail to notice that the books were being jiggled. In April 1578 North Holland agreed to its share of a payment of 34,000 pounds for troops stationed in Brabant, but only after there had been full payment of wages ‘for the twenty-ﬁve companies’—that is, those operating beyond the borders with the approval of the States.⁷¹ When Orange complained that Holland was not keeping up the wages of companies outside the province, the States replied that his list included thirty-six companies, not the twenty-ﬁve to which they had agreed; IJsselstein’s total (347,000), and Zeeland for 184,000. Note that there is a gap in RSH from 2 September 1577 to 21 August 1578. The ‘eight or ten companies in Brabant’ is presumably a reference to Tympel’s regiment. ⁶⁷ RSG, ii, nos. 661, 662, 688, pp. 279, 295. ⁶⁸ Bor, Oorsprong, xii. 948; RSG, ii, no. 737, pp. 320–1 (emissaries of the States General are to offer Holland certain concessions to help maintain the twenty-ﬁve companies for the Generality, 10 May 1578); no. 761, pp. 337–8, Holland accepts (21 June 1578) the 17 May ‘Proposition’, calling on Holland to keep twenty-ﬁve companies for the service of the Generality. ⁶⁹ Above, n. 35; Het Staatsche Leger, i. 61–5: in 1580 the regiment of Filips de Zoete, lord of Haultain, included ﬁve companies on garrison duty in Zeeland, one in Arnhem (Gelderland), and two in Steenwijk (Overijssel). For relative ﬁnancial burdens of the two provinces, RSH 1581, 229–30, 238–9: 31 May, 2 June 1581, in the monthly quota for the Union of Utrecht, Holland owes 83,000 pounds, Zeeland 17,000; RAZH 3.01.14, no. 231, for a debt of 51,134 owed by Holland and Zeeland to the merchants of Ipswich, Zeeland’s share is 17%. If Zeeland’s share for infantry units serving the Generality was only 12% (three of twenty-ﬁve companies), Holland probably paid proportionately less for warships. ⁷⁰ The attack on Amsterdam. ⁷¹ RANH 238, 22 April 1578.

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six companies in Brabant and the ﬁve at Deventer were identiﬁed as exceeding the quota.⁷² This disagreement over money had to do with differing strategic priorities. Of the two theatres where Orange posted the eleven Holland companies at issue, the Zuider Zee region was vital for Holland, but Brabant was not. Formation of the Union of Utrecht (January 1579) crystallized a North Netherlands perspective. In February, Holland sent word to His Excellency that it could no longer support the companies in Brabant, because of new obligations to ‘the Closer Union’ (Nadere Unie).⁷³ Parma’s siege of Maastricht, on the upper Maas, removed any doubts about where Holland’s interests lay. As Jan van Nassau and Philip von Hohenlohe formed a relief army, Holland raised loans of 25,000 pounds for munitions and victuals, and another 25,000 for the hiring of 3,000 German cavalry, to be commanded by Orange’s brother-in-law Gunther von Schwarzburg and Hohenlohe. Overcoming their habitual reluctance to accept responsibility for debts contracted by the States General, Holland and Zeeland also joined with Antwerp and Ghent to issue obligatiën to cover three months’ wages for the cavalry.⁷⁴ The twenty-ﬁve companies to be maintained beyond the borders were now seen as included—all of them—in the 100 companies that Nassau and Hohenlohe were thought to require to break the siege of Maastricht.⁷⁵ In July 1579, Holland announced the recall of troops on its payroll stationed in Brabant, for if Maastricht fell (as it soon did) more troops would be needed ‘here’. Rotterdam’s pensionary Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, a young man of rising prestige in the States, was sent to tell Orange that Holland wanted to be relieved of paying for knechten in Brabant, unless they were sent to places where they could ‘do the Closer Union some good’.⁷⁶ In fact, it seems that IJsselstein’s regiment, formerly on duty in Brabant, had already relocated north of the great rivers; as of 30 March 1579, IJsselstein was serving as lieutenant-general for Jan van Nassau in Gelderland.⁷⁷ With this redeployment, Holland and His Excellency were back on the same page. In September 1579, the States included IJsselstein’s six companies, plus the ﬁve that had been sent to Overijssel the previous year, among the twenty-ﬁve companies that Holland and Zeeland were supporting beyond their frontiers.⁷⁸ ⁷² See the passage in Bor cited above, n. 55. ⁷³ RSH 1579, 18, 30–2: 12, 27 February 1579: the States agree to Holland’s share of the costs for defending Gelderland, but resolve to write again to His Excellency that expenses for the Closer Union must be deducted from what Holland has been paying for knechten in Brabant. ⁷⁴ RSH 1579, 98–9: 11 May 1579; RSG, no. 263, 18 February 1579, p. 628; no. 287, 18 April 1579, p. 642. For Holland’s refusal to share in such debts, Chapter 9. ⁷⁵ RANH 238, 6 May 1579; Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, ii. 174–92. ⁷⁶ RSH 1579, 146–7, 152: 2, 8 July 1579; cf. States of Holland to Orange, The Hague, 11 July 1579, INGWVO, no. 12273. ⁷⁷ Het Staatsche Leger, i. 210, 224. ⁷⁸ RSH 1579, 205–6, 217, 227: 1, 18, 24 September 1579.

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Holland’s commitments south of the great rivers were a casualty of this new understanding. Since Holland’s war budget (including for the companies within Holland) was now pledged to the Union of Utrecht, money could be spent in Brabant only if the payment was authorized by the Union as part of Holland’s monthly quota.⁷⁹ Even before the Union was formally approved, the Noorderkwartier refused to charge against its gemene middelen an assigned quota of 16,000 pounds for soldiers in Brabant. After two months of negotiations, the North Hollanders agreed to borrow 8,000 for this purpose (April 1579), but the next month they would neither put their quota for the men in Brabant on the regular budget, nor borrow the money; in the Noorderkwartier’s stead, South Holland had to pay 20,000 pounds ‘provisionally’, asking His Excellency to settle the matter.⁸⁰ After the fall of Maastricht, Holland made no more than partial payments to garrison companies in Brussels and Vilvoorde, evidently of Tympel’s regiment.⁸¹ Special payments were occasionally approved, but only if the Union of Utrecht provided assurances that Holland would not be held responsible for anything still lacking in the wages of these companies.⁸² Inevitably, discipline among unpaid troops disintegrated.⁸³ Four Walloon companies, found to number no more than 200 men all told, took their ofﬁcers prisoner, and had to be mustered out by Holland ofﬁcials sent to Brussels and Vilvoorde.⁸⁴ In March 1580, while Tympel was away in Mechelen, his men pillaged churches and monasteries in Brussels, joined by some burghers, while others aided the magistrates in taking leaders of the attacks into custody. Colonel William Stuart, the highest-ranking ofﬁcer on the scene, appealed to the States General in Antwerp, which appealed to Holland and Zeeland for funds.⁸⁵ In December, Orange wrote to the States of Brabant on behalf of Tympel, who was owed for 14,000 pounds paid to his own soldiers, not counting what he

⁷⁹ e.g. RSH 1579, 216–17: 18 September 1579, Holland will send 13,333 pounds to its army paymaster in Antwerp, provided this sum is accepted by the Union of Utrecht as part of Holland’s monthly quota, currently 87,000 pounds. ⁸⁰ RSH 1579, 7, 49–50, 59, 71, 109: 27 January, 13, 21 March, 8 April 21 May 1579. ⁸¹ Orange to the States General, Ghent, 25 August 1579, Gachard, Letter 702, iv. 180–1; cf. RSH 1579, 217: 18 September 1579, the States are content that in the war budget of the States General, Holland shall have credit only for what the garrisons in Brussels and Vilvoorde have actually been paid, not for what they are owed. ⁸² RSH 1579, 248–9, 275–8: 22 October, 14 November 1579. ⁸³ RSG, ii. 658–60: 4, 8, 12 August 1579, nos. 311, 313, 314; iii. 668, 19 August 1579, no. 326; and iii. 671–2, 6 December 1579. ⁸⁴ RSH 1579, 255–6: 2 November 1579; RSH 1580, 2, 35: 12 January, 14 March 1580. ⁸⁵ Villiers to Orange, Antwerp, 17 March 1580, Groen, Letter 965, vii. 269–70; Henne and Wouters, Histoire de la ville de Bruxelles, iii. 528–9; the authors suggest Tympel’s absence may have been calculated, using the violence of his troops to force civil authorities to disgorge money for their wages.

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had spent for the capture of Mechelen over a year earlier; knowing that Brabant was short of cash, Orange suggested that Tympel might accept a hypotheek.⁸⁶ Eventually, for wage arrears accumulated between 1 February 1578 and 15 May 1581, Holland issued obligatiën for 103,336 to Tympel and seven of his captains, plus 44,231 to the city of Brussels for sums paid to them on Holland’s behalf.⁸⁷ While Tympel had to make due with promissory notes, Holland reserved cash for the Union of Utrecht.

H O L L A N D ’ S C O M PA N I E S A N D T H E U N I O N O F U T R E C H T, 1 5 7 9 – 1 5 8 2 The initial signatories to Union of Utrecht (23 January 1579) were Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Jan van Nassau (who presumed to sign on behalf of Gelderland), and the Ommelanden or hinterland of Groningen (but not the capital city). In the war budget for the Union, Holland was assessed at 83,000 pounds a month, while Zeeland, Utrecht, and Gelderland together were to pay 47,000.⁸⁸ Parma’s capture of Maastricht imposed on this nascent coalition the urgent need to throw a cordon sanitaire across the river valleys below Maastricht, to bar any forward thrust by royal troops.⁸⁹ Holland focused on enemy activity near Heusden, a small fortress town on a bend in the left bank of the Maas.⁹⁰ Heusden was vulnerable because of its proximity to the large city of ’s-Hertogenbosch, which reconciled with Parma (August 1579) after an attempted coup by local Calvinists. Taking ’s-Hertogenbosch would have secured Heusden, but two attacks organized from Holland were unsuccessful.⁹¹ Hence, to defend this south-eastern anchor of its chain of frontier fortresses, Holland took under its protection key Gelderland towns on the Maas and Waal. In addition to the three companies ⁸⁶ Orange to the States of Brabant, Antwerp, 24 December 1581, Gachard, Letter DCCCXXVIII, iv. 415–16. ⁸⁷ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 231. Most other debts included in this list of ‘obligatiën for military men’ refer to debts from the period 1572–6. ⁸⁸ Geyl, Revolt of the Netherlands, 170; F. C. Spits, ‘Unie en militie’, in S. Groenveld and H. L. P. van Leeuwenberg, De Unie van Utrecht ( The Hague: Nijhoff, 1979), 187. For the text of the agreement, S. Groenveld and H. L. P. Leeuwenberg, ‘ ‘‘De originale unie metten acten daernaer gevolcht’’ ’, 5–55. RSH 1582, 12–18: 20 January 1582, Friesland and Overijssel are now assessed for 20,000 and 7,000 pounds respectively, meaning that Holland was to pay 83,000 of a total of 157,000, or 52.8%. ⁸⁹ Orange to Jan van Nassau, stadtholder of Gelderland, Antwerp, 22 July 1579, Groen, Letter 901, vii. 15–16 ⁹⁰ RSH 1579, 236: 26 September 1579. ⁹¹ Groen, vii. 25–6; Het Staatsche Leger, i. 162, the city’s reconciliation with Parma (29 August 1579) was conﬁrmed on 20 December; RSH 1579, 239–40: 13 October 1579, Holland will pay for a river ﬂotilla in support of a planned attack.

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already posted at Nijmegen,⁹² Holland now took responsibility for garrisons at Bommel and Tiel (below Nijmegen on the Waal) and Grave (above Heusden on the Maas).⁹³ To Holland’s north and east, conditions were unsettled. In the States of Friesland, most deputies espoused the moderate programme of Archduke Matthias and the States General: they envisioned a Catholic Netherlands under the sovereignty of the king, but without Spanish troops, or Counter-Reformation bishops. There was, however, a minority, largely made up of returned exiles, many of them Calvinist, which had a clearer vision of its goals. This group, in control of the States college, decreed a Religious Peace in the summer of 1578, thus opening churches to Calvinists in the main towns—Leeuwarden, Harlingen, Stavoren, Franeker, and Dokkum. Since the college had made this important decision without summoning the full assembly, the States majority reacted, twice rejecting proposals from the college to join the new Union of Utrecht.⁹⁴ The States of Overijssel, wary of sharp differences between religious factions in the main cities,⁹⁵ hoped to stay out of the war altogether; thus while maintaining contact with both sides, they had neither agreed to join the Union of Utrecht, nor accepted Parma’s offer of reconciliation. In August 1579, delegates from the States of Overijssel asked the Union of Utrecht for letters patent from William of Orange, ordering local ofﬁcials throughout Overijssel to ‘beset and kill’ the unruly German horsemen on the Union’s payroll. Rennenberg, whose stadtholderate included Overijssel, persuaded the States to open negotiations instead, but the problem continued. Hence exasperated peasants took up arms against the foreign troops on their own initiative (December 1579). As of January 1580 Hohenlohe and his cavalry were at war with the farmers of Overijssel.⁹⁶ In Groningen the States assembly included delegates from the capital city as well as the Ommelanden (hinterland). Apart from the usual tensions between ⁹² RSH 1579, 152–5: 8 July 1579 (before the fall of Maastricht), Holland will not provide powder for Nijmegen, since it cannot pay for all cities on the frontier; Het Staatsche Leger, i. 53–4, Colonels Christoffel van IJsselstein and Jacob van Steinbach are to defend Upper Gelderland, including Nijmegen (1579); RSH 1579, 221: 18 September 1579, for the four new companies sent to Gelderland, Holland will receive credit on the Union of Utrecht budget only for sums actually paid; RSH 1580, 133–4, 160: 6, 30 July 1580, with RANH 239, 12, 15 November, 13 December 1580, South Holland insists that North Holland meet its responsibilities for three companies in Nijmegen. ⁹³ For Bommel, above, n. 12; RSH 1581, 529–30: 11 October 1581, Amsterdam consents to a hundredth-penny levy only if a budget item of 25,000 pounds for old debts is stricken, and the money goes for garrisons in Heusden, Tiel, Bommel, Gorinchem, and Grave. ⁹⁴ J. J. Woltjer, ‘In de leerschool der monarchie’, and ‘De kerk in de branding’, in J. J. Kalma, J J. Spahr van der Hoek, and K. De Vries, eds., Geschiedenis van Friesland (Leeuwarden: De Tille, 1980), 259–83, 284–300. ⁹⁵ Deventer, Kampen, and Zwolle. ⁹⁶ Reynier Cant to Jan van Nassau, 14 August 1579, Groen, Letter 915, vii. 85–9; Seyno van Dorth to Jan van Nassau, Zutphen, 31 December 1579, Letter 949, vii. 184–6: 5,000 peasants have taken to arms, led by former landsknechte; Reitsma, Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces, 170–99.

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town and countryside, there was also a balance of forces that, as in Overijssel, prevented a clear choice between the Union of Utrecht and Alexander of Parma. In Groningen, the Protestant and Staatsgezind party was well represented among the magistrates, but the burgers were mainly Catholic and Koningsgezind; leading nobles of the Ommelanden were mainly Protestant and Staatsgezind, but the independent peasantry of the district remained Catholic and Koningsgezind.⁹⁷ Finally, Rennenberg’s loyalty to the States General was by now an anomaly, for most Walloon Catholic noblemen had joined the Malcontents in coming to terms with Parma. Indeed, Catholics of his stadtholderate looked to Rennenberg to forestall a Calvinist terror such as they saw taking hold in the cities of Utrecht and Gelderland, often with the help of garrison soldiers paid by Holland. When the Union of Utrecht got a garrison into Zutphen (Gelderland), its commander was Barthold Entens, Lumey’s erstwhile lieutenant, known for his brutal treatment of Catholics. The States of Overijssel asked Rennenberg to have the garrison removed, but Jan van Nassau, as stadtholder of Gelderland, refused. When Sonoy replaced Entens as military governor of Zutphen, his troops joined minority Calvinists in a coup that gained control of the city; Rennenberg complained to Jan van Nassau, but was told that Zutphen’s Catholics had been behaving ‘suspiciously’. Matters came to a head in January 1580, when a visit from Rennenberg’s sister Cornelia aroused suspicion, rightfully, as it turned out, that she brought an offer from Alexander of Parma. In early February, without informing Rennenberg, the Union of Utrecht, the States of Friesland, and deputies from the Groningen Ommelanden transferred authority over troops in Friesland and Groningen to Barthold Entens. Townsmen in Leeuwarden (the capital) and in the port cities of Harlingen and Stavoren tore down their Spanishbuilt citadels⁹⁸ Meanwhile, in Groningen, 315 burghers, mostly guildsmen and magistrates, signed a compact proposed by Rennenberg, to resist all who would forcibly compel the city to adhere to the Union of Utrecht. After a Calvinist putsch was put down, both Rennenberg and the magistrates of Groningen, in separate letters to Parma, declared for the king (5 March 1580). Some towns in the Ommelanden also declared for the king. As soon as this ‘treason’ became known, the States of Friesland secured the moral authority of the Revolt in the now customary fashion by banning Catholic worship, so that only the Reformed religion was to be practised, in private or in public.⁹⁹ Thus in March 1580 the Union of Utrecht faced an arc of danger along the Zuider Zee. Loyalist outposts in Groningen, though separated from one ⁹⁷ Reitsma uses the contemporary Dutch terms, Staatsgezind and Spaansgezind, but Netherlands Catholics who came to terms with Parma in 1579 did so on condition that his Spanish troops be sent home; their loyalty was to the king, as sovereign prince of the country. ⁹⁸ Drente was a dependency of Groningen. The other towns were Appingedam (or Dam) and Delfzijl, both in the Ems estuary, and Bourtange. ⁹⁹ Ros, Rennenberg en de Groningse Malcontenten, 152–98.

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Map. 4 The Union of Utrecht, 1579–1582

another, were in communication with Parma, and Caspar de Robles known to be recruiting troops in north Germany.¹⁰⁰ Holland took a special interest in the two Frisian ports whose citadels had now been torn down—Stavoren, just across the water from Medemblik, and Harlingen, a bit to the north. In April 1580, the ¹⁰⁰ Ibid. 202. Robles had been stadtholder of Friesland, Groningen and Overijssel for Philip II until he was ousted in 1576.

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States sent a company from Amsterdam and half a company from Enkhuizen; their mission was to defend Harlingen and Stavoren against Rennenberg, and also to hold them as sureties; Holland was paying the men, but only on the promise of repayment from Friesland.¹⁰¹ When Renneberg broke out of Groningen (see below), Friesland needed further protection. In July 1580, by agreement with Orange and the States General, six Walloon companies under Michiel Caulier were brought up from Vilvoorde; Holland was to pay their wages from the time they arrived in Holland. In November, after the enemy brieﬂy captured Stavoren, two more Holland companies were sent up from Gelderland.¹⁰² As Rennenberg announced his change of allegiance, Sonoy was in Overijssel, building a fortress at Zwaartsluis, a position that would block a march by Rennenberg south along the coast of the Zuider Zee. Sonoy acted at the behest of the States of Friesland, without consulting Overijssel, but the States of Overijssel were even now being forced to choose sides. The peasant army that opposed Hohenlohe’s cavalry was reliably reported to be in contact with Parma; Orange, on behalf of the Union of Utrecht, offered protection for Overijssel. On 12 March, Staatsgezind burghers of Kampen arranged the entry of Captain Samplon’s company, from Sonoy’s regiment; their wages were to be paid by Holland. Five days later, Hohenlohe, having rallied his cavalry, defeated the main band of the rebel farmers.¹⁰³ Meanwhile, Barthold Entens prepared for a siege of Rennenberg’s stronghold in Groningen, with reinforcements from the Union of Utrecht: Hohenlohe’s cavalry and Holland’s ﬁeld regiment, now commanded by Count Willem Lodewijk,¹⁰⁴ the son of Jan van Nassau. In May the Groningers got word of a relief army marching from Germany, under the command of Maarten Schenk. In Overijssel, an effort by Catholic burghers to open Zwolle’s gates to Schenk was thwarted by the arrival of two Holland companies from Kampen.¹⁰⁵ But at ¹⁰¹ RANH 238, 3 April 1579; RSH 1580, 25–6: 6 February 1580; Het Staatsche Leger, i. 166–7; RSH 1580, 212: States of Friesland to States of Holland, 29 August 1580 (Holland may hold Stavoren until Friesland repays the costs for protecting it), and States of Holland to Amsterdam and Enkhuizen, 19 September 1580 (Amsterdam and Enkhuizen are to pay the soldiers in Stavoren and repair the fortress there). ¹⁰² RSH 1580, 128: 2 July 1580, Holland will send 300 pounds for each of Caulier’s six companies, now at Vilvoorde, and pay them the rest of their ﬁrst month’s wage for action in Friesland when they arrive in Holland; Resolutiën der Staten-Generaal, 6 July 1580, no. 156, p. 89; RANH 239, 9, 17, 23 November 1580, the companies of Roelant Forster and Jacob Steyn are brought up from Nijmegen. ¹⁰³ Reitsma, Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces, 206–11, 146; RANH 239, 23 February 1581, North Holland objects to taking Samplon’s company off its payroll, because, it is said, Kampen is content with Samplon. On the battle, near Doetinchem, Jan van Nassau to Orange, 5 April 1580, Groen, vii. 311–14. ¹⁰⁴ Het Staatsche Leger, i. 152–3; men from Willem Lodewijk’s ten companies, scattered in the Battle of Hardenberg, were re-formed into ﬁve companies. ¹⁰⁵ Reitsma, Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces, 215; RSH 1580, 110–11: 17 June 1580, having sent a company to the aid of Zwolle, Kampen asks for help from Amsterdam, which agrees to dispatch one of its three garrison companies, under Jan Duyn.

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Hardenberg, east of Zwolle, Schenk routed Hohenlohe and Willem Lodewijk (17 June 1580). Entens’s troops took fright and abandoned their sconces before Groningen, despite Sonoy’s pleas to await further news; Willem Lodewijk did his best to make the retreat to Friesland an orderly one.¹⁰⁶ In early October, the royalist army, having reached the Zuider Zee, arrived before Steenwijk, the ﬁrst walled town on the Overijssel coastline. Steenwijk was the ﬁrst test of Holland’s ability to support a major campaign beyond its borders. To begin with, there had to be a capable commander. Willem Lodewijk was a young man of promise, as yet unproven; Hohenlohe had experience, but did not inspire conﬁdence.¹⁰⁷ Hence the Lords States sent emissaries to Colonel John Norris, then in Friesland. Shortly after signing on with the States General, Norris’s English regiment joined in the charge that forced Don Juan’s retreat at Rijmenam (August 1578). After service in Flanders, he brought his twelve companies up to Friesland in July 1580; the States General requested the Four Members of Flanders to continue paying their wages, but it is doubtful that they did.¹⁰⁸ On 3 November Norris contracted to undertake the relief of Steenwijk; Holland would pay his men from a sum of 50,000 pounds in cash already promised to the Union of Utrecht. Reynier Simonszoon van Neck, Amsterdam’s receiver for the gemene middelen, was sent to Kampen to make sure that money coming from Holland was paid out only according to the orders of Holland’s commissioners there. North Holland at ﬁrst refused to assume responsibility for getting Norris’s regiment across the Zuider Zee, but after the usual haggling, the seven cities of the Noorderkwartier borrowed 8,300 pounds, and had twenty-four ships ready to bring Norris and his men to Steenwijk by the end of December, together with pioneers to do the work of entrenching. In February 1581 Rennenberg broke off the siege, and Norris’s regiment returned to Friesland.¹⁰⁹ During the summer of 1581, Francisco Verdugo, sent by Parma to serve as Rennenberg’s deputy, took over as royal commander in this region, Rennenberg having died in the interim.¹¹⁰ Verdugo’s troops were effective in ﬁghting against ¹⁰⁶ Het Staatsche Leger, i. 166–7; Willem Lodewijk to Jan van Nassau, 22 June 1580, Groen, Letter 985, vii. 369–73; Ros, Rennenberg en de Groningse Malcontenten, 198–203. Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, ii. 305: Schenk had 3,000 infantry and 600 Albanian light horse. ¹⁰⁷ See the letter of Aggaeus van Albada to Arent Corneliszoon van der Mijle, 1 October 1579, cited by Groen, vii. 85–9: ‘Non puto te ignorare in quanta pericula levitas ac securitas biosi istius iuvenis . . . partes nostras adduxit.’ Bios was a Greek wine favoured by the Romans. ¹⁰⁸ Het Staatsche Leger, i. 46; Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, i. 274. The conduct of this regiment over the next year makes it clear their wages were in arrears. ¹⁰⁹ RSG, iii. 90: 11 July 1580, no. 158, and iii. 94: 25 August 1580, no. 160; RSH 1580, 233–5, 245–6: 3–4, 17 November 1580; RANH 239, 9, 17, 18, 23 November, 25 December (His Excellency has set North Holland’s quota for the relief of Steenwijk at 8,300 pounds, the towns are to borrow the money), 31 December 1580; Ros, Rennenberg en de Groningse Malcontenten, 204–5. ¹¹⁰ Rennenberg himself died 22 July 1581; Francisco de Verdugo took over as commander for Groningen, Friesland, and Overijssel in the king’s name, though not as stadtholder: Francisco

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Norris’s regiment, which was eventually sent back south across the rivers, but they did not pose a threat to the Union of Utrecht’s positions until the next year. In July 1582, Verdugo’s second-in-command, Jean-Baptiste de Tassis, built a sconce before the walls of Lochem on the Brekel, a stream that ﬂows into the IJssel at Zutphen. Sensing an opportunity, Verdugo joined forces with Tassis, and his emissary persuaded Parma to send further reinforcements. Now the battle was joined, for, as Verdugo puts it, ‘the neighbouring cities, especially Zutphen and Deventer, threatened to surrender to His Majesty if Lochem were not relieved’.¹¹¹ To form a relief force, the Landraad wanted 30,000 pounds from Holland, while Hohenlohe wanted to bring up the four and a half Holland garrison companies serving under him at Heusden, along with his troop of 300 cavalry. The States approved 16,000 pounds for the Landraad, but would not release the Heusden garrison companies from their posting; instead, they offered 200 pounds per company for a week’s wages for each of the French companies Hohenlohe had arranged to bring up from Brabant, plus another 20,000 for victuals and munitions for the relief army. By Verdugo’s account, his men achieved some success, notably in expelling Hohenlohe’s French companies from the sconces they had built. But, seeing that the rising of the Brekel made it impossible to prevent the city from being resupplied—‘for those of Zutphen had stopped the waters with their mills’—he decided in mid-September to withdraw.¹¹² Frustrated at Lochem, Verdugo moved on to Steenwijk, where he soon captured the city that had held off Rennenberg. Regardless of what was happening to the south of the great rivers, Spain’s smaller forces in the north caused enough trouble to demand the full attention of Holland and the Union of Utrecht. Decisions by the States of Holland during these years reﬂect a clear sense of priorities. To secure and guard Holland’s frontiers they spent as necessary. While not abandoning their commitments south of the great rivers, they put off the day of reckoning by issuing obligatiën. To defend Friesland, Overijssel, and Gelderland, Holland’s outer lines of defence, they gave not everything that was asked by the Union of Utrecht, but, in most cases, enough to get the job done. With Parma’s army based in the south, this was a poor strategy for defeating Spain. It was, however, an effective strategy for gaining the objective of the Lords States: ‘it is better to ﬁght the war with the help of neighbouring provinces and Verdugo, Commentario de la guerra de Frisa, ed. Henri Lonchay (Brussels: Kiessling et cie., 1899), p. xiii. ¹¹¹ Ibid. 26–32 (the quote, 28); Verdugo has the prince of Orange sending Hohenlohe to the relief of Lochem. There is no doubt that Orange will have given his approval to a redeployment of troops under his command, but at the initiative of the Landraad east of the Maas and the States of Holland. ¹¹² Ibid. 30–9 (the quote, 38); RSH 1582, 345–6, 357–8, 389, 429–30, 451: 17, 20 July, 19 August, 5, 22–23 September 1582.

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cities, and on their ground, than for Holland to separate from the other provinces and seek to defend itself alone.’¹¹³ Shielded by its outer bulwarks,¹¹⁴ Holland’s garden remained secure. ¹¹³ RSH 1582, 28: 23 January 1582, though it means borrowing against the gemene middelen to the tune of 100,000 pounds per month, Holland accepts the Union of Utrecht war budget, for the deputies ﬁnd ‘dat oock beter is den Oorloge te volvoeren, by hulpe ende op den bodem van den nagebuyren Landen ende steden, dan dat de voorschreven Landen van Hollandt van andere landen souden separeren, ende haer alleen meynen te defenderen’. ¹¹⁴ RSH 1582, 471, 474–9: 4, 6 October 1582, Holland’s emissaries will secretly ask Orange to request of Anjou that Holland’s twenty-ﬁve companies beyond its borders will be posted in the towns already guarded by Holland companies, like Tiel and Bommel (in Gelderland) and Stavoren and Harlingen (in Friesland).

8 Paying for an Ever More Expensive War Philip II’s second suspension of payments (1575)¹ led to the collapse of Spain’s military position in the Netherlands a year later. Yet leaders of the Revolt knew that lenders would soon regain conﬁdence in Philip II’s vast incomes. In fact, once the ﬁghting resumed, the States of Holland had to meet the costs of a steadily rising war budget. There had to be a revenue stream that was predictable, and politically acceptable to the burghers whose town corporations sent deputies to the States assembly. Export and transit trades, Holland’s lifeblood, were thus not taxed beyond what was needed for warships guarding the sea lanes.² Instead, land warfare was to be supported from the gemene middelen—land and excise taxes that could be collected without enquiring into a burgher’s moveable wealth. After 1576, the gemene middelen were about enough for the garrison companies on Holland’s payroll, including those now stationed beyond the borders. For costs of the war not covered by the gemene middelen, money had to be raised on credit. To make room for new loans, one ﬁrst had to manage the overhang of old debt so as to pay off only those creditors who absolutely could not be put off. New credit came from within Holland. More adventurous lenders subscribed voluntarily in loans raised by district receivers of the gemene middelen; others acquiesced in new repartitiën decreed by the States, and raised by town magistrates. Both for new loans and for selected ‘old debts’ there also had to be a means of paying off principal. The States favoured a tax on real property, but long-contended questions limited the amount of such levies. Also, Amsterdam, citing its 1578 Satisfaction, refused liability for debts contracted by the province prior to that date. Compromise on this issue (December 1581) opened the way for progress toward a real-property tax that could bring in as much as 440,000 pounds a year for debt clearance.

T H E C O S TS O F WA R , 1 5 7 6 – 1 5 8 2 Garrison companies remained the most important item in Holland’s military budget. In December 1576 Holland and Zeeland together agreed to maintain ¹ The ﬁrst had been in 1557; see Chapter 1.

² The convoyen and licenten.

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ﬁfty companies, reduced to 113 men each, of which Zeeland was responsible for no more than six. In June 1578, Holland pledged to support twenty-two companies within the province, now raised to 150 men, sometimes 200, plus twenty-ﬁve stationed beyond the borders.³ At prevailing wages, forty-seven garrison companies of 150 men would have meant 79,900 pounds in monthly wages.⁴ To cut costs, the States accepted Orange’s recommendation to pay the soldiers a month’s (or four weeks’) wages only every six weeks; this was in part a recognition of the fact that board-and-lodging fees (otherwise deductible from soldiers’ pay) were now paid separately.⁵ Two-thirds of 79,900 would be 53,266, a ﬁgure that reasonably approximates the 54,100 monthly cost of Holland companies mentioned in States of Holland resolutions.⁶ In addition, there were monthly charges of at least 6,000 for ofﬁcers’ pay,⁷ and perhaps 8,000 for board-and-lodging fees,⁸ especially for companies stationed outside Holland:⁹ in all about 68,000 a month. Other expenses dictated by circumstance could match or exceed this total. In 1577, for example, Holland lent Zeeland 20,000 pounds at 18 per cent for dyke repairs on the island of Schouwen, so as to restore the ‘bulwarks’ of Zierikzee,¹⁰ and paid 32,000 pounds to help Boussu get German garrisons out of the towns they held, plus 12,000 to get a Spanish garrison out of Vredenburg Castle in Utrecht.¹¹ Through the ﬁrst half of 1578, North Holland claimed debts of 100,000 pounds for back wages of companies that were mustered out or reduced in size; since the Noorderkwartier was responsible for only about a quarter of the companies, the total spent for this purpose may have been 400,000 pounds.¹² Meanwhile, although the States General were unrealistic in their expectations

³ Chapter 7, n. 68. ⁴ The standard monthly wage for a company of 150 men in the war budgets of these years (including the one for January 1582, discussed below) was 1,700 pounds, not counting ofﬁcers’ pay or lodging fees. ⁵ RSH 1583, 445: 23 August 1581, captains in the Noorderkwartier say they would rather be mustered out than accept the new pay regime. Cf. RSH 22 January 1582, 18–20, Holland gets credit in the Union of Utrecht war budget for 10,000 in board-and-lodging fees, so as to pay soldiers a month’s wages only every six weeks. ⁶ RSH 1581, 247–8: 4 June 1581; cf. the Union of Utrecht war budget, RSH 1582, 12–18: 20 January 1582, Holland is listed for the equivalent of twenty-nine companies of 150 men, costing 48,250 per month, or 50,300 counting 100 cavalry, but only 33,886 with the one-third reduction. ⁷ RSH 1582, 12–18: 8–16 January 1582, 6,100 for ofﬁcers’ pay (tractamenten). ⁸ RANH 239, prior to the entry for 23 September 1580, a tally of 16,265 in wages for North Holland’s ten companies, reduced by 2,765 ‘because of the 17% we are to hold back’. This sum is roughly equivalent to a separate tally of 2,459 for ‘loans’, including lodging costs which were reckoned, in stuivers per day, from 1.4 for a common soldier to 6 for a company captain. Cf. RSH 1581, 211: 25 May 1581. ⁹ RSH 1576, 95–6: 27 November 1576, magistrates of frontier cities may take lodging fees from provincial funds, at the rate of six stuivers a week for a foot soldier. ¹⁰ RSH 1577, 110–12: 14–15 June 1577. ¹¹ Bor, Oorsprong, x. 807. ¹² RANH 238, 22 May 1578.

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of what Holland could pay,¹³ the gentlemen-deputies in Antwerp, backed by Orange, insisted on getting something. Thus in July 1577 Holland offered 150,000 over eight months, a sum possibly intended for back wages for Olivier van Tympel’s regiment in Brussels.¹⁴ Once the Union of Utrecht was formed (January 1579), Holland agreed to monthly quotas ‘for the States General’ only insofar as the States General was counting for this purpose Holland’s monthly quota for the ‘Closer Union’,¹⁵ that is, 80,000 per month in 1579, 83,000 per month as of June 1581.¹⁶ Eighty thousand pounds a month would be 12,000 more than the 68,000 needed for soldiers’ pay and other expenses of the companies on Holland’s payroll. Though Holland did not always pay what it owed on time,¹⁷ cash transfers for the beneﬁt of the Union of Utrecht (or the States General) probably averaged more than 12,000 pounds a month. Between May and August 1579, for example, ﬁscal ofﬁcials in Holland were instructed to borrow, or take from the gemene middelen receipts, a total of 154,000: 28,000 for the relief of Maastricht, 40,000 to 50,000 for Tympel’s regiment in Brussels, 20,000 for the defence of Venlo and the Maas below Maastricht, and 16,000 for other needs of the Union of Utrecht.¹⁸ In November 1580 Holland promised 50,000 for the relief of Steenwijk, part of which was to go to Norris’s regiment.¹⁹ In September 1581 another 67,000 was approved for troops in Friesland.²⁰ Counting the 68,000 a month for the forty-seven companies, plus extra expenses, Holland probably spent more than 80,000 pounds a month, or around 1,000,000 pounds per year.²¹ Starting in summer 1581, the Landraad east of the Maas sought to regularize the Union of Utrecht’s military expenditures. The war budget for 1582, submitted to the provinces in January, called for 11,730 men on garrison duty, of which 4,350 (37 per cent), the equivalent of twenty-nine companies of 150, were said to be posted in Holland.²² At approximately 11.1 pounds per man per month, the nominal wage for 11,730 men was about 130,100, including 48,250 for ¹³ In July 1577, the States General asked Holland for sums in excess of 1,000,000 pounds: Bor, Oorsprong, xi. 870–1. ¹⁴ Ibid. 870–1. ¹⁵ RSH 1580, 64–9, 82–3: 21 April, 10 May 1580, the deputies will consider a States General quota as high as 100,000 pounds a month (they think they can get by with 80,000), provided the money pays ﬁrst for garrisons on Holland’s payroll. ¹⁶ RSH 1579, 151–2: 7 July 1579; RSH 1580, 192: 9 September 1580; RSH 1581, 229–30, 238–9: 31 May, 2 June 1581: Holland and Zeeland together agree to a joint quota of 100,000 per month, with Zeeland responsible for 17,000 and Holland for 83,000. ¹⁷ e.g. RSH 1581 [512–13]: 29 September 1581, according to the Landraad, Holland still owes 67,000 for sums due in the months of June, July, and August. ¹⁸ RSH 1579, 83–4, 151–2, [198–9], [202]: 2 May, 7 July, 26, 28 August 1579. ¹⁹ RSH 1580, [233–5]: 3–4 November 1580. ²⁰ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99C; RANH 239, 11 August 1581. ²¹ Liesker and Fritschy conclude that ‘total war costs’ for Holland amounted to 960,000 pounds in 1580, 947,133 in 1582: Gewestelijke ﬁnanciën, Holland, Bijlage A.1, p. 494 . ²² There were actually twenty-two companies, some having 200 men, including three companies stationed in Grave (Gelderland), on the upper Maas.

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the soldiers in Holland. Ofﬁcers’ pay and Orange’s guard cost another 12,679, while 597 cavalry, much better paid, were owed 16,330.²³ The cost of a ﬁeld army, with twenty-ﬁve infantry companies and 800 cavalry, was set at a bit less than 80,000, making a monthly war budget of some 240,000 pounds. Since the Union of Utrecht (like Holland) paid monthly wages only every forty-two days, all wage costs were reduced by a third, leaving a total of 164,000, or, subtracting a few incidentals, a bit less than 138,000. But if Holland had 37 per cent of the garrison soldiers, it was responsible for 60 per cent of the budget (83,000 of 138,000).²⁴ To be more precise, 83,000 a month was exactly what was needed for the forty-seven companies²⁵ Holland had repeatedly agreed to support. By the calculations of Holland’s deputies, their province was being asked for the regular quota of 83,000 pounds per month, plus 10,000 for board-and-lodging fees, plus two large assessments for the ﬁeld army, or about 120,000 pounds per month for the duration of the campaign season (1 March–31 October 1582). This price, though high, was not too much to pay, if it meant ‘keeping the war on our neighbour’s ground’.²⁶

GEMENE MIDDELEN In March 1576, during the siege of Zierikzee, the States adopted signiﬁcantly higher excise rates, including thirty pounds for a cask of Spanish or Rhine wine, twenty-one pounds for a barrel of Jopenbier from Hamburg, and twenty-four stuivers for each barrel of domestic beer a burgher had carted into his house.²⁷ Over the next six years some rates were slightly increased.²⁸ The beer excise, though collected in the countryside as well,²⁹ was especially lucrative in the cities; in Amsterdam it accounted for 30 per cent of the revenue in the collection district of Amstelland.³⁰ Cities had ceded a share of their own beer and wine excise to the ²³ About twenty-ﬁve pounds per month per man on average. One hundred cavalry were stationed in Holland. ²⁴ RSH 1582, 12–18: 20 January 1582. ²⁵ At 150 men. ²⁶ RSH 1582, 18–20, 28–9, 37, 92: 22, 23, 25 January, 3 March 1582. ²⁷ RSH 1576, 16–19: 15 March 1576, the table of rates, with minor changes; RSH 1576, 23–8, 41, 48–53: 23 March, 15, 23 April 1576, rates proclaimed in the king’s name. ²⁸ RSH 1580, 155: 26 July 1580, the tax on turf exported from Holland goes from one oortgen (a quarter of a stuiver) per barrel to three. RSH 1581, 141: 14 April 1581: the sales tax for livestock is raised to 4%, the tax on reﬁned salt from ﬁfty to ﬁfty-four pounds per hundred, and the tax on herring to six stuivers per barrel. RSH 1582, 64: 14 February 1582, all cities but Dordrecht agree to raise the wine excise. ²⁹ RANH 238, 1 March 1577: apart from the seven cities of the Noorderkwartier, beer is to be unloaded only on the islands of Texel, Vlieland, and Wieringen; at Petten (gateway to the Zijpe polder); at Huisduinen (opposite Texel); at Spaarndam (on the IJ); and at ‘Brouckhaven’ (perhaps the harbour of Grootebroeck, west of Enkhuizen). ³⁰ RAZH 3.01.28, no. 1695, summary account of Reynier van Neck as receiver of the gemene middelen for Amsterdam and Amstelland for 14 May–31 December 1578; the beer excise in Amsterdam yielded 41,300 of the total revenue of 127,308, or 32.44%.

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common cause, but they were now allowed to claim half the receipts, as opposed to one-third.³¹ The shift was most likely made without increasing the overall rate for this politically sensitive tax. Counting two stuivers for a separate provincial tax dedicated to ammunition,³² a burgher owed the excise farmer forty-two stuivers (2.1 pounds) for each barrel of domestic beer consumed by his family.³³ Other excises were speciﬁc to rural areas, like the tax on sown land, or the 2 per cent sales tax for livestock, or the fee of one stuiver per month for each ‘horned beast’ more than two years old.³⁴ Even though a majority of Hollanders lived within town walls, it seems the countryside paid more in the gemene middelen than the towns did.³⁵ In 1575 the gemene middelen brought in 24,000 pounds per month.³⁶ No source I have seen gives ﬁgures for 1576 or 1577, but revenue was surely increased by the reintegration of two collection districts hitherto under Spanish control, Haarlem (Kennemerland) in January 1577, and Amsterdam (Amstelland) in May 1578. Haarlem initially refused to collect the gemene middelen, because of claims to compensation for an estimated 520,000 pounds spent during the unsuccessful defence of the city against Fadrique de Toledo (1572/3).³⁷ But sums collected by Amsterdam’s receiver for the gemene middelen were about 16 per cent of the total for Holland in 1578, and 13 per cent in 1582.³⁸ To my knowledge, the ³¹ See Chapter 5, n. 13; below, n. 32. ³² In 1577, this tax was reduced from four stuivers per barrel to two, at the insistence of Delft: RSH 1577, 51, 63, 75–6, 189–200: 15 April, 12, 15 May, and 20–3 August 1577. RSH 1580, 38–9: 10 March 1580, two stuivers are to be subtracted from the twenty stuivers that cities could claim for themselves, not added to the existing overall rate of forty-two stuivers per barrel. ³³ RSH 1576, 208–9: 24 December 1576, seeking to levy a beer and wine excise to pay its debts, the island of Overﬂakkee is authorized to ‘do as the towns do’, and collect twenty stuivers per barrel. RSH 1579, 223–4: 22 September 1579, Delft complains that Hoorn violates the rule of taxing domestic beer equally, by collecting the full forty-two stuivers for Delft heavy beer, but ten stuivers less for local beers. ³⁴ RSH 1576, 41: 15 April 1576, some in the States wanted higher taxes on livestock, but this was left to Orange’s discretion; RSH 1578, 19: 10 September 1578, one stuiver a month for horned beasts. ³⁵ RSH 1582, 413–14: 24 August 1582, a list of six-month gemene middelen tax-farm contracts within the walls of nineteen cities, totalling 166,912. One-month ﬁgures for the entire collection districts of receivers based in eight towns south of the IJ (Amsterdam, Brill, Delft, Dordrecht, Gouda, Haarlem, Leiden, and Rotterdam), also given, yield a six-month total of 357,442 pounds. RANH 239, 16 December 1582, monthly receipts for the Noorderkwartier’s seven cities are 18,919, meaning 113,514 for six months. Thus townsfolk paid 46.7 of the gemene middelen in Holland south of the IJ, and 42.5% in the Noorderkwartier, or 45.7% overall. ³⁶ Chapter 5, n. 17. ³⁷ RSH 1580, 21–2: 3 February 1580, Haarlem has yet to set the gemene middelen in train, alleging its Satisfaction, and debts from the siege; cf. Chapter 5, n. 24. ³⁸ A summary of Reynier van Neck’s ﬁrst account as collector of the gemene middelen for his native city (14 May–31 December 1578) shows a total of 69,788 for 1 July–31 December (RAZH 3.01.28, no. 1695). According to a summary prepared for Leicester in 1586 (cited in the following note), Holland’s gemene middelen brought in 430,575 for the same period. RSH 1582, 577–8: 13 December 1582, Jan Pieterszoon Reael collects 9,492 per month for Amsterdam and Amstelland, or 56,952 for six months, which would be 13.2% of the total given in RAZH 3.01.28, no. 1695.

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only surviving overview of gemene middelen income for the years 1578–82 comes from a French-language summary prepared for the earl of Leicester in 1586, and now published by two Dutch historians.³⁹ Figures may be given here as monthly averages: 1578 - 68,199 1579 - 63,490 1580 - 68,135 1581 - 69,520 1582 - 72,308 Occasional references to gemene middelen income in States of Holland resolutions corroborate these ﬁgures.⁴⁰ The totals represent what Holland’s tax farmers contracted to pay over a three- or six-month term,⁴¹ but actual receipts may have been higher. In 1582, North Holland wanted its receiver-general, Hendrick van Wou, to be assessed for a loan at the rate of his stated gemene middelen totals (about 13,000 pounds per month), rather than at the level of actual receipts, calculated at 18,919.⁴² But sums actually collected may also have been lower, because farmers could not meet their contracts,⁴³ or because towns were permitted to hold back part of the receipts, e.g. for fortiﬁcation.⁴⁴ In theory, the gemene middelen were to pay for the companies on Holland’s payroll, and nothing else.⁴⁵ In practice, magistrates of the main town in each ³⁹ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99B, ‘Estat sommier des charges de la guerre au terre que du revenu des moyens generals au payment dicelles destinees, aynsi quelles son descheus in Hollande, 1578–1586’. Liesker and Fritschy, Gewestelijke ﬁnanciën, Holland, Bijlage A.2, 497–503. ⁴⁰ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99B, monthly average of 68,496 for the period 1 April–30 September 1580. RSH 3 March 1582, the 71,711 that Holland still owes for its quotas to the Union of Utrecht in recent months is said to be ‘dat haerluyder middelen van de contributiën over Holland ter maend bedragen’; RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99B, monthly average of 71,711 for the period 1 October 1581 to 31 March 1582. ⁴¹ The gemene middelen were regularly renewed by the States for terms of three to six months; north of the IJ the excises were not farmed, but collected by ofﬁcials appointed by the Noorderkwartier’s receiver-general (e.g. RANH 238, 15 February 1577). ⁴² RSH 1582, 577–8: 13 December 1582, with RANH 239, 16 December 1582: to raise 72,000 for Anjou and the States General, receivers south of the IJ were to borrow sums equal to their monthly receipts, 58,921 in all, while Wou in North Holland was to borrow 18,919, equal to his monthly receipts; but the college in Hoorn orders him to borrow no more than is needed to make up the 72,000 [13,079]. ⁴³ RSH 1580, 43: 25 March 1580, let district receivers remind excise-farmers that the States intend to recover from them whatever may be lost through non-payment. ⁴⁴ RANH 239, preceding the entry for 23 September 1580, and 9 November 1580: the net (suver) for gemene middelen in the Noorderkwartier is only 15,748, not 17,000, because some localities have been given gratiën. Cf. RSH 1580, 211: 16 September 1580, and RSH 1581, 257–8: 8 June 1581, Naarden is granted all of its gemene middelen to help pay for its new bastion-trace fortiﬁcations. ⁴⁵ RSH 1577, 117: 26 June 1577; cf. RSH 1579, 26: 24 February 1579, since the gemene middelen are only for soldiers’ wages and ofﬁcers’ pay, Amsterdam will hold back its revenue if the money is used for settling old debts.

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collection district had a lot to say about how money was disbursed.⁴⁶ In the Noorderkwartier, deputies clung to the view that money left over after paying for the companies actually stationed in North Holland should go for settling burghers’ debts secured by the gemene middelen, not for the wages of companies transferred out of the Noorderkwartier to Gelderland or Friesland.⁴⁷ In Holland south of the IJ, the States forbade town magistrates to ‘hinder’ the collection of provincial revenues, or ‘exercise command’ over the receivers.⁴⁸ This resolution was not intended to direct the ﬂow of cash; after 1575, there is no evidence that district receivers south of the IJ remitted their receipts to Delft or The Hague.⁴⁹ Rather, the aim was to control spending: payments were to be made only on the basis of orders (ordonnantiën) issued by the receiver-general or the Council of Finance.⁵⁰ Yet town magistrates did as they pleased. Gouda, for example, ‘withheld’ its gemene middelen because of an inlandwaterway dispute with Leiden, and continued ‘withholding’ the money even after the dispute was settled.⁵¹ Leiden chose to pay the arrears of its own garrison rather than the current wages of other companies assigned on its gemene middelen receipts. On another occasion, the district receiver for Rijnland (Leiden) reported that the burgomasters had ‘preremptorily taken’ 2,600 pounds from his ofﬁce for the salaries of university professors, and would do so each quarter, unless other provision were made.⁵² In 1579, the States tried and failed to contest Amsterdam’s right to take 12,000 pounds from its gemene middelen to repay a loan by burghers.⁵³ The next year, because of a dispute over how convoy fees were collected, Amsterdam’s burgomasters announced that they had ‘forbidden’ collectors of gemene middelen revenues as well as convoy fees in their city to make any payments, ‘save through the hands’ of the burgomasters.⁵⁴ In September 1580, Rotterdam consented to a six-month continuation of the gemene middelen ⁴⁶ RSH 1579, 317–18: 21 December 1579, several cities agree to terminate the contracts of all current receivers of the gemene middelen, provided the cities nominate their successors; RSH 1581, 105–6: 22 March 1581, Amsterdam insists that each receiver be a burgher of the district’s main city, and reside there. ⁴⁷ RSH 1579, 264: 10 November 1579; RSH 1580, 77–8, 133–4, 158: 6 May, 6 July, 29 July 1580. ⁴⁸ RSH 1581, 111: 23 March 1581. ⁴⁹ See below, n. 59. ⁵⁰ RSH 1580, 137–8: 8 July 1580, a proposal to have town magistrates make disbursements of gemene middelen receipts would have the money be paid according to assignatiën issued by the States; RSH 1581, 518: 6 October 1581, Amsterdam is chided for paying its garrison companies, without ‘prior knowledge of the States’. ⁵¹ RSH 1577, 89, 20: 24 May, 13 February 1579, referring to a old quarrel over the closing of the Vliet at Leidschendam south of Leiden (see Chapter 3). The word ‘withheld’ seems to mean not properly accounting for the incomes of the district. ⁵² RSH 1579, 283: 20 November 1579, with RSH 1580, 212: 19 September 1580, citing a letter from Jan Lucaszoon, the receiver. Two thousand six hundred pounds would have been about 10% of quarterly receipts: RSH 1582, 577–8: 13 December 1582, when receivers are to borrow the equivalent of a month’s receipts, Jan Lucaszoon’s assigned total was 8,980. ⁵³ RSH 1579, 14–15, 54–5, 68–9: 10 February, 19 March, 4 April 1579. ⁵⁴ RSH 1580, 212–13, 215–17: 30 September, 6 October 1580.

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only on condition that ‘no money leave our city until the debts of our burghers are paid, as is done in other cities’. In 1581, when the States instituted a 2 per cent tax on excise-farm contracts to pay the salaries of Reformed preachers, it was because several cities were already taking gemene middelen money for this purpose.⁵⁵ The reason that magistrates got away with bending the rules was that the gemene middelen could not have been collected and disbursed without their active collaboration. Those who bid for excise-farm contracts had to have guarantors, to guard against default; to be doubly sure the States declared that local magistrates were actionable as co-guarantors.⁵⁶ Some deputies wanted to tie the personal credit of town magistrates even more intimately to the province’s most important revenues. In 1579 it was proposed that either the magistrates of the main town (e.g. Leiden) or the receiver for that collection district (e.g. Rijnland) should ‘obligate’ themselves or himself for the full amount of expected gemene middelen receipts; payment orders for the infantry companies could thus be written on these obligatiën, dispensing with the need for ‘any other kind of assignation’.⁵⁷ To reduce the costs of collection, and to provide greater ‘security’ for the revenue, it was proposed in July 1580 that payments due from tax farmers in each city should be ‘placed in the hands of the magistrates’, for disbursal by order of the Lords States. The nobles and a number of cities supported this idea, but other cities and the Noorderkwartier voted it down.⁵⁸ What lay behind these proposals was a struggle for ﬁnancial control. To the end of 1575, district receivers of the gemene middelen still accounted for their income and disbursements to Holland’s receiver-general, Jacob Muys of Dordrecht. Though Muys stayed on as receiver-general until 1581, he seems no longer to have collected or accounted for the gemene middelen. Cornelis van Mierop, Muys’s successor, makes no mention of money from the gemene middelen in his account for 1581–2.⁵⁹ In the States, some deputies wondered whether Holland needed a receiver-general, because ‘all the income’ was being collected by the district receivers. In States resolutions, and in rebuttals to the lawsuit that Muys brought against the States, the reasons given for not renewing his contract as receiver-general were that he refused to accept the salary reduction the States ⁵⁵ RSH 1580, 186: 3 September 1580, and RSH 1581, 244: 4 June 1581. ⁵⁶ RSH 1581, 157: 20 April 1581, if held to respond as guarantors in subsidium, magistrates will look closely into the solvency of a tax farmer’s guarantors. ⁵⁷ RSH 1579, 157: 9 July 1579; I have not found any record of a decision. ⁵⁸ RSH 1580, 137–8: 8 July 1580, the proposal; RSH 1580, 155: 27 July 1580, the nobles and six cities approve, three others ﬁnd it not advisable. The Noorderkwartier was willing to have town magistrates answerable for their receipts, provided that the rijkdom of each village bore the same responsibility. ⁵⁹ 59 For Muys’s 1574–5 account, Chapter 5, n. 17. RSH 1576, 193: 17 November 1576; cf. RSH 1582, 532: 12 October 1581, the States would only continue Muys’s appointment at a lower salary, because ‘scarcely a quarter of the receipts mentioned in his [1574] commission remain’. Mierop’s account, RAZH 3.01.28, no. 352.

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imposed on ﬁscal ofﬁcials, and that he authorized payment of interest on old States of Holland renten to persons not eligible to receive such payments.⁶⁰ These were not trivial matters, but there were also larger issues at stake. Muys had been a loyal conﬁdant of Orange since the beginning of the Revolt, and it looks as if Orange’s partisans in the States rallied to his defence.⁶¹ What Muys represented was the principle of centralized accountability, meaning that Holland’s revenues would be transparent, and thus accessible to the demands of Orange and the States General. By contrast, most of the gentlemen-deputies wanted to husband the province’s resources for protection of Holland’s Garden. Absent the kind of centralized control that Muys represented, only the town magistrates had the capacity to mobilize gemene middelen receipts in an emergency.⁶² Thus in June 1581, when 177,000 pounds had to be raised quickly for the ﬁghting against Verdugo’s forces in Friesland, the States ordered all gemene middelen income for May to July to be ‘bound, and remain in the hands of the magistrates’.⁶³ When magistrates diverted gemene middelen receipts to other purposes, there was that much less money available for the garrison companies, so that the soldiers often had to be paid with borrowed money. But the problem was more basic: Holland now had war expenses of perhaps 120,000 pounds per month, but the gemene middelen yielded only a bit more than 70,000 pounds per month. In other words, even if gemene middelen money were not set aside for repayments of burghers’ loans or the salaries of university professors, there would not have been enough. If Holland was to continue ﬁghting, it had to ﬁght on credit—presuming, that is, that a province with a large overhang of old debt could still borrow new money.

T H E M A N AG E M E N T O F D E BT The ﬁrst principle of debt management was to prevent the debt from growing larger by inadvertence. The gentlemen-deputies insisted that only they, acting as a body (staatsgewys), could pledge Holland’s full faith and credit. No federated province, not even Zeeland, could by its action bind Holland to a debt. Pressed to accept joint responsibility for 50,000 pounds lent in Zeeland by the merchants of Ipswich (England), Holland agreed to a share of interest payments, but assigned its portion of the principal on a ‘revenue’ of such dubious worth that the debt ⁶⁰ RSH 1581, 481: 12 September 1581, and RSH 1582, 385–6: 18 August 1582. For Muys’s lawsuit and a counter-suit by the States assembly, RAZH 3.01.13, no. 44. ⁶¹ RSH 1582, 53: 24 January 1582, from Orange’s reaction to Muys’s dismissal, the deputies see that His Excellency is not fully informed about this matter; Dordrecht argues that Muys cannot be dismissed from his post without Orange’s consent. ⁶² Note that, as mentioned, the Noorderkwartier had its own receiver-general. ⁶³ RSH 1581, 247–8: 4 June 1581.

180

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was carried over from year to year.⁶⁴ For a 100,000-pound loan to Zeeland by London’s Merchant Adventurers, the States of Holland initially refused all responsibility.⁶⁵ Yet the Adventurers had much credit at the court of Elizabeth I, whose good will was vital for the Revolt. Thus in 1581 Holland and Zeeland signed a pact: Holland took on 77.5 per cent of the debt to the Merchant Adventurers, in return for Zeeland’s acceptance of 22.5 per cent of the burden for certain debts contracted by Holland in the course of the war, including 500,000 pounds to the German cavalry commanders who had served in a losing cause at Mons (1572), and 110,000 to the count palatine, Johann Casimir, for his fruitless incursion in 1578/9.⁶⁶ Holland did its best to stay clear of debts contracted by the States General. In March 1579, Orange and his aides found merchants willing to lend the States General 600,000 pounds for the relief of Maastricht, provided that Flanders, Brabant, Holland, and Zeeland agreed to bind their revenues for repayment of the loan. Although Holland’s deputies had instructions to refuse consent, they consented nonetheless, because this 600,000 loan seemed the only way to get 50,000 pounds desperately needed to forestall mutiny among garrisons in Brabant. But Holland disavowed their action, and the States General subsequently agreed that the province was not bound in any obligatie its deputies were not authorized to sign.⁶⁷ Holland sometimes joined in backing promises by the States General, as for interest payments to two Genoese bankers,⁶⁸ or a 100,000-pound gratuity for the duke of Anjou as governor-general, but only ‘out of liberality’.⁶⁹ In 1582, Count Gunther von Schwartzenburg, who had commanded 3,000 German cavalry against Don Juan, presented a brief van verband for 500,000 pounds, to which the Great Seal of the States General was afﬁxed. Holland had not been consulted when Archduke Matthias contracted with Schwartzenburg, ⁶⁴ RANH 238, 2 December 1577; RSH 1579, 185: 21 November 1579, and RSH 1580, 271: 15 December 1580, payment for the Ipswich merchants is assigned on 23,000 pounds due from Anna van Oudt-Heusden, for what her late husband, Aert Coebel, owed at the close of his last account (cf. RAZH, Graafelijkheidsrekenkamer, no. 3462); RSH 1580, 274–5: 20 December 1580. ⁶⁵ RSH 106, 12 June 1577; RSH 1578, 30: 17 October 1578; and RSH 1580, 57: 8 April 1580, a claim that Holland’s deputies ‘knew nothing about’ the transaction. ⁶⁶ RSH 1581, 320–1: 8 July 1581. RSH 1581, 416–18: 17 July 1581, for the 93,000 loan in 1576, Holland and Zeeland together have already given Christopher Huddleston 6,000 pounds, and will pay 100,000 two years after the conclusion of the war, plus 10,000 in annual interest during the war, starting in 1582. As for the debt to the German cavalry commanders, the 368,465 pounds mentioned in RAZH 3.01.14, no. 231 [can be dated c. June 1581] represents Holland’s share (77.5%); the total debt would have been about 475,320 pounds, only slightly less than the face value of the 500,000 pound obligatie signed by the thirteen towns in 1572. ⁶⁷ RSH 1579, 76, 92, 96–7: 29 April, 8, 9, 16 May, 1579; cf. RSG, ii, no. 364, 27 April 1579 [this date does not square with those in RSH ], 697–8, and Swart, Willem van Oranje, 174. ⁶⁸ RSH 1581, 205, 342–3: 23 May, 13 July 1581. For the loan, RSG, iii. 59–63. Cf. RSH 1581, 351–2: 17 July 1581, the States have no objection to an obligatie for 800,000 pounds in the name of the Generality, but stipulate that Holland is not bound. ⁶⁹ RSH 1581, 397: 29 July 1581.

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but because Schwartzenburg was ‘closely connected to the House of Orange’,⁷⁰ Holland offered him the equivalent of 120,000 toward the 500,000 owed him by the States General, including land in Holland formerly belonging to the Carthusians of Savoy, and two lijfrenten once owned by Gaspar Schetz.⁷¹ One also had to make a politic selection among Holland’s unpaid debts from earlier years of the war. The largest single debt was that owed to the German cavalry commanders, Count Ernst von Manderslohe and his companions-inarms. These gentlemen or their agents came regularly to The Hague, but got no more than payments for travel and lodging expenses, plus an occasional small loan at low interest.⁷² The count palatine, Johann Casimir, though owed less money, was taken more seriously because he was at the centre of the Nassau family’s network of friends among German princes. In January 1579, the States of Holland accepted responsibility for brieven van verband amounting to 45,000 heeren gulden: a sum of 23,000 heeren gulden (37,950 pounds) in principal and 6,375 in interest (10,519 pounds) was to be paid by Easter 1579, and the remaining 22,000 heeren gulden (36,300 pounds), with interest, by Easter 1580. To satisfy Johann Casimir, the States further agreed to issue an obligatie in his name, with the seals of the college of nobles, the six great cities, and ‘any other city’ that wished to afﬁx its seal.⁷³ When Easter 1579 came Holland had no cash on hand, yet something had to be done, for the ‘honour’ of Jan van Nassau was implicated: he had made himself a guarantor for Holland’s debt of 23,000 heeren gulden, on pain of transferring one of his German territories to Johann Casimir if the money was not paid.⁷⁴ Over the next several months, Holland’s agent in Cologne, Jan Pauli, got Jan van Nassau off the hook by funnelling money to the count palatine’s representatives in dribs and drabs, including loans raised by the gemene middelen receivers, and 12,000 pounds held on deposit in Antwerp (this money had been raised as part of Holland’s quota for the relief of Maastricht).⁷⁵ To cover the second instalment, Jan van Nassau transferred to Holland a debt ⁷⁰ His wife was Orange’s sister Catharina. ⁷¹ Swart, Willem van Oranje, 147; RSH 1582, 84, 108–9, 116–19, 128–32, 193–4, 225–6, 232, 240–6: 14 February, 15, 17 March, 21, 24 April, 5, 8, 15 May 1582. ⁷² RSH 1578, 47: 22 December 1578, and RSH 1579, 4, 162, 299, 300: 13 January 1579 (reading ‘Ernst van Mansfelt’ as a misprint for ‘Ernst van Manderslohe’), 14 July, 30 November, 3 December 1579. Cf. Het Staatsche Leger, i. 137–8, a list of how many men served under each commander in 1572, with a statement of what they were still owed as of November 1584 (159,059 heeren gulden, or 262,464 pounds). ⁷³ RSH 1579, 7, 10, 13, 25: 28, 29 January, 9, 23 February 1579. Cf. RSH 1581, 315: 7 July 1581, 315, heeren gulden valued at 33 stuivers or 1.65 pounds. ⁷⁴ RSH 1579, 68: 4 April 1579; Jan van Nassau to Orange, Arnhem, 10 November 1579, Groen, Letter 930, vii. 18–20. ⁷⁵ RSH 1579, 68, 84, 121–2, 127, 140: 4 April, 2 May, 2, 10 June (the money on deposit in Antwerp), 22 June 1579; RSH 1579, 267–8: 11 November 1579, Pauli has thus far paid 19,800 pounds or 12,000 Frankfurt gulden (heeren gulden) in Cologne, plus 14,000 (sic) in Antwerp; and RSH 1579, 279: 14 November 1579, for the 3,417 pounds ‘remaining’ (i.e. toward the 37,950 pounds that would equal the 23,000 heeren gulden for which Jan van Nassau had obligated himself to the count palatine), Pauli is to borrow the money and repay himself from the convoyen.

182

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of 25,000 pounds owed him by the States of Gelderland (31,600 with interest). Pauli, still in Cologne, tried in vain to collect from Gelderland; absent pressure from Jan van Nassau, Holland found no other funds for Johann Casimir. As of July 1581 the count palatine claimed to be owed 40,000 heeren gulden, counting unpaid interest.⁷⁶ The rest of Holland’s soldier-creditors were not treated so well as Schwartzenburg or the count palatine. The massa of ‘old debt’ was estimated at 1,500,000 pounds in November 1578, and 1,200,000 in April 1580.⁷⁷ In July 1582 ﬁscal ofﬁcials prepared a summary for 1,157,641 pounds in unpaid ‘obligatiën given to military men’.⁷⁸ To keep creditors at bay the States would pay small sums in cash, and issue obligatiën for payment of the rest over three or four years. This summary lists in each case all payments still outstanding, including 30,554 for all four terms of Hohenlohe’s obligatie, 26,273 for the last two of Count Willem Lodewijk’s three terms, 24,561 for the second of two instalments for the Ipswich merchants, 23,934 to Brussels for its payments of the wages of Tympel’s regiment, and 10,000 for a year’s interest for the Merchant Adventurers.⁷⁹ Though capital sums for larger debts are counted in the total, there is also a separate listing for the biggest items, including 368,465 for Holland’s share of what the German cavalry commanders are owed, 180,000 to Haarlem for unpaid costs of the 1572/3 siege, 100,000 for the Merchant Adventurers. These debts were put off for ten years or more, so Holland could concentrate its resources on the creditors who really mattered, like Orange’s companions-in-arms—and burgher-lenders.

B AC K I N G U P T H E F LOW O F C A S H : R E C E I V E R S ’ LOA N S A N D REPARTITIËN Unpaid liabilities charged against the gemene middelen mounted to 117,000 in October 1579, 200,000 in May 1580.⁸⁰ To meet such gaps, without resorting to the repartitiën that so tried the patience of burghers,⁸¹ the States instructed ⁷⁶ RSH 1581, 315, 326–8, 408–10, 468–9: 7 July, 10 July (Holland asks to be let off by paying annual interest at the Frankfurt fair so long as the war continues), 30 July, 7 September 1581. ⁷⁷ Bor, Oorsprong, xiii. 19; RSH 1580, 50: 1 April 1580. ⁷⁸ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 231; my total is 1,121,859. Cf. the second item, a sum said to be due to the Ipswich merchants ‘the twenty-second of this month of July 1582’. ⁷⁹ Caulier’s cavalry had been dismissed after complaints about indiscipline. ⁸⁰ RANH 238, 29 January1578, 30 May 1578; RSH 1580, 82–3: 10 May 1580. RSH 1579, 246–7: 20 October 1579, and RSH 1580, 136: 8 July 1580. ⁸¹ RSH 1576, 83–5: 4 June 1576, the States need 100,000 pounds, but the deputies are resolved not to have any repartitiën for at last six months. RSH 1576, 140–1, 24 August 1576, the States decree a repartitie of 24,000 pounds; until August 1579, I have not found reference to further repartitiën in RSH, RANH, or the list of repartitiën prepared for Leicester in 1586: RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99C.

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district receivers who oversaw collection of the gemene middelen to borrow in their own names, paying themselves back either from future receipts, or from other incomes.⁸² Receivers thus had to be men of capital, willing to put their own wealth at risk, and capable of persuading others to do the same; for loans they arranged receivers got a 1 per cent brokerage or ﬁnder’s fee.⁸³ When large sums were needed on short notice—28,000 in April 1579, 30,000 early in 1582, another 29,000 in July, 72,000 in December 1582—receivers were assigned quotas proportional to their receipts.⁸⁴ Individual receivers were also called upon to ‘interpose their credit’ locally, for example, by serving as guarantors for loans organized by the government of a small town.⁸⁵ But the receivers themselves needed guarantors; thus the States required magistrates of the larger towns to back them up with their own ‘faith and credit’, and to help them persuade lenders to prolong their loans, e.g. from six months to a year.⁸⁶ After the fall of Maastricht (July 1579) and Rennenberg’s change of allegiance (March 1580), the States could no longer avoid calling upon burghers in general, through the intermediacy of their magistrates, to put their money at the service of the Revolt. Table 3 gives an overview of ten repartitiën decreed by the States between August 1579 and December 1582, for loans totalling 636,000, or about 160,000 pounds per year.⁸⁷ The sum borrowed in May 1579 for various purposes—including ‘cleansing’ the gemene middelen of debt (item 1)—was probably larger than 150,000, because Holland also promised at this time 28,000 pounds for the relief of Maastricht.⁸⁸ Apparently because burgher-lenders were ‘unwilling’ to continue their loans beyond the six-month due date, there had to be a new repartitie for a new levy of 200,000 pounds in October (item 3).⁸⁹ With a few exceptions,⁹⁰ money from the remaining loans went for putting fresh troops in Gelderland, Overijssel, or Friesland. If the gemene middelen could not pay the wages of Holland’s garrisons for June 1581 (item 8), it was because the money had been used instead to get soldiers to Friesland, from south of the great rivers as well ⁸² The hundredth penny or Verponding: see the last section of this chapter. ⁸³ RSH 1581, 298–9, 476–7: 3 July, 9 September 1581; RSH 1582, 327–8: 3 July 1582. ⁸⁴ RSH 1579, 75: 27 April 1579; RSH 1582, 327–8, 577–8: 3 July, 13 December 1582. ⁸⁵ RSH 1582, 395, 426–7: 20 August 1582, 395 (Cornelis van Mierop, the receiver-general, is to help Schoonhoven borrow 1,000 pounds for fortiﬁcation), 8 September 1582 (Amsterdam’s receiver, Jan Pieterszoon Reael, is borrow at 12% for the fortiﬁcation of Naarden). ⁸⁶ RSH 1580, 204–5: 15 September 1580; RSH 1582, 558: 27 November 1582. ⁸⁷ Liesker and Fritschy, Gewestelijke ﬁnanciën, Holland, table II.1.2, column 4, p. 160, give a total of 148,633 for repartitiën in 1582, but none for the years 1579–81. ⁸⁸ RSH 1579, 76–7: 29 April 1579, Holland and Zeeland together pledge 35,000 for Maastricht (Holland’s quota was 28,000), meaning that the gemene middelen could not cover more than half the wages for Holland’s garrisons for the next two months. ⁸⁹ Had the States levied a repartitie of 188,000 pounds in May, about 200,000 would be due in October (the principal, plus 6% interest for half a year, or 11,280). ⁹⁰ For Holland’s responsibility for Olivier van den Tympel’s regiment in Brussels (item 4), see Chapter 7.

184

Table 3 Repartitiën levied on Holland’s towns, August 1579–December 1582 Sum

Purpose

To be repaid from

Source

1. 2.

Aug. 1579 Oct. 1579

12,000 200,000

The Gelderland frontier Lenders unwilling to prolong their loans

Verponding Gemene middelen

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Nov. 1579 Mar. 1580 Nov. 1580 June 1581 June 1581

16,000 83,000b 50,000 55,900 54,100

Wages of soldiers in Brussels Cavalry commanded by Hohenlohe Relief of Steenwijk Getting troops to Friesland Wages of garrisons on Holland’s payroll

Gemene middelen Verponding Gemene middelen

8.

Sept. 1581

67,000

Infantry and cavalry in Friesland

Verponding

9. 10. Total

Aug. 1582 Dec. 1582

30,000 55,000 663,000

Garrison companies Debt (from 1576) to merchants of Ipswich

Verponding Verponding

RSH 28-8-1579, 799 RSH 17,20-10-1579, 850 RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99Ca RSH 11-11-1579, 868 RSH 31-3-1580, 55–6 RSH 3-11-1580, 280–1 RSH 2-6-1581, 238–9 RSH 2-6-1581, 238–9 RANH 239, 17-6-1581 RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99C RANH 239, 11-8-1581 RSH 4-9-1582, 413–14 RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99C

a b

‘Staat van repartitiegelden,’ 1580–6, advanced by the cities from gemene middelen, paid by receiver-general from other sources. Holland and Zeeland together will raise 100,000; Zeeland’s usual share was 17%.

Holland and the ‘Closer Union’, 1576–1582

Date

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as from garrison postings in Holland.⁹¹ In other words, it seems that repartitiën were politically possible after all, if one could make the case to Holland’s burghers that this was the price to be paid in order to ﬁght the war on the ground of Holland’s neighbours. This did not mean, however, that lenders did not expect repayment. For settlement of debts contracted between 1572 and 1576, especially the approximately 600,000 pounds in repartitiën or burghers’ loans,⁹² church property and the property of émigrés had provided a needed safety valve.⁹³ But the Paciﬁcation of Ghent had given émigrés the right to return and reclaim goods sequestered by one side or the other. To be sure, some émigrés showed they had no intention of returning, and their lands could still be used for debt settlement, especially after the Paciﬁcation of Ghent came to be seen as a dead letter.⁹⁴ But others desired to return, and Holland needed their credit and their connections. Thus Jonkheer Johan van Matenesse, a returning Catholic nobleman, was to get back not only his lands but also 2,800 pounds in recompense for jewellery taken from his wife and used ‘for the common cause’.⁹⁵ Much ecclesiastical property was also not available for debt settlement, even though the Paciﬁcation ruled out claims for restoration of property seized from the Catholic Church in Holland or Zeeland. Endowments for the living of pastors—and also for purposes that smacked of idolatry to a Reformed sensibility, like masses for souls of the departed, or the singing of vespers in parish churches—were earmarked for Reformed dominees and schoolmasters.⁹⁶ As for endowments dedicated to the fabriek (that is, the church building), in Holland south of the IJ these incomes were collected and disbursed, as of old, by the churchwardens of each parish.⁹⁷ In the Noorderkwartier, parish endowments of all kinds were administered by magistrates in the towns and also the villages, where zeal for the new religious establishment was not always apparent. The best hope for debt settlement lay in the properties of monastic houses and collegiate churches. Selling lands in Holland purchased in the name of a foreign religious house—like the Carthusians of Savoy, some of whose property went to Schwartzenburg—posed no problem. The property of Holland monasteries was protected to an extent: the provincial receiver for ecclesiastical property, who administered these incomes, had to provide for erstwhile monks, nuns, and canons, so long as they survived. Thus when a general sale of monastic properties ⁹¹ RSH 1581, 247–8: 4 June 1581. ⁹² Chapter 5, n. 31. ⁹³ Chapter 5, nn. 56, 57. ⁹⁴ e.g. RSH 1582, 57–9: 13 February 1582, in settlement of arrears for service dating from 1572, Colonel Lazarus Muller accepts seventy morgen of land in Aarlanderveen, formerly held by Lady Anna van Barnecourt, ‘who lives in Spain’. ⁹⁵ RSH 1578, 503: 9 September 1578. Matenesse also reclaimed his position as a member of the college of nobles: Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand, 196–8. ⁹⁶ RSH 1579, 69–71: 6 April 1579. Because these funds were insufﬁcient for the purpose, the States decreed a 2% tax on auction contracts for the gemene middelen: RSH 1579, 91–2: 8 May 1579. ⁹⁷ RSH 1579, 69–71: 6 April 1579.

186

Holland and the ‘Closer Union’, 1576–1582

was proposed, partly to pay for war debts dating from 1572, the college of nobles objected: these endowments were originally made ‘in order to provide for the children of the nobility’.⁹⁸ In keeping with Haarlem’s Satisfaction, the States of Holland were content to allow Haarlem’s episcopal chapter to reclaim its lands near Geervliet, where the chapter’s original members had previously been canons of a collegiate church.⁹⁹ In 1579, when ‘certain Flemings’ now living in Leiden asked to be housed in two former convents in Haarlem, the States stipulated that erstwhile nuns still living in the convents would have to give their permission.¹⁰⁰ Yet religious houses had a good deal more land than was needed to support their dwindling communities. Also, burgher-lenders were familiar with the properties of monasteries in or near their own towns. Hence, as in the years 1572–6, the States, with the help of town magistrates, raised money to free the lands of local religious houses from debt, so that land could then be transferred to burghers in payment of their loans.¹⁰¹ I have found no indication of how much debt was cleared in this way, but it was not enough.

F RO M T H E H U N D R E D T H PE N N Y TO T H E VERPONDING In 1561, the States levied a tenth penny on real-property income in order to redeem high-interest renten from renten-holders who would not accept reduction to a lower rate. In 1569, to buy off Alba’s tenth-penny sales tax, Holland agreed to a hundredth penny or 1 per cent tax on the ‘value’ of real property, taking the value to be twenty times the annual rent, as speciﬁed in rental contracts. This roughly doubled the suspiciously low yield of the 1561 tax, from 58,588 to 123,350 pounds.¹⁰² Though tainted by Alba’s memory, the hundredth penny was too useful a precedent to be ignored. For example, in 1577 the States decreed a hundredth penny to pay for the repair of dykes and sluice gates ‘opened’ for ⁹⁸ RSH 1582, 402: 22 August 1582. ⁹⁹ RSH 1577, 193: 22 August 1577, a decision conditional on Orange’s approval. On 1 January 1579 (RSH 1579, 1), the States of Holland (following the States General) annul the acts of incorporation by which Philip II used monastic properties to endow new bishoprics. But this decision apparently did not affect the reverend gentlemen of Haarlem, formerly of Geervliet: cf. RSH 1579, 69–71: 6 April 1579. ¹⁰⁰ RSH 1579, 251: 25 October 1579. ¹⁰¹ RANH 238, 30 May 1578, Alkmaar reports that this is being done in Holland south of the IJ; RSH 1579, 296: 28 November 1579, goods of Leiderdorp Reguliers, freed of debt, may be sold to settle claims of Leiden burghers; RSH 1580, 244–5, 281: 15 September, 4 November 1580, and RSH 1581, 530–1: 11 October 1581, similar arrangements for Rotterdam, Gorinchem, Delft, Dordrecht, Gouda, ¹⁰² A parcel of land renting for ﬁfty pounds a year would be valued at 1,000 pounds; thus a tenth penny would yield ﬁve pounds, and a hundredth penny ten. Cf. RAZH 3.01.25, no. 25, document 5, where, for many towns and villages, the quotas set for the 1569 levy are very roughly double those for 1561: e.g. Hoorn, 2,575 and 5,909; Enkhuizen, 3.016, 7,426; Grotebroeck, 1,186 and 2,462; Hoogkarspel, 1,541 and 3,149.

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military purposes during the years of civil war.¹⁰³ Tenant-farmers were to pay the tax, but then deduct two-thirds of it from the rent they owed. To ensure compliance, two of the ‘sworn men’ of each village were to command that all tenants and landowners present themselves on a speciﬁed day, to show their rental contracts (huurcedulen).¹⁰⁴ The States of Holland plakkat announcing this resolution called for the second half of the hundredth penny to be collected according to a new valuation of land and houses, but the Noorderkwartier held up publication of the plakkat, insisting that both instalments be collected on the old basis, that is, according to the rental contracts.¹⁰⁵ In 1578 the States south of the IJ again wanted half the hundredth penny to be collected on a fresh basis, but North Holland again refused a new valuation. The yield ought to have been higher in 1578, since Amsterdam and Amstelland were now reunited with Holland, but Amsterdam refused to pay: while this hundredth penny was earmarked for clearing States of Holland obligatiën, Amsterdam’s Satisfaction freed the city of liability for debts contracted before February 1578.¹⁰⁶ In the debate about how to raise the hundredth penny for 1579, familiar arguments were rehearsed. Dordrecht, Delft, Gouda, Gorinchem, and North Holland wanted the money collected on the basis of rental contracts; in other words, there should not be a new assessment. Haarlem, Leiden, Rotterdam, and Brill wanted a new valuation, so as to ‘avoid the fraudulent use of rental contracts’¹⁰⁷—it was alleged, for example, that in some places tenants and landholders colluded to produce ﬁctive contracts showing lower rents. In the end it was decided to base the ﬁrst instalment on Jacob Bols’s accounts for the 1569 hundredth penny, though Leiden, Dordrecht, and Gouda insisted on paying it as in 1578, that is, according to rental contracts.¹⁰⁸ The second instalment was to be collected according to a new assessment of ‘true value’, but since North Holland again voted no, rental contracts were used instead. Houses in the cities were capitalized at 1 : 14, farmland on the island of Voorne at 1 : 16, and farmland elsewhere at 1 : 18.¹⁰⁹ Though the hundredth penny was in principle meant for settling debts, the question of how to spend the income became more and more contentious. Thus money from the 1579 hundredth penny was at various times earmarked for: (1) ¹⁰³ RSH 1577, 115: 23 June 1577; note that there is no mention of any compensation for tenant farmers and landholders whose crops were ruined by ﬂooding. ¹⁰⁴ RSH 1577, 134–6: 5 July 1577. ¹⁰⁵ RANH 238, 8, 14, 17 September 1578: one-quarter was to be collected immediately, and half in two months; the last quarter was to be held back, to repay that portion of the 1576 hundredth penny intended for the relief of Zierikzee. ¹⁰⁶ RSH 1578, 31: 22 October 1578; RSH 1579, 14–15: 10 February 1579. ¹⁰⁷ RSH 1579, 57–8: 20 March 1579. Brill’s vote is surprising, since one would expect land values to be rising in its rural hinterland, the islands of Voorne and Putten. ¹⁰⁸ RSH 1579, 91–4, 175, 176–7, 181–2: 8 May, 9, 29 July, 12 August 1579; RANH 238, 15 July 1579. ¹⁰⁹ RSH 1579, 91–4, 181–2: 8 May, 12 August 1579; RANH 238, 17 July 1579.

188

Holland and the ‘Closer Union’, 1576–1582

loans from 1578 that could not be repaid from that year’s hundredth penny; (2) the ‘cleansing’ of the gemene middelen; (3) the relief of Maastricht; (4) the ﬁrst of two instalments for Holland’s share of the States General’s debt to Count Palatine Johann Casimir; and (5) repayment of the 40,000 to 50,000 that Jacob Muys was instructed to borrow in order to pay wages for soldiers of the Union of Utrecht as well as Olivier van den Tympel’s regiment in Brussels.¹¹⁰ On the assumption that roughly 100,000 pounds was actually collected that year, the hundredth penny cannot possibly have met all of these needs. In January 1580 the Lords States agreed in principle to a levy of the size that was really required: four hundredth pennies, or 400,000 pounds. To make this possible, the resolution called for each of the seventy-nine collection districts for the hundredth penny to send its record book for the 1579 levy to the States College in The Hague, for ‘revision’. When Rennenberg’s change of allegiance presented Holland with new and more urgent demands,¹¹¹ it was decided to collect only two hundredth pennies, or one ﬁftieth penny, that is, 200,000 pounds. Since the cities ‘could not agree’ about their assessments, the resolution was amended to provide that the ﬁrst instalment would be collected according to the ﬁgures for 1569; for the second instalment, quotas for twenty-nine of the seventy-nine districts were identiﬁed as needing revision, to be done in each case by two deputies.¹¹² To ensure that names of owners and tenants who failed to come forward with their rental contracts were duly noted, the sheriff and two magistrates of each village were to keep 8.00 a.m. to 4.00 p.m. hours one day a week for three weeks.¹¹³ This time North Holland complied. Its deputies to the full States assembly agreed to turn in copies of North Holland’s assessment books (they were reprimanded by their principals for doing so, for these records were ‘never to leave the Noorderkwartier’). Local ofﬁcials in each North Holland district were then given instructions on ‘revising’ their tallies from 1579, and this work was ‘almost complete’ by mid-October. By now, however, closer inspection brought out the fact that villages in various parts of Holland had ‘framed their assessment books so as to pay as little as possible’. Hence the States decided in November 1580 to collect the second instalment of the ﬁftieth penny on the basis of what had been paid in 1577 and 1578.¹¹⁴ Collection began in December 1580,¹¹⁵ and was completed prior to September 1581.¹¹⁶ These many false starts nudged the gentlemen-deputies closer to accepting the need for a fresh look at real-property valuations. According to a resolution of ¹¹⁰ RSH 1579, 16–18, 81, 109–10, 127, 151–2: 12 February, 1, 21 May, 16 June, 7 July 1579. ¹¹¹ e.g. item 5 from table 8:1. ¹¹² RSH 1579, 314–15: 19 December 1579; RSH 1580, 12–13, 22–3, 137: 25 January, 3 February, 8 July 1580. ¹¹³ RSH 1580, 104–5, 220: 11 June, 11 October 1580. ¹¹⁴ RANH 239, 17 November 1580. ¹¹⁵ RSH 1580, 264–5, 282: 9, 28 December 1580. ¹¹⁶ RAZH 3.01.28, no. 352, does not include receipts for the 1580/1 hundredth penny (Mierop’s commission as receiver-general was dated 19 September 1581).

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July 1581, ﬁve ‘neutral and qualiﬁed persons’ were to be named by the States, subject to approval by His Excellency. Their charge was not to make a new assessment of property values, but to establish new quotas for each district, taking into account tenth- and hundredth-penny records from the 1560s as well as the revised assessment books for 1579.¹¹⁷ According to the Chamber of Accounts, a ﬁftieth penny calculated on this basis should yield 220,000 pounds, not 200,000. Initially, the States decided to impose a hundredth penny on the towns (55,000), and a ﬁftieth penny on the countryside (110,000).¹¹⁸ The hundredth and ﬁftieth pennies of 1581, collected in 1582, were earmarked for purposes that exceeded the expected income: these included payments to Colonel Norris, debts assigned on the gemene middelen, and 25,000 for the duke of Anjou. Thus the deputies agreed in the fall of 1581 to another ﬁftieth penny (220,000) for the period April–June 1582.¹¹⁹ As of January 1582 debts that had to be paid from this tax included 90,000 in assignations on the gemene middelen; sums that Mierop had ‘taken’ from future gemene middelen receipts in order to make payments to the Landraad (32,000) and for ofﬁcers’ pay (13,500); and money for repayment of Holland’s portion of the 1575 loan by the merchants of Ipswich, with accumulated interest; to make sure this sum was in fact paid, the cities agreed to a dedicated levy of 55,000 pounds, separate from the ﬁftieth penny.¹²⁰ Mierop’s account for September 1581–end 1582 included receipts for the second half of the 1581 ﬁftieth penny (110,000 on the countryside), the ﬁftieth penny for 1582 (220,000), the special levy for the Ipswich merchants (55,000), loans for the war in Friesland and Overijssel, raised through a repartitie among the cities (67,000), and loans contracted by the gemene middelen receivers (27,000). Mierop included in his account the Noorderkwartier’s share of these levies, even though the money did not pass through his hands, since the Noorderkwartier insisted on collecting and disbursing revenue through its own receiver.¹²¹ This record, the only one of Mierop’s many accounts as receiver-general that has been preserved, gives a rare glimpse of what was paid for by the levy on real property, henceforth known as the verponding (Table 4). ¹¹⁷ RSH 1581, 116–17, 155, 238–9, 388–9, 392: 23 March, 19 April, 2 June, 25, 27 July 1581. ¹¹⁸ RSH 1581, 446–50, 484: 24 August, 12 September 1581. ¹¹⁹ RSH 1581, 484, 512–13, 524–5, 529–30: 12, 29 September, 9 , 11 October 1581, a levy of 110,000 on the countryside and 110,000 on the cities; RSH 1582, 29, 81–2: 23 January, 23 February 1582, a second such levy to be collected in September or October. RAZH 3.01.28, no. 352, Van Mierop’s account for autumn 1581–end 1582 lists under income the quotas for three verpondingen, each totalling 110,000, that were to be collected in October 1581 (the ﬁftieth penny on the countryside for that year), April 1582, and June 1582 (the ﬁftieth penny for 1582). ¹²⁰ RSH 1582, 18–20: 22 January 1582. ¹²¹ RAZH 3.01.28, no. 352: Mierop’s total for all receipts (counting sums that were due, not sums actually paid) is 502,549.

Current war costs

Cities’ war loans

Old war debts

Not collected

Civil expenses

7,307 28,199

41,413 18,050 43,335 30,809 11,104 5,075 48,870 23,602 19,920 3,198 19,201 7,247 23,999 Totals 156,494 (45%) Total actual expendituresd a b c d

61,333 (17%)

72,697 (21%)

156,176 156,176

Remarks Orange’s guard Military pay arrears Castle guards, lodging fees Ammunition Provisions supplied by cities 1572 cav. commanders (interest) States of Holland administrationa Pensions, incl. 25,000 for Anjou Provincial council Muster commissioners Payments ordered by Landraad Payments to treasurer of war Repay cities for anticipationsb Preachers, university professors Ipswich merchants (51,314 due) Arrears to Ipswich merchants For troops paid by Holland 97,000 from Noorderkwartierc

57,637 (17%) 348,161

Includes travel outside Holland by deputies, messengers, secretaries, pens and paper, etc. For Norris’s regiment. The Noorderkwartier paid for war expenses through its own receiver-general, not through Mierop. My total, with sums not collected, is 504,337; Mierop’s total is 485,048 (he seems to miscount subtotals XIII and XIV).

Source RAZH 3,01.28, no. 352.

Holland and the ‘Closer Union’, 1576–1582

12,364 4,468

190

Table 4 Payments from Cornelis van Mierop’s ﬁrst account as receiver–general, September 1581–[end 1582]

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Though the settlement of debts was mentioned prominently in States of Holland resolutions consenting to a hundredth or a ﬁftieth penny, current military needs took precedence over any other uses of this precious revenue. Thus while 45 per cent of the money Mierop actually paid out went to ofﬁcials responsible for the wages of soldiers and their ofﬁcers, only 17 per cent went to repay cities for sums they had raised—including a total of 41,000 pounds for war provisions supplied by the towns, which may be seen as representing encumbrances on the gemene middelen.¹²² As for old debts, while an effort was made to keep up payments on arrears to units still serving,¹²³ those who had served or provided money during the dark years of 1572–6 were not so well treated: the merchants of Ipswich got only 19,000 of the outstanding principal that was due,¹²⁴ and the 8,000 for the cavalry commanders of the 1572 Mons campaign covered no more than interest on the debt, plus expenses for those who solicited on their behalf. In July the States sent Paulus Buys to ask His Excellency (in Antwerp) to provide a remedy for the complaints about ‘inequalities’ that were said to cause great difﬁculty in collecting the verponding assessments. Despite all the levies of recent years, unfunded liabilities falling due in the next two to three months were calculated at 350,000 pounds. But what was to be the basis of further verpondingen? Even the 1569 hundredth-penny assessment, based on the most careful calculation of recent years, had been found to contain ‘great inequities’; besides, conditions in many districts were not what they had been before the war. There were complaints also about the revision of the 1579 hundredth penny, which had allegedly never been carried out in North Holland. To cleanse the ledgers of debts now estimated at 400,000 pounds, the only choice was to appoint a new committee of seven ‘neutral persons’, this time for the purpose of overseeing a wholly new assessment of property values throughout the province,¹²⁵ a task that had not been attempted since the 1514 schiltal. Some of the nominees for this verponding committee, unlike the last, are named in the States resolution; from among fourteen candidates, His Excellency chose seven.¹²⁶ Controversy over Amsterdam’s responsibilities for Holland’s debts had a sharp edge, probably because of lingering memories of the ﬁghting in 1577/8. For ‘extraordinary contributions’ (i.e. the hundredth pennies and verpondingen) Amsterdam insisted (September 1579) on remitting no more than one-third ¹²² Cities providing supplies expected payment from gemene middelen receipts. ¹²³ RAZH 3.01.28, no. 352, expenditures, subtotal II, 28,199 for ‘ordonnantiën for Count Willem and other colonels and captains’, for sums due to May 1581. ¹²⁴ In theory, Mierop was to have collected 55,000 from towns throughout the province, but North Holland (as usual) held back its quota (16,893), and towns south of the IJ were 13,774 short in their quotas, so that Mierop collected only 24,323. ¹²⁵ RSH 1582, 329–330, 400–1, 404: 3 July, 22, 23 August 1582. ¹²⁶ RSH 1582, 404: 23 August 1582 (the names proposed); RSH 1582, 526–7: 9 November 1582 (the men chosen by Orange). None is from Amsterdam, evidently because of ongoing disputes about its contributions in the verponding (see below).

192

Holland and the ‘Closer Union’, 1576–1582

of its assigned quota; the States provisionally agreed to settle for half of Amsterdam’s quota.¹²⁷ In 1580 Amsterdam’s refusal to collect convoyen in its harbour occasioned a new quarrel. The States asserted that the assembly would not convene there until Amsterdam accepted its responsibility; in reply, Amsterdam announced it would send no deputies until the States conﬁrmed ‘that Amsterdam is a member of Holland and has a right to vote on contributions’. Invited to mediate the quarrel, Orange wisely declined, but the States accepted his suggestion that Amsterdam be allowed a vote until the question of its Satisfaction was settled. In October 1581, Amsterdam, exercising its rights,¹²⁸ stipulated that it would not approve the hundredth penny on the towns unless payments to Ernst von Manderslohe, the count palatine, and the Ipswich merchants were stricken from the budget; instead, the money should go to garrisons in towns along the Maas and Waal, to prevent mutiny.¹²⁹ In fact, Mierop’s account suggests that no money from this levy of 55,000 pounds went for any of the ‘old debts’ indicated.¹³⁰ Following this partial victory, in December 1581 Amsterdam signed an agreement abolishing its 1578 Satisfaction, and with it the immunity from helping to pay for Holland’s pre-1578 debts. Amsterdam’s countervailing claims against Holland—particularly in regard to interest payments for its burghers on pre-1572 Holland renten—were to be settled by arbiters.¹³¹ As these disputes were being worked out, and even though the seven commissioners had yet to produce a new assessment, the States made plans for a new and larger verponding. In September 1582 the nobles and eight cities agreed to a levy of 400,000 pounds in two instalments, March and July 1583; 300,000 would go to clean up debts assigned on the gemene middelen and other provincial revenues, and 100,000 was earmarked for other ‘urgent needs’, including unpaid sums due on debts to the Merchant Adventurers, the merchants of Ipswich, and the count palatine. Seven of the eight cities that voted no were brought into line, and in December the deputies took the unusual step of setting aside the principle of unanimity on matters of taxation: Leiden, the lone hold-out, was formally declared to be ‘outvoted’ (overstemt).¹³² Inevitably, the gentlemen-deputies were to be disappointed in the hope that one grand levy would clear Holland’s most pressing debts. Money from the 1583 verponding, like all the others, would ¹²⁷ RSH 1579, 14–15, 119, 205–6, 233, 266: 10 February, 30 May, 31 August, 26 September 1579. ¹²⁸ It was a rule that votes for taxes had to be unanimous. ¹²⁹ RSH 1581, 529–30: 11 October 1581. ¹³⁰ The count Palatine got nothing, and money paid to the Ipswich merchants may be linked to a separate 55,000 repartitie earmarked for this purpose. ¹³¹ RSH 1581, 634–8: 20 December 1581; RSH 1582, 367–8: 2 August 1582 (for States of Holland renten as well as renten on Holland domains and the Geervliet toll). The arbiters ruled that Amsterdam’s burghers were entitled to interest payments for all years subsequent to 1576. ¹³² RSH 1582, 409–10, 433–43, 526–7, 544: 24 August, 13 September, 10 November, 13 December 1582.

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have to be reallocated for immediate military needs. Yet a verponding that could reliably be expected to yield 400,000 pounds or more would prove vital to Holland’s ability to continue the war. If it did not mean that old liabilities could be swept aside, it did mean that Holland could contract new liabilities with more conﬁdence, and thus sustain a larger burden of debt on into the future.

9 Holland as a Body Politic, II: Seeds of Discord Trade and religion continued to be sources of division, though not in the same ways as before 1572. The Baltic trade ﬂourished anew, especially after Amsterdam’s adherence to the Revolt in 1578. Skilled immigrants from the southern Netherlands brought hope of revival for the cloth industries in Leiden and Haarlem, even if Dordrecht and especially Gouda found no new answers for their economic woes. But Holland’s traditional position in the Low Countries economy, as a gateway for goods going to or coming from the Baltic, raised an urgent question: would trade with provinces loyal to Spain be allowed? On both sides there were strong and deeply held views, portending, just over the horizon, a major political battle. Provincial as well as urban authorities were determined to uphold the public supremacy of the Reformed Evangelical Religion. But Reformed religion was in practice an alliance between two theologies, one based in the Geneva of John Calvin (d. 1564) and Theodore Beza (d. 1605), the other in the Zurich of Ulrich Zwingli (d. 1531) and Heinrich Bullinger (d. 1584). In the Geneva tradition, church polity was a touchstone of orthodoxy, for a true church must govern itself; in the Zurich tradition, the God-given powers of civil magistrates included authority to govern the Church. In Holland, where town magistrates and church leaders collaborated harmoniously, there was no clash between the two Reformed theologies. But some towns experienced protracted conﬂict on whether magistrates or clergy had ultimate authority for appointing preachers. At the provincial level, each side ignored the pronouncements of the other about governance of the Church. Here too was a problem in the making.

T R A D E A N D I N D U S T RY In time of war each side did its best to prevent vital supplies from reaching the foe, not just munitions, but also foodstuffs, especially grain. In this dimension of the struggle Holland and Zeeland had the edge over Spain, because of the many sea-port towns that had joined the Revolt. Boussu mobilized Amsterdam’s ﬂeet for a counter-attack, but his defeat at the Battle of the Zuider Zee (11 October

Holland as a Body Politic, II

195

1573) left the rebels in control of the seas.¹ While warships from Zeeland patrolled the Scheldt estuary, preventing access to Antwerp,² warships from Holland patrolled the Zuider Zee, preventing access to Spanish Amsterdam. In March 1573 Orange decreed that no butter, cheese, or salt might leave Holland without his ‘passport’. In practice, this meant that export merchants paid ‘permission’ fees (licenten), the proceeds of which supported the war ﬂeet. Licenten were sometimes collected for all exports, sometimes only for exports to lands of the enemy. As might be expected, Holland’s domestic needs had priority: even when shipments to the foe were allowed for other foodstuffs, grain or salt might be held back for fear of shortages in Holland.³ Meanwhile, to pay for the armed escort of friendly merchant ships, convoy fees (convooien) were introduced, at rates lower than for licenten; convoy fees were initially collected on incoming goods only, but were sometimes imposed on exports as well.⁴ Some worried that allowing goods to go out under licenten was a way of supplying the foe. But preventing exports from Holland would not necessarily harm the enemy. Instead of calling in the Low Countries, ships from Bremen, Hamburg, and Gda´nsk often made direct voyages to Iberia, bringing Baltic grain and timber. Similarly, loyalist Netherlands provinces could be supplied via north Germany’s rivers and roads.⁵ Ofﬁcially, the state of war in the Low Countries ended with the Paciﬁcation of Ghent; thus Orange declared trade among all the provinces to be free (November 1576). But Holland insisted on restricting exports to Amsterdam and other cities that had not yet accepted His Excellency as stadtholder. Holland and Zeeland also continued to collect convoy fees and licenten, which brought protests. Under pressure from the States General, Holland agreed to drop licenten altogether (May 1577), then ceded to the States General its right to collect convoy fees for trade with foreign lands (June 1578). But Don Juan’s revival of the war led to fresh restrictions on shipments to Iberia, agreed to by the States General. In the autumn of 1579 the States General again banned all shipments of foodstuffs to the enemy; at about the same time, Holland, reacting to a seizure of its merchant ¹ For early Spanish efforts to form a ﬂeet to challenge rebel supremacy at sea, and their failure, Stradling, The Armada of Flanders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 3–9. ² J. H. Kernkamp, De Handel op den Vijand, 1572–1609 (Utrecht: Kemink & Zoon, 1931), chapters 1 and 2: efforts by the Merchant Adventurers to open a path to Antwerp, through alternate negotiations with Orange and Spanish authorities. ³ Ibid, 51. ⁴ A summary of Kernkamp, ibid, 21–32. In North Holland, the convoy fee for a last of wheat was four pounds (November 1574); the licent for sending a last of wheat to Amsterdam was nine pounds (March 1575): RANH, 236, 15–16 March 1575, and 237, 21 November 1574. ⁵ e.g. in the 1530s, the humanist Damiâo de Gois, who was then the king of Portugal’s factor in Antwerp, went to Gda´nsk to take delivery on 150 last of rye bound direct for Lisbon: Meilink, ‘Rapporten en Betoogen nopens het Congiegeld op Granen’, 34–65. Cf. Kernkamp, De Handel op den Vijand, 43, a report (1574) about Easterling ships bound directly for Spain. For the larger context, Hermann Kellenbenz, Fremde Kauﬂeute auf den Iberischen Halbinsel (Cologne: Böhlau, 1970).

196

Holland and the ‘Closer Union’, 1576–1582

ships in Spain by King Philip, issued its own ban on sailing to Spain. In keeping with the fortunes of war over the next several years, trade policy shifted back and forth, stimulating a vigorous domestic debate. While those who spoke for the Generality consistently pointed to the danger of providing the foe with precious supplies, Holland’s main seafaring towns—Enkhuizen, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam—consistently pointed to the danger of letting north German cities take over the trade to Spain and its Netherlands provinces, thus harming Holland without harming the enemy.⁶ One can best grasp what was at stake by looking at things from different local perspectives.

The Noorderkwartier In the 1540s, North Holland’s Zuider Zee ports traded close to home, sending dairy goods and ﬁsh to the further shores of the Zuider Zee (Friesland, Overijssel).⁷ After 1572, Amsterdam’s loyalty to Spain opened a door of opportunity, for the Baltic grain trade was far more lucrative. At their ﬁrst meeting (Dordrecht, 15 July 1572), the rebel States of Holland petitioned His Excellency (through Marnix van Sint-Aldegonde, his representative) to ask the Easterlings and the king of Denmark to ‘transfer their trade’ from Amsterdam to an Orangist harbour—Enkhuizen, Hoorn, or Dordrecht.⁸ After the Battle of the Zuider Zee (1573), Amsterdam’s seagoing trade was shut down in any case, blockaded by rebel ships paid from the Noorderkwartier.⁹ Meanwhile, Amsterdam refugees with Baltic connections took residence in North Holland. Willem Bardesius, the son of Sheriff Baerdes, was collector-general of licenten in North Holland, and chief adviser to the governor, Diederik Sonoy; Adriaan Reyerszoon Cromhout, a merchant once domiciled on Amsterdam’s Warmoesstraat, became a burgomaster in Medemblik.¹⁰ ⁶ Kernkamp, De Handel op den Vijand, 104–25. ⁷ Lesger, Handel in Amsterdam, table 1.2, p. 34, ‘Percentage Value of Exports from Holland and Zeeland, 10 February–10 August 1545’: exports for Edam (69.9% to the north or east Netherlands), Enkhuizen (57.8%), Hoorn (80.8%), and Monnickendam (41.8%). Monnickendam and Enkhuizen have the highest percentage of exports going to the North Sea or Baltic (36.3% and 28.7% respectively). By contrast, Amsterdam sent 62% of its exports to the North Sea or Baltic, and 22.6% to the north or east Netherlands. Cf. table 1.4, p. 38, ‘Exports from the Zuider Zee Coast and the IJ’: dairy goods stand out among the exports of Edam (69.9%) and Hoorn (54.5%), ﬁsh among the exports of Enkhuizen, a herring town (47.7%, and Monnickendam (47.9%). ⁸ Geeraerdt Brandt, Historie der vermaerde Zee- en Koop-Stad Enkhuizen (2nd edn., Hoorn: Sebastiaan Centen, 1747), 180. ⁹ RANH 237, 25 February 1575: the ﬁve Zuider Zee ports (Edam, Enkhuizen, Hoorn, Medemblik, Monnickendam) are to maintain seven ships at the Vlie (exit to the North Sea), and eight others on the Zuider Zee. ¹⁰ Elias, De Vroedschap van Amsterdam, i. 16–17 (Cromhout; his son Reynier Adriaanszoon Cromhout became a burgomaster of Alkmaar), and i. 48 (Bardesius). Cf. RANH 237, 26 Dcember 1574, Bardesius is collector-general of licenten for the Noorderkwartier; RANH 238, 17 May 1575: Cromhout is one of two nominees from the Noorderkwartier for the ‘council in presence of His Excellency’.

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By tradition, most grain imported from the Baltic was sold in the Low Countries, especially in populous Flanders and Brabant.¹¹ Would North Holland merchants have freedom to re-export grain to traditional markets south of the great rivers, in lands still ruled by Spain? In Holland south of the IJ there was strong sentiment for banning the supply of grain and other foodstuffs to Spanishheld provinces; by contrast, North Holland’s States assembly petitioned again and again for permission to ship grain to the foe—except, of course, for Amsterdam,¹² the worst of all foes. In the autumn of 1576, with clear signs of a dwindling supply in the Baltic, the States of Holland south of the IJ concurred in a States General ban on all grain exports, even though the Noorderkwartier offered assurances that supplies were plentiful. In periods when grain exports were permitted, Orange’s governor for North Holland, Diederik Sonoy, tried to keep exclusive control over issuing ‘passports’. But the towns demanded and got this right; the governor should have no fear, the deputies explained, for magistrates could be relied on to ‘defend the welfare of the common land, which depends on trade’ (negotiatie).¹³ Whatever the ofﬁcial policy was, Holland’s seafaring towns did not necessarily comply. In May 1577 Rotterdam announced that it would cease collecting licenten until other member provinces of the States General imposed the same regime. In December, after grain exports had again been prohibited, the States of the Noorderkwartier acknowledged the fact that ‘sixty or seventy’ grain ships had sailed out from the Marsdiep despite a recent ban; they promised to hold back other ships waiting to sail out, but hinted that pressure to let them go was hard to resist, because, Enkhuizen claimed, ships based in the Maas estuary (Rotterdam?) were sailing out ‘unhindered’.¹⁴ Within a few months, the terms of debate were drastically altered. North Holland’s dreams of greatness were dashed by the Alteratie of May 1578—a bloodless coup, organized by Willem Bardesius, that aligned Amsterdam with the rest of Holland. Hoorn’s seventeenth-century chronicler Theodorus Velius claims to have spoken with old-timers who remembered the sad day when Amsterdam’s exiles went home: ‘They left our city bare ¹¹ Van Tielhof, De Hollandse Graanhandel, 159–60: ‘To summarize: at the end of the ﬁfteenth century and in the ﬁrst decades of the sixteenth century, Baltic grain was re-exported from the Low Countries to southern and western Europe, but only now and then. The Netherlands thus imported most of the grain for their own consumption. In the second quarter of the sixteenth century exports to the south and west became common, as may be seen from revenues of the congie [for re-exported grain] in the southern Netherlands in the period 1535–1541. But the data also show that the quantity exported varied sharply from year to year, and in some years was hardly noticeable’ (my translation). ¹² RANH 236, 13 October 1574, the States of the Noorderkwartier send a delegation to ask Orange for permission to export grain to the foe; 22–24 February 1575, collectors of licenten in North Holland will get eight gold gulden for each last of rye sent to the foe; 4 August 1575, if Orange insists that North Holland begin immediately to collect the grain excise [part of Holland’s gemene middelen], the Noorderkwartier could lose its export trade. ¹³ RANH 237, 6 March 1575; 9 March 1575, the college gives Enkhuizen permission to export grain to Spain or Portugal, provided the college is told how much is being collected in licenten. ¹⁴ RSH 1577, 60, 67: 6, 10 May 1577; RANH 238, 3, 16 December 1577.

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of trade and welfare, such as it had not been for a long time.’ Local wags had a name for Hoorn’s new harbour, built for a boom that never came; they called it the bathtub, since it was now good for nothing else.¹⁵

Amsterdam Among thirty-six members of the new vroedschap (city council) chosen in May 1578 by Amsterdam’s civic militia companies, only one elderly gentleman had served in the former loyalist magistracy. Many new vroedschap members—and all four new burgomasters—were men who had gone into exile as declared opponents to Philip II’s placards, either as leaders of Amsterdam’s nascent Calvinist congregation, or as religious moderates who had advised the Dirkist burgomasters to close the churches to avoid violence. Now they had returned, from Bremen or Emden or the Noorderkwartier. Their business activities reﬂected Amsterdam’s traditional connections to the north and east. Among new city councillors, four were grain merchants; nine were dealers in goods that came from or were exported to Scandinavia and the Baltic (including ﬁve soap-boilers); and four were occupied in trades ancillary to shipbuilding.¹⁶ Among the new elite, four men served most often in the decades following the Alteratie. Willem Bardesius, son of the late sheriff, seems mainly to have been an investor in land. Maarten Janszoon Coster served in exile as court physician to King Frederik II of Denmark (1567–76). Reynier Cant, a dealer in Baltic gunpowder, spent his exile years in Bremen, where he helped supply Orange’s campaigns in 1568 and 1572. Pieter Boom Corneliszoon apparently inherited his father’s ropewalk in the Lastage (the shipyard district); the elder Boom had been a leader in the petition against the Dirkist magistrates organized by Lastage property-owners in the 1540s.¹⁷ Better than their Dirkist predecessors, these men understood the importance of Holland’s ‘mother trade’. ¹⁵ Velius, Chronyk van Hoorn (Hoorn: Jacob Duyn, 1740), 460. ¹⁶ Information from Elias, De Vroedschap van Amsterdam. Elias lists in numerical order those chosen to the vroedschap in the period he covers. The four grain dealers were Adriaan Pauw, Gerrit Janszoon Coesvelt, Claes Reyerszoon, and Claes Corneliszoon van Vlooswijk (nos. 5, 9, 16, 29). Evert Cors Schos (no. 15) was a Bergvaarder (shipper of goods to Bergen, Norway), Dirk Janszoon Graefff (no. 22) a dealer in iron who lived during his exile in Emden, Balthasar Simonszoon Appelman (no. 25) a dealer in dairy goods, and Reynier Cant (no. 26) a dealer in gunpowder from the Baltic. The soap-boilers were Hendrick van Marcken Winricxzoon (no. 4), Antonis Willemszoon Bontekoe (no. 10), Jan Duyn Corneliszoon (no. 18), Jan Laurenszoon Spieghel (no. 31), and Jacob Franszoon Oetgens (no. 35). Maarten Simonszoon Abbe (no. 1) was a compass-maker, while Ysbrant Janszoon Dommer (no. 3) and Hendrick Olfertszoon Fuyck (no. 34) were owners of ropewalks. Six others are listed by Elias as ‘merchants’ without further qualiﬁcation (nos. 8, 9, 13, 21, 28, 30). Three were drapers or dealers in cloth (nos. 12, 14, 24), others dealt in goods sent to England (no. 20), or in spices (no. 30) or hides (no. 32). ¹⁷ Bardesius (d. 1601, ibid., no. 17) was burgomaster thirteen times in the twenty-four years between 1578 and 1601; his connections to investments in agriculture are suggested by the nature of the missions he undertook on behalf of the city (e.g. Gemeentearchief Amsterdam, ‘Stadsrekeningen’, 1578–82, under ‘Reysen’ (trips): 1579, Bardesius to Alkmaar, as one of Holland’s commissioners for upkeep of the Hondsbosse seawall, and up the Amstel, for inspection of the Amsteldijk; 1580, to

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199 Fig. 6 Willem Bardesius (1526–1601), Amsterdam burgomaster after 1578. Print collection, New York Public Library.

Amsterdam’s seafaring commerce quickly regained its earlier level. A chance survival of partial convooien receipts for 1580 and 1584 discloses the volume of trade with neutral lands, though not with enemy lands, or with other provinces Wijkermeer and Veendijk for dyke inspections on behalf of the city; 1581, to Alkmaar, for the affairs of the Hondsbosse seawall. Coster (d. 1592, ibid., no. 7) was burgomaster ﬁve times in the eight years between 1578 and 1585. Cant (d. 1595, ibid., no. 26) was burgomaster ten times in the sixteen years between 1580 and 1595. Boom (d. 1609, ibid., no. 42) was burgomaster sixteen times in the twenty-ﬁve years between 1583 and 1608. Cf. Gemeentearchief Amsterdam, Stadsrekeningen, 1581, under extraordinary expenses: Pieter Boom Corneliszoon will receive one-quarter of the 1,561 pounds the city has been condemned to pay by the Court of Holland, in compensation for the razing by the magistrates (1542/3) of his father’s house on the Lastage.

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adhering to the Union of Utrecht or the States General.¹⁸ The convoy receipts differ in this respect from the hundredth-penny tax of the 1540s, which was levied on all exports, including goods bound for other Low Countries provinces. Nonetheless, the average monthly value of goods exported during four months in 1580 (496,976 pounds) and six months in 1584 (761,657 pounds) was roughly equal to that for goods exported during a six-month period in 1545 (354,600 pounds), allowing for an inﬂation rate of 2 per cent per annum.¹⁹ The structure of the export trade also resembled that of the 1540s: goods going to Norway, Germany’s North Sea coast, or the Baltic accounted for 62 per cent of the total in 1545, 76.5 per cent in 1580, and 73.5 per cent in 1584. If Amsterdam exported over 190 different kinds of wares in 1545, in the 1580s there were more than 300 categories of export goods.²⁰ Though the hundredth-penny records for 1545 have no information about imports, the value of goods imported (especially grain from the Baltic) was probably greater than that for goods exported. In the 1580s the difference between incoming and outgoing trade was striking: the value of imports exceeded that of exports by a factor of roughly three to one in 1580, and by nearly ﬁve to one in 1584.²¹ Grain accounted for 49.5 per cent of the value of imports in 1580, about 190,000 pounds a month for four months, and 76.2 per cent in 1584 , about 431,775 pounds a month for six months.²² As previously, much of the grain that came in was required for Low Countries markets. In 1580, outbound shipments to provinces loyal to the States General, not subject to the convooien, left no trace in the records. In 1584, when grain imports from the Baltic were apparently much larger, could merchants active in Amsterdam take advantage of markets south of the great rivers, even though most of Flanders and parts of Brabant were now again under Spanish control?²³ ¹⁸ Save as noted, this paragraph is based on Lesger, Handel in Amsterdam, chapter 2, ‘Continuïteit en verandering in het gateway systeem, ca. 1550–ca. 1630’. Convooien were levied only on trade from or to neutral lands—that is, the North Sea and Baltic territories, Scandinavia, England, and France. ¹⁹ One hundred multiplied by 1.02 thirty-ﬁve times is 1.9998876 (let us say 2), and by 1.02 thirty-nine times is 2.1647425. Thus at an inﬂation rate of 2% per annum, 354,600 pounds in 1545 would be equivalent to 709,200 pounds in 1580, or 767,611 in 1584. Note, however, that 28.1% of Amsterdam’s exports in 1545 went to areas not included in the convooien receipts of the 1580s: see columns A and E of table 1.2 in Lesger, Handel in Amsterdam, 34. Cf. Roelof van Gelder and Renée Kistemaker, Amsterdam 1275–1795: De ontwikkeling van een handelsmetropool (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1983), 51: Amsterdam’s Baltic trade in 1580 was as great as it had been before 1572. ²⁰ Compare tables 1.2 and 2.1 in Lesger, Handel in Amsterdam, 34, 68, and 69. ²¹ Ibid., table 2.2, p. 72: in 1580 (four months), 1,554,385 pounds for imports and 496.676 for exports; in 1584 (six months), 3,399,648 for imports, 761,657 for exports. Thus while the average monthly value of exports rose only slightly over the four years, the average monthly value of imports increased c.43%, from 388,577 pounds to 566,608 pounds. ²² Ibid., table 2.2, p. 72. ²³ For the problem of grain supply in Low Countries provinces loyal to Alexander of Parma, see the Prologue to Part IV.

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From the beginning of his tenure as governor-general, Alexander of Parma’s victories provided political ammunition for those who sought to ban trade with enemy lands. In September 1578, at Orange’s behest, the States of Holland ‘sharply prohibited’ all shipments to Spain. In March 1579, as Parma prepared to besiege Maastricht, there was a further ban on shipments up the Waal or the Maas, to districts Spain now controlled. The next year, despite a recent growth in Spain’s power (Philip II’s troops had just defeated forces contesting his claim to the crown of Portugal), the regime of allowing exports to enemy lands under payment of licenten was for a time reinstated. In 1581, however, trade to Iberia was banned altogether, as was trade to provinces controlled by the ‘Malcontents’ who had reconciled with Parma. Holland repeatedly contended that Hamburg and Bremen would have no trouble supplying the customers that Holland was prevented from supplying, but to no avail.²⁴ But even within Holland, the argument for preventing vital goods from reaching the foe seems to have found popular support. In the Noorderkwartier, the college of deputies in Hoorn warned the States assembly south of the IJ that shipments of grain ‘to Spain and elsewhere’, especially from Amsterdam, were causing prices to rise; unless exports were prohibited, there was likely to be an ugly mood (murmuratie) among townsfolk.²⁵ (Dairy farmers in the Noorderkwartier, dependent on export markets, may have had a different view.) Amsterdam’s deputies were now the natural leaders for any movement in the States to defend the trading interest. But in the wake of a bitter civil war Amsterdam had limited credibility, the more so because its magistrates were determined that the city remain free of entanglement in debts incurred by Holland after 1572, as provided in the February 1578 Satisfaction.²⁶ This quarrel was not resolved until each side gave ground (December 1581): Amsterdam renounced its Satisfaction, agreeing to co-responsibility for Holland’s post-1572 obligations; Holland declared Amsterdam’s burghers entitled to interest payments on their ²⁴ Kernkamp, De Handel op den Vijand, 107–25; RSH 1578, 498–9: 4 September 1578; RSH 1579, 43: 8 March 1579. ²⁵ RSH 1579, 259–60: 6 November 1579; RANH 239, 19 October 1580 (there is no reference to townsfolk in particular, but it seems that the dairy farmers of Hoorn’s hinterland would have been less likely to complain about free export of foodstuffs). ²⁶ Cf. the last section of Chapter 8: Amsterdam would not pay its full quota of the hundredth penny, because this levy was meant for clearing old debts. Gemeentearchief Amsterdam, ‘Stadsrekeningen’, under ‘Reysen’: 1578, trips to The Hague by Adriaan Reyerszoon Cromhout and by Gerrit Janszoon Delft to protest Amsterdam’s hundredth penny assessment; 1579, trips to The Hague by Claes Corneliszoon van Vlooswijck and by Maarten Janszoon Coster to discuss Amsterdam’s Satisfaction; 1580, Vlooswijck and others to The Hague, where His Excellency would attempt to mediate the dispute about Holland’s old debts, and Coster to Utrecht, for a continuation of this discussion; 1581, missions to The Hague, for discussions about the Satisfaction, by Reynier Cant and others, by Balthasar Simonszoon Appelman and others, and by Reynier Cant and others in January 1582 to Middelburg (where Orange then was), for conversations about the recent agreement to end the Satisfaction.

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old Holland renten as of 1576, but not before.²⁷ Only now could Amsterdam begin to build in the States assembly an inﬂuence proportionate to its wealth and population. Just now, however, Parma’s continuing advances seemed to make the case for an embargo stronger than ever. In May 1582, the duke of Anjou issued a placard forbidding the issuance of licenten for trade with the enemy; despite criticism in Holland, this ordinance was published there as well, under Orange’s name.²⁸

Leiden and Haarlem Following its heroic resistance to the Spanish siege of 1573/4 Leiden became the seat of a new university. But its woollen cloth industry, centrepiece of the urban economy, showed few signs of recovery from the deep depression that had preceded the Revolt. To promote growth Leiden nulliﬁed a ﬁfteenth-century privilege that prevented drapers from serving as magistrates; thus employees of a particular ﬁrm were no longer be thrown out of work when their employer was chosen to the magistracy. But no one imagined that the ‘old drapery’ would ever regain its former prosperity. In 1576, homes once built to house fullers of woollen cloth were torn down as superﬂuous.²⁹ The possibility of a different kind of future ﬁrst emerged in 1577, when a group of refugee Flemish cloth workers domiciled in England (Colchester) opened discussions about transferring their residence to Leiden. These Flemings were weavers of says and bays, lighter fabrics characteristic of the ‘new drapery’, a trade with proven market potential, but one that had as yet left no trace in Leiden’s records. Magistrates gladly accepted the Flemings’ conditions: they would be admitted to the status of burghers (poorters), without paying the usual fee, and would have the right to practise their craft without paying guild fees. As against eighteen new burghers inscribed on the rolls in 1575, and three in 1576, Leiden received 125 new burghers in 1577, most coming from Colchester. But this promising beginning evaporated in 1579, when the Colchester Flemings got permission to move on to Haarlem, which had made them a better offer.³⁰ Then in July 1582 the duke of Anjou’s soldiers did Leiden an unintentional favour by burning and looting the Flemish city of Hondschoote, until now one of the leading centres of the say industry. Hondschoote’s entrepreneurs and skilled craftsmen saw before their eyes a ruined city, and a Flanders torn by ﬁghting ²⁷ RSH 1580, 21–2, 34, 50, 233, 243, 246: 3 February, 14 March, 1 April, 3, 14, 17–18 November 1580: Amsterdam refuses to appear at further sessions of the States until its grievances are settled, then the States back down on one point and Amsterdam again sends its deputies; RSH 1581, 529–30, 634–48: 11 October, 20 December 1581, the terms by which Amsterdam agrees to renounce its Satisfaction. ²⁸ RSH 1582, 370–1: 3 August 1582. ²⁹ Posthumus, Geschiedenis van de Leids Lakenindustrie, ii. 5–11. ³⁰ Ibid., 1–5, 12–16. One thing Haarlem offered the Colchester Flemings was housing in two former convents: Chapter 8, n. 100.

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among the armies of Parma, Anjou, Ghent, and the States General. Catholics among them moved to nearby Nieuwpoort, but Protestants looked further aﬁeld. Some went to England, but a large group entered into discussions with Leiden, perhaps best known to them for its resistance to the Spaniards. The Hondschoote Flemings requested a new city ordinance to regulate the say industry (passed in November 1582); fulling mills and drying frames built to their speciﬁcations; and permission to settle in Leiden on the same terms granted to the Flemings from Colchester a few years previously. Leiden agreed, stipulating only that those newly admitted to town citizenship must post bond to remain as burghers for at least ﬁve years. As before, the agreement brought a spike in immigration; Leiden had thirty-two new burghers in 1582, 216 in 1583.³¹ For the ﬁrst time in decades, Leiden’s leaders could envision a prosperous future.³² Haarlem too was interested in drawing say weavers from the southern Netherlands, as has been noted. But this city’s importance for the cloth industry lay in its European reputation for the bleaching of ﬁne linen. Bleaching required two things, both abundantly available in Haarlem’s immediate vicinity: pure water, from the North Sea dunes, and buttermilk, from local dairymen. For this industry too immigrants from the southern Netherlands were more than welcome. During the 1580s Flemish specialists in the art of linen-bleaching set up new operations in two villages near Haarlem that were known for the purity of the water. The college of magistrates responsible for quality control in the bleaching process came to reﬂect the immigrant character of the workforce: the six ‘ordinance masters’ (keurmeesters) included two Flemings, two Brabanders, and two Hollanders. The advance of the bleaching industry can be measured from the proceeds of a city excise on ﬁnished cloth; as a recent scholar has remarked, ‘the sharp climb around 1585 shows the importance of South-Netherlands immigrants for this branch of the industry’.³³ As in Leiden, skilled Protestant craftsmen from the south were turning a new page in Haarlem’s economic history.³⁴ ³¹ Herman van der Wee (in collaboration with John Munro), ‘The Western European Woolen Industries, 1500–1750’, in David Jenkins, ed., The Cambridge History of Western Textiles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 397–472, here 439–41 (I am grateful to Professor van der Wee, emeritus of the Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven, for sending me a copy); Posthumus, Geschiedenis van de Leids Lakenindustrie, ii. 41–7. ³² ‘Through the destruction of Hondschoote, Bruges, Ieper, and Nieupoort, by the blessing of almighty God, who has made this city young again, the say industry has been started, from which this city and the community have without doubt proﬁted well’: my translation of a 1588 letter from the magistrates of Leiden, as cited in Briels, Zuidnederlandse Immigratie. See also Gustaaf Asaert, 1585: De Val van Antwerpen en de Uittocht van Vlamingen en Brabanders ( Tielt: Lannoo, 2004), 146–8. ³³ Spaans, Haarlem na de Reformatie, 19–20, and Graﬁek 3, p. 294 (the quote); Israel, The Dutch Republic, 349. See also Asaert, 1585: De Val van Antwerpen, 152–5. ³⁴ ‘Now we see Haarlem and other cities populated by bleachers and merchants, the burned-out houses and buildings restored, and nearby parcels of land, formerly unnoticed and of no account, bought at a high price to be used in bleaching’: my translation of a 1586 letter from Haarlem’s magistrates to the States of Holland, as cited in Briels, Zuidnederlandse Immigratie, 37. On the religion of the immigrants, Spaans, Haarlem na de Reformatie, 87, on the consistory of the Reformed

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Dordrecht and Gouda Dordrecht had approximately 11,000 people in 1550, and about 21,000 by 1610, mainly because of population growth in the preceding two decades. The latter ﬁgure was not to be exceeded during the seventeenth century, even though Leiden and Haarlem, which had been comparable in size to Dordrecht prior to the Revolt, had both reached about 40,000 people by 1620. Dordrecht too attracted skilled immigrants from the southern Netherlands, including textile workers, but among the towns of the Dutch Republic it never ranked as a centre of the new drapery.³⁵ As in the decades prior to the Revolt, Dordrecht’s magistrates saw their city’s prosperity as tied to the staple privilege. Violations were constantly brought to the attention of the Lords States, albeit without achieving much in the way of results. Rhine wine, the historic mainstay of Dordrecht’s trade, was now transported from Germany to Amsterdam, avoiding Dordrecht, and thence to Scandinavia or the Baltic. In 1580, a city excise that reﬂected the proﬁts of the staple took in only about a ﬁfth of the revenue that was collected in 1560; this ﬁgure rose in subsequent years, but not above half the income for pre-Revolt years. By the early 1600s if not earlier, Rotterdam had surpassed the older city in wealth and population.³⁶ For Gouda, the beginning of the Revolt marked a coup de grâce for the brewing industry; if protective tariffs levied by other cities made traditional markets in Flanders less and less accessible, the severing of all connections with the southern Netherlands after 1572 made things altogether impossible. This city too had skilled immigrants from the south, but not nearly as many as Leiden or Haarlem, or Amsterdam.³⁷ Between 1583 and 1588, the magistrates found some 4,500 pounds for converting former ecclesiastical buildings to suitable industrial sites. This investment eventually paid off, but not until the beginning of the seventeenth century, when Gouda ﬁnally began to attract a larger stream of congregation: ‘In making choices among candidates whose status made them acceptable, care was also taken that the consistory be somewhat representative of the composition of the community. In view of the great number of church members from the southern Netherlands, roughly half the members were Brabanders and Flemings’ (my translation). ³⁵ For population ﬁgures in 1550, Table l. See Hubert Nusteling, ‘Stad in beweging’, and ‘Het stapelrecht beknot, de zeehandel ingeperkt’, in Frijhoff, Nusteling, and Spies, eds., Geschiedenis van Dordrecht, 109–16, 130–48. Dordrecht is not mentioned in the section on the textile industry after 1585 in De Vries and Van der Woude, The First Modern Economy, 279–95. Asaert, 1585: De Val van Antwerpen, 160–1: Dordrecht is said to have had a Walloon Reformed church in 1586, and from 1592 to 1604 the transit trade was in the hands of merchants originally from Liège. ³⁶ Nusteling, ‘Het stapelrecht beknot, de zeehandel ingeperkt’; cf. Rotterdam to Orange, 4 June 1577, a request that His Excellency quash the levies recently introduced by Dordrecht on grain passing by Rotterdam, INGWVO, no. 11957. ³⁷ Immigration to Amsterdam is discussed in Chapter 12. Asaert, 1585: De Val van Antwerpen, 160, notes that prior to the 1590s Delft received little immigration from the southern Netherlands.

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migration.³⁸ Meanwhile, absent any prospect for a return to prosperity, Gouda’s magistrates aimed at preventing things from getting worse; hence they fought the same kinds of battles their predecessors had fought during the Habsburg era. Gouda gave to the war effort against Spain not a stuiver more than it was compelled to give; it also beat back, by sending out the militia companies if necessary, every challenge to the city’s privileged position on Holland’s inland waterway.³⁹ Amsterdam’s growing trade held out the prospect of economic integration for the province, at a more complex level than before. But the very dynamism of the Amsterdam market made it imperative to ﬁnd a resolution for Holland’s political dilemma: whether to trade with the foe, or not. Would Amsterdam capitalize on its surplus of grain by sending it to traditional markets in the southern Low Countries, now Spanish, using licenten revenue to support the war ﬂeet? Or would a growing fear of revived Spanish power make trading with the enemy politically unacceptable, and thus allow Bremen and Hamburg to take over the business of providing grain to Spain and the southern Low Countries? In 1582, though both sides had honed their arguments well, the real battle was yet to be joined.⁴⁰ C H U RC H A N D S TAT E For partisans of the Revolt, freedom of conscience was fundamental.⁴¹ At the same time, the ‘Reformed Evangelical Religion’ enjoyed, by law, a monopoly on the public expression of religious belief.⁴² Any challenge to this principle was an affront not merely to true religion, but also to the authority of the Lords States. Mennonites had built good-sized congregations in some parts of Holland even under Hasbsburg rule, as in the Noorderkwartier, whose network of waterways ³⁸ Hibben, Gouda in the Revolt, 21–2, 140–1. In 1572 Gouda (with perhaps 10,000 people) was not much smaller than Leiden or Haarlem. But in 1614, when both these cities had reached 40,000 or more, Gouda’s population was only about 14,600. Asaert, 1585: De Val van Antwerpen, 159: of the 538 persons registered as new poorters in Gouda between 1573 and 1604, 242 (45%) came from the southern Low Countries. ³⁹ The opening in the Leidschendam (Chapter 3, n. 41), closed permanently by men from Gouda in 1579, was also closed for a time in 1577: States of Holland to Orange, 28 August 1577, reporting the closing of the opening, and Orange to Gouda, 28 December 1577, condemning the ‘destruction’ of the dam, and asking Gouda to lay the matter before the States of Holland: INGWVO, nos. 10795, 9494.These issues are covered very well in Hibben, Gouda in the Revolt, chapter V: ‘Parsimony and Financial Obstructionism’, 141–9; and ‘The Threat to Gouda’s Privileges’, 149–54. ⁴⁰ For continuation of this discussion, see Chapter 12. ⁴¹ e.g. Orange to the magistrates of Gouda, 26 July 1577, commanding them not to harass local Mennonites, INGWVO, no. 9497. ⁴² Cf. Orange’s ‘Instruction’ from the States (1576) as ‘Head and High Authority’ over Holland: ‘As for Religion, His Excellency shall allow and preserve the Reformed Evangelical Religion, causing to cease the religions that are contrary to the Gospel’ (Chapter 6, n. 22).

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afforded many avenues of escape from zealous ofﬁcals. After 1572 some towns made allowances for speciﬁc Mennonite beliefs (e.g. they were not required to swear oaths in town courts), but they were not allowed to build churches; they had to be content worshipping in structures that, from the outside, looked like residences or warehouses.⁴³ Catholics faced a more difﬁcult legal environment, because the law prohibited the practice of their faith even in private. But so long as they too kept ‘quiet’ in house-churches, their deﬁance of the law was left to the local sheriff.⁴⁴ For a few years Catholics made themselves conspicuous in the Noorderkwartier, still hard for ofﬁcials to control. In May 1582, the States demanded to know from the sheriff of the island of Texel how a Jesuit had been permitted to preach to a crowd of 300 or 400 people; at Lambertschaag, west of Medemblik, where 2,000 ‘papists’ were said to have gathered in the open air, a company of troops was posted, to prevent any recurrence of the scandal.⁴⁵ The general rule was that unless something untoward happened in the public forum, it was not of concern to the Lords States.⁴⁶ What did it mean to profess ‘the Reformed religion’? Modern scholars, like sixteenth-century believers, use the term to designate a broad stream of European Protestantism that repudiated Roman Catholicism root and branch, yet differed sharply from Lutheranism.⁴⁷ From about 1550 Zurich and Geneva ⁴³ Troy Osborne, ‘Saints into Citizens: Amsterdam’s Mennonite Congregations in the Golden Age’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 2006). ⁴⁴ Christine Kooi, ‘Paying off the Sheriff: Strategies of Toleration in Golden Age Holland’, in R. Po-Chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop, eds., Calvinism and Religious Toleration in Golden Age Holland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 87–101. ⁴⁵ RSH 1582, 261–2:26, 28 May 1582; cf. RANH, 239, 28 February 1581, the States of the Noorderkwartier must inform their colleagues south of the IJ ‘how certain restless spirits and left-over papists have begun to introduce the popish religion all over in some villages of this quarter, both secretly and in public, with preaching, and the conduct of ceremonies like baptism and marriage’. Because they portend ‘great change in the Christian religion, and discontent among the common people’, North Holland’s deputies would like advice as to whether such things ought not be ‘controlled’. RANH 239, 12 January 1583: ‘Someone who calls himself bishop of Haarlem [Godfried van Mierlo], or his representative’, has turned up in the vicinity of Hoorn, ‘saying mass in village churches’. Because many rural folk come to Hoorn on Fridays and Saturdays, there could easily be ‘tumult and commotion in the city’. Hence the Nooderkwartier’s deputies ask for another company of troops to be posted to Hoorn, for fear that the 150 men now stationed there may not be enough; 23 January 1583, two ‘trouble-makers’ have been arrested in Hoorn, ‘with the help of the soldiers’, and although ofﬁcials in ‘Brouck’ (Grootebroeck?) could not catch the ‘bishop’, they have detained those in whose houses the services were held. These texts reﬂect activities of the Holland Mission, based in Delft, an effort to revive Catholic belief in Holland that would have considerable success in the Noorderkwartier: see Parker, ‘Community on the Fringe’. ⁴⁶ Tracy, ‘Begrenzter Dissens’, 230–2). ⁴⁷ Lutherans (like Catholics, but with important differences) believed that the body and blood of Christ were truly present in the Eucharist, a doctrine ﬁrmly rejected by the various branches of Reformed theology. For the Reformed, any veneration of images was ‘idolatry’, and so was everything connected with the Catholic mass; Lutherans reformed the mass, eliminating what they saw as grave errors, and kept many traditional images. Thus Lutherans and Catholics sometimes used the same worship space at different times (e.g. in a German town or village that had but one church), but Calvinists and Catholics never did. In general, Tracy, Europe’s Reformations, 1450–1650 (2nd edn., Boulder, Colo.: Rowman & Littleﬁeld, 2006).

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formed a common front⁴⁸ against the ‘popish idolatry’ of a Roman Catholicism reinvigorated by the Council of Trent, and against the increasingly harsh attacks of Germany’s Lutheran divines. Yet between preachers trained in the school of Theodore Beza and those trained in the school of Heinrich Bullinger there remained important differences.⁴⁹ For present purposes the key point was that while Zurich entrusted governance of the church to the civil magistrates, churches modelled on Geneva governed their own affairs, through presbyteries (colleges of lay elders) in each congregation, and synods in which preachers of a given district gathered at regular intervals. So long as Reformed Protestants from the Netherlands lived in exile—in Emden or London—preachers and ideas from both traditions were made welcome.⁵⁰ But in 1571 the Emden congregation adopted a form of church organization based on Calvinist principles, as worked out among French Huguenots. Each church was to have a consistory (kerkeraad) of lay elders, whose duties included examining the morals and doctrine of persons desiring to be admitted to communion. For questions of doctrine and the appointment of new preachers, pastors of the district met regularly. After 1572 Emden’s church polity was transplanted to the towns loyal to the prince of Orange. The church body consisting of pastors from a district centring on one of the main towns was called a classis. In 1574 and again in 1578, Holland’s classes sent representatives to Dordrecht for the ﬁrst two synods of the Dutch Reformed Church; a third synod was held in Middelburg in 1581.⁵¹ Whether or not a classis and a town government collaborated harmoniously together seems mainly to have depended on local circumstances.

Dordrecht and Delft In June 1572, the turning point in Dordrecht had come when Sheriff Jan Boudewijnszoon van Drenckwaert, known for his enforcement of the government’s anti-heresy laws, ordered the city’s militia companies to ﬁre on ships of the Sea Beggars, drawn up in the harbour. Instead, one of the militiamen, Jacob Muys van Holy, issued a threat: ‘If you ﬁre out from the city, we will ⁴⁸ Bruce Gordon, The Swiss Reformation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002). ⁴⁹ For a classic study of the differences between Zurich and Geneva, and in Swiss and German cities that took one or the other as a model, Walther Kohler, Zürcher Ehegericht und Genfer Konsistorium (2 vols., Leipzig: M. Heinsius Nachfolger, 1932–42). ⁵⁰ Pettegree, Emden and the Dutch Revolt, 306. ⁵¹ Alastair Duke, with Rosemary Jones, ‘Toward a Reformed Polity in Holland, 1572–78’, in Duke, ed., Reformation and Revolt, 199–226; Hibben, Gouda in the Revolt, 107–8; John Paul Elliott, ‘Protestantization in the Northern Netherlands. A Case Study: The Classis Dordrecht, 1572–1640’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1994), 87, 99–105; cf. 89–90: ‘Even if not all Dutch Protestants subscribed to the Calvinist orthodoxy of the two confessional statements [the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism], the consensus of the church lay there.’ Hence they brought to Holland ‘a church order prescribing a Genevan orthodoxy’.

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ﬁre into the city.’ After the staunchly Catholic Drenckwaerts and their allies had departed, Dordrecht was notable among cities in Holland for the close connections between its political elite and the lay leadership of the new Reformed Church.⁵² Three men prominent in swinging Dordrecht to the side of William of Orange had been members of the city’s clandestine Protestant congregation: Cornelis van Beveren (d. 1586), one of the burgomasters in 1572; Adriaan van Blijenberg (d. 1582), a jurist who had studied in Calvin’s Geneva; and Jacob Muys (d. c.1592), a kinsman of Beveren’s, who returned to Dordrecht as sheriff, after his contentious tenure as Holland’s receiver-general.⁵³ In subsequent years, more than one-quarter of the men who served as elders or deacons of the church between 1573 and 1589 were also members of the magistracy. In the civic militia companies during roughly the same period, sixteen of forty-eight captains were also elders or deacons, or candidates for those ofﬁces; of the four colonels, three served both as magistrates and as church elders.⁵⁴ Early pastors of the church were not natives to Dordrecht, but in social terms they were insiders, from patrician families in cities to the south of the great rivers—like Hendrik van der Corput of Breda; along with Delft’s Arent Corneliszoon (see below), Corput was perhaps the most respected Dutch Reformed cleric of this ﬁrst generation. Though Corput was a convinced Calvinist, not all his Dordrecht colleagues were. Hermannus Herbertszoon, popular as a preacher, was invited for a time to Gouda (1578), where he made such an impression that magistrates repeatedly tried without success to get Dordrecht’s magistrates to approve a permanent transfer. Then in 1582 Herbertszoon announced that he would no longer use the (Calvinist) Heidelberg Catechism as a guide for his sermons. In discussions with the magistrates he promised to adhere to the Catechism, but would not sign it; this was not good enough for the classis of Dordrecht, and Herbertszoon was dismissed. When some in Dordrecht petitioned for his reinstatement, the magistrates not only rejected the petition but imposed a penalty on the petitioners.⁵⁵ Orthodox doctrine, as understood by the classis, was not to be questioned. By about 1600, Dordrecht’s arch-Calvinist reputation was well established. Delft was one of the cities that made its adhesion to the Revolt conditional on freedom of worship for all, in this case guaranteed by Orange himself, only to ⁵² Pieter Schotel, ‘Strijd om de macht’, in Frijhoff, Nusteling, and Spies, eds., Geschiedenis van Dordrecht, 15–17 (the quote); Elliott, ‘Protestantization in the Northern Netherlands’, 147–8; Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand, 247–8. ⁵³ Elliott, ‘Protestantization in the Northern Netherlands’, 146; Schotel, ‘Strijd om de macht’, 15–17; Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand, 247–9. See also the family trees at the end of Balen, Beschryving eder stadt Dordrecht: the mother of Cornelis van Beveren was Alijd Muys van Holy. On Muys as receiver-general, Chapters 5 and 8. ⁵⁴ In most cities, church elders were usually men of a social status a bit inferior to that of the magistrates; many were refugees from the southern Netherlands. See A. van Ginkel, De Ouderling (Amsterdam: Ton Bollard, 1975). ⁵⁵ On Herbertszoon, Hibben, Gouda in Revolt, 120–2; Elliott, ‘Protestantization in the Northern Netherlands’, 148–53; and C. A. Tukker, De Classis Dordrecht van 1573 tot 1609 (Leiden: Universitaire Pers, 1965), 52–6.

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see Catholic worship suppressed by the violence of the soldiers (1573). Unlike Dordrecht, Delft continued to have a strong Catholic presence; from its inception in 1582, the Holland Mission, led by a priest from a patrician family, Sasbout Vosmeer, had its headquarters in Delft.⁵⁶ Meanwhile, however, the Reformed congregation put down strong roots, thanks in good part to another cleric of patrician background, Arent Corneliszoon van’s Gravesande, whose great-uncle had been a member of the vroedschap and a leader of the city’s earliest Protestant congregation.⁵⁷ Corneliszoon had studied at Geneva and Heidelberg, and was know for his translation into Netherlandish of another Calvinist creed, the Belgic Confession. By church law, as approved at the national synods of 1574 and 1578, the classis of Delﬂand, representing twelve churches, had the right to present prospective pastors for approval by city or village magistrates: four in the city, eight in the countryside. But the Delﬂand classis almost never intervened in appointments to city churches, allowing the consistory and the magistrates to work things out to their mutual satisfaction. At one point the magistrates wanted a commitment from Corneliszoon to schedule himself for services at the same time every Sunday; his popularity as a preacher would draw crowds, and thus bolster contributions for church poor relief. Reformed clergy, desirous of preventing congregants from forming attachments to a particular preacher, generally avoided preaching according to a set rotation. In this case, however, Corneliszoon did as the city fathers had asked. His tact, and his connections to the local elite, may reasonably be credited for a smooth working relationship between the classis and the magistrates. This did not mean that members of the Delft’s Reformed community made up anything close to a majority of the adult population. Partly because of competition with the Mennonites,⁵⁸ who held their members to strict moral standards, Netherlands Reformed churches eschewed the idea of a people’s church—one that would encompass the whole of civil society.⁵⁹ Rather, they ⁵⁶ Chapter 6; Parker, ‘Community on the Fringe’; A. p. F. Wouters and p. H. A. M. Abels, Nieuw en Ongezien: Kerk en Samenleving in de Classis Delft (2 vols., Delft: Eburen, 1994), ii. 124–36. ⁵⁷ For this paragraph, save as noted, Wouters and Abels, Nieuw en Ongezien, vol. i. On Arent Corneliszoon see also the references in Charles H. Parker, The Reformation of Community: Social Welfare and Calvinist Charity in Holland, 1572–1620 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1998). ⁵⁸ Under the regime of an established church, as in Spain or England or Sweden, all Christians were expected to belong, and were subject to civil penalties for not conforming. The Netherlands provinces encouraged membership (e.g. non-members were not supposed to be magistrates, or, later, hold shares in the Dutch East India Company), but the Dutch Church was by law and in fact a voluntary church. Cf. Elliott, ‘Protestantization in the Northern Netherlands’, 79: the ‘challenge of Anabaptism in the Low Countries, followed by the growth of the Reformed Protestant Church in exile due to persecution, formed the two major features pushing the Dutch Church ﬁrmly towards voluntarism and an independent church’. ⁵⁹ So long as Hubert Duifhuis served as pastor, the Sint Jacobskerk of Utrecht embodied the idea of what has been called a people’s church, very different from the Netherlands Calvinist ideal: all adults who deemed themselves worthy were admitted to the sacrament. See Benjamin Kaplan,

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admitted to the communion table—that is, to full church membership⁶⁰—only men and women of proven moral character, as determined by the consistory. The slow but steady growth of the Delft congregation reﬂects this understanding of the church: full members numbered an estimated 13.6 per cent of Delft’s adult population in 1580, 18.7 per cent in 1602.

Gouda and Leiden In Gouda the new church got off to a bad start: The Gouda vroedschap never reconciled itself to the supremacy of the Reformed Church. Reformed Protestantism had been imposed on the town through force of circumstance—a ‘revolutionary reformation’—and the authorities had been compelled to proscribe Catholic worship in the interest of civil peace. The vroedschap resented this solution and never regarded it, at least during the 1570s, as permanent.⁶¹

If Dordrecht had 536 adult communicants by 1574, and Delft had 1,085 by 1578, Gouda’s communicants in 1578 numbered only in the ﬁfties.⁶² This was why city ofﬁcials welcomed Herbertszoon with enthusiasm in 1578, and regretted their inability to arrange a permanent transfer; when Herbertszoon was dismissed from Dordrecht (1582), he had a pulpit waiting for him in Gouda. For magistrates who were hardly enamoured of Calvinist orthodoxy, his refusal to preach according to the Heidelberg Catechism was an asset. Herbertszoon had responded to his critics with a short treatise in which he questioned not only the Catechism but also the doctrine of predestination. Church leaders demanded that he appear before a synod to defend his orthodoxy. Herbertszoon was willing to do so, but Gouda forbade him appear in public before any church body; magistrates allowed no more than ‘private’ conversations with representatives of the synod. Finally, in 1590, the city fathers declared they would retain Herbertszoon in his pulpit no matter what a synod or conference of preachers might decide. This was their church, now at last a growing church, and no church body of the new dispensation would lay down the law to Gouda. Like other cities, Leiden had preachers who came and went, but two stayed on to leave an imprint on the church. Pieter Corneliszoon, who had ministered to his congregants during the sieges of 1573 and 1573/4, was a zealous Calvinist who denounced ‘popish’ elements that survived in Leiden’s worship practices, Calvinists and Libertines: Confession and Community in Utrecht, 1578–1620 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). ⁶⁰ People who attended services but were not full members were called toehoorders (hearers), or liefhebbers (admirers: I agree here with John Elliott’s translation of the term). ⁶¹ Hibben, Gouda in the Revolt, 102. Save as noted, this paragraph is based on Hibben, chapter IV. ⁶² Elliott, ‘Protestantization in the Northern Netherlands’, 147–8; A. P. F. Wouters and P. H. A. M. Abel, Nieuw en Ongezien (Delft: Eburen, 1994), 230.

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like the celebration of feast days, or having evening prayer in the churches. Caspar Janszoon Coolhaes, a former Carthusian monk, had a broader understanding of the new doctrine. In 1579, acting in accord with the decisions of the recent Synod of Dordrecht, Leiden’s consistory nominated candidates for election as elders, without informing the magistrates. Incensed, the city fathers named a rival consistory of their own. It seems Corneliszoon and Coolhaes worked out a compromise acceptable to both sides, but then the magistrates announced that two of their number (who happened not to be church members) would henceforth ‘preside’ at meetings of the consistory. Coolhaes from his pulpit defended this exercise of civil power as lawful, while Corneliszoon from his pulpit denounced it as a usurpation of church authority. The magistrates accordingly dismissed Corneliszoon from his pulpit in Leiden (6 May 1579). But the Flemish immigrants who had brought their skills to Leiden had also brought strong Calvinist convictions; in 1577, for example, four of the eight men nominated for membership in the consistory were Flemings.⁶³ To the dismay of the magistrates, as many as 500 people now trooped out of Leiden on Sundays to the nearby village of Voorschoten, where Corneliszoon had found another pulpit. The scandal of public division had to be addressed by Holland’s authorities. While both Orange and the Lords States tried to reopen negotiations between the two parties in Leiden, burghers quarrelled in the streets and in their shops. Leiden’s long-time town secretary Jan van Hout penned an ‘Advice’ refuting the articles of the Synod of Dordrecht point by point: the magistrates, not the church, had the right to appoint preachers, and even to judge the doctrinal content of sermons. Early in 1580, Coolhaes himself published an Apology which not only upheld the authority of the magistrates, but also propounded the idea of a people’s church totally at odds with Calvinist doctrine. In his view honest believers of all persuasions ought to be welcome at the communion table: in such a church ‘there is never heard Martinist [Lutheran], Calvinist, Mennonite, papist, I am this, or you are that’.⁶⁴ But Coolhaes’s willingness to accept a former Mennonite as a fellow-preacher led to further division in Leiden; this prompted the magistrates to begin seeking a replacement for Coolhaes, who then resigned from his pulpit. Meanwhile, the two sides agreed on names for a committee of arbiters, who in October 1580 produced an ‘Arbitral Accord’ that was accepted by both consistories and by the city government. In future, the names of nominees for the consistory would be submitted by the church to the magistrates, who would then return a list containing two-thirds of the names, for ⁶³ This paragraph is based on Christine Kooi, Liberty and Religion: Church and State in Leiden’s Reformation, 1572–1620 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), chapters 2 and 3. Cf. Orange to the magistrates of Leiden, 14 April 1579, INGWVO, no. 10410: he has named Gerard van Wijngaerden and Lenaert Casembroot to mediate in the dispute between the magistrates and the Reformed community. ⁶⁴ Kooi, Liberty and Religion, 80; the idea of a people’s church open to all believers was then defended in Utrecht by Hubert Duifhuis (above, n. 59).

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election by the congregation. Magistrates would have the right to send two of their number to meetings of the consistory, but they must be church members, and they would be there as observers, not presiders. The quarrel at Leiden turned in part on the public-law status of rules for governing the church adopted by synods at Dordrecht (1574, 1578). Elders were to be chosen by the congregation, and candidates for the ministry were to be examined by the classis, which then ‘called’ a preacher to a particular pulpit. Out of respect for civil authority, town magistrates were to be consulted in the selection of pastors. Meanwhile, in 1576, a committee of the States of Holland prepared a draft church order in which town magistrates were given authority not only to install preachers for the churches, but also lay elders for the consistory, and lay deacons for the administration of church poor relief.⁶⁵ This plan for the future of the Church was discretely ignored by church bodies, just as the Lords States took no action on the Church’s synodical legislation.⁶⁶ These incompatible assumptions about Church–State relations portended trouble, and would one day bring a major political upheaval in Holland,⁶⁷ albeit at a date that lies beyond the chronological limits of this book. But the way factions had formed in Leiden—with magistrates and their backers lined up against strong Calvinists, many of whom were immigrants from the south—portended a different kind of problem that would rise to the surface more quickly. The refugees who created a new identity for themselves by turning their backs on Spanish tyranny and popish idolatry were ardent Orangists, and zealous foes of any who seemed to truckle to the enemy. Thus to the ongoing debate about trade with the Spanish Netherlands, already involving a clash of political and economic interests, there would soon be added a tincture of religious fervour. ⁶⁵ Elliott, ‘Protestantization in the Northern Netherlands’, 99–105. ⁶⁶ e.g. RSH 1579, 795 (25 August), Dordrecht, Haarlem, Amsterdam, Schiedam, Brill, and Alkmaar are of opinion that the Acta of the (1578) Synod of Dordrecht can be accepted by the States assembly with only minor adjustments, but the other cities have on this point ‘no charge’ from their principals. ⁶⁷ For the Arminian controversy, culminating in the 1618/19 Synod of Dordrecht, and the overthrow and judicial murder of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, Carl O. Bangs, Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1971), and A. T. van Deursen, Bavianen en Slijkgeuzen: Kerk en Kerkvolk ten tijde van Maurits en Oldenbarnevelt (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1974).

PART I V A N EW REPUBLIC, 1583–1588

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Prologue: Parma’s Offensive, 1583–1588 Having defeated those who contested his claim to Portugal (1582), Philip II had more resources for the Low Countries, where the return of Spanish and Italian troops had now been endorsed by the Union of Arras.¹ Alessandro Farnese was thus able to build an army of 60,000, with as many as half available for ﬁeld operations. Detaching units under Francisco de Verdugo and Jean-Baptiste de Tassis to operate against Friesland and Gelderland, Parma applied his main force to the reconquest of the great cities of Flanders and Brabant, the economic heartland of the Habsburg Netherlands.² This task, though largely completed, was interrupted in 1588, when Parma had orders to post his troops along the English Channel, to await the Invincible Armada. In his quest for a foreign counterweight to the wealth and power of King Philip II, William of Orange settled on the younger brother of France’s King Henry III, Franc¸ois Hercules, duke of Anjou. Anjou was named ‘defender of the liberties of the Netherlands’ by the States General in 1578, and ‘prince and lord of the Netherlands’ in January 1581. Anjou formally assumed his ofﬁce in Brussels in August of the latter year. After a vain courtship of Queen Elizabeth in England, he returned to Brussels to be hailed in elaborate ceremonies as duke of Brabant (February 1582). Anjou was of course expected to bring troops from France, in exchange for the monthly subsidies promised him by the States General. In the summer of 1582 the 5,000 cavalry and the 12,000 infantry he brought up to Cambrai forced Parma to abandon his designs on this important town. But Anjou’s foot soldiers (apart from elite Swiss units) lacked discipline, and, as one historian puts it, the duke himself ‘lacked all the gifts of a ﬁeld commander’. As if in recompense for Anjou’s shoddy service, the record of the States General in meeting the promised quota of 200,000 pounds per month was even shoddier. By the end of 1582, Anjou and his men tired of waiting for their money. In the ‘French Fury’ of 17 January 1583, Anjou’s troops assaulted but failed to take the ¹ According to Matteo Zane, Venetian ambassador to Madrid, the king was resolved on a defensive war, until the ‘French Fury’ at Antwerp removed the likelihood that his forces would have to ﬁght a major war against France as well as against the rebels: cited by Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, iii. 173–5. ² Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 213: ‘Already in January 1581 [Parma] had described to the king how he could bring all the great towns of Brabant and Flanders, the industrial heart of the Netherlands, to their knees if only he could occupy the Flemish coast and block the Scheldt above Antwerp.’

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great city of Antwerp, losing as many as 2,000 men. At the same time, however, their compatriots gained control of a number of towns, including Dunkirk (Flanders) and Dendermonde (Brabant). Despite an explosion of anti-French feeling in rebel towns, Orange managed to prevent an open breach with his difﬁcult ally.³ Parma held back, waiting to see what the French would do. At the behest of loyalist ’s-Hertogenbosch, he did send Charles de Mansfelt to begin siege works at nearby Eindhoven, held by the French under Bonnivet.⁴ ’s-Hertogenbosch, on a tributary of the Maas called the Aade, was of strategic interest for Holland, but Eindhoven, some twenty miles upstream, was not.⁵ Hence Hohenlohe, from his base at Geertruidenberg, disregarded orders from the States General to send four cornets of cavalry and four infantry companies to Eindhoven.⁶ The States General got no better cooperation from other provinces. Cavalry stationed in Gelderland, ordered to advance through Utrecht toward Eindhoven, was repeatedly turned back at Utrecht’s border. English and Scottish companies based in northern Flanders also had orders to advance on Eindhoven, but would not move without their pay; the States General could not pay them and Flanders, it seems, would not.⁷ Since the help promised Eindhoven never came, Bonnivet surrendered on 23 April. In the aftermath, Parma’s commanders gained the allegiance of more towns in northern Brabant.⁸ Parma now targeted Dunkirk, where bombardment commenced on 16 July 1583. Nearby Gravelines had been loyalist since La Motte, its governor, reconciled ³ Swart, Willem van Oranje, 207–37 (the quote, 227). At King Henry III’s court, the logic of this alliance was that France was then attempting to reverse the victory achieved by Spain’s Philip II when he asserted his claim to Portugal in 1580 (e.g. in 1581 a French ﬂeet sailed to the Azores, a Portuguese dominion, to support the cause of Philip’s rival Dom Antonio, prior of Crato, illegitimate cousin of Dom Sebasti˜ao I (d. 1578), last king of the House of Avis). See also Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 191, 192, 197–8, 205–7, and Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, ii. 848; Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, iii. 219–20; and Parker, Spanish Road, 274 (the Spanish company in the Low Countries wars had, in theory, 250 men, and the tercio had about twelve companies). For Orange’s ﬁeld army in 1583, Orange to Jan van Nassau, Antwerp, 10 July 1583, Groen, MCXVIII, viii. 219–26. ⁴ RSG iv. 3, 17, 24 January 1583; Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, iii. 106–22; Orange to Anjou, Antwerp, 22 January 1583, Groen, Letter MC, viii. 143–5. Bor, Oorsprong, xviii. 366, Eindhoven’s French and Scottish defenders numbered about 800 men. ⁵ RSH 1583, 10 (? March 1583), plans for the fortiﬁcation of Heusden (on a loop of the Maas, below where the Aade enters), in case Eindhoven is lost; also, the castellan of Heusden, a Brabander, is to be replaced by a Hollander. ⁶ RSG, iv. 31 January 1583. Cf. RSH 24 January 1583, although the Landraad has asked Holland to send 25,000 pounds of its quota in a current extraordinary levy to Brabant, for mustering troops to join with Anjou, the States will comply only if Orange himself so orders; 4 March 1583, the Landraad expresses regret that Holland has had ‘difﬁculty’ in sending cavalry and infantry for the defence of Eindhoven. ⁷ Remonstrance to the States General in Orange’s name by Adolph van Meetkerke, president of the Council of Flanders, 7 February 1583, Gachard Supplement, Letter CMXLIV, v. 315–18; States General to the States of Utrecht RSG iv, 18 March 1583; and RSG iv. 20 April 1583. ⁸ Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, iii. 120–30, capture of Diest, Steenbergen, and Hochstraten; Bor, Oorsprong, xviii. 366.

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with the crown. But for building a ﬂeet that might contest rebel supremacy of the sea Parma needed a larger harbour, like Dunkirk’s. Orange tried to arrange reinforcements for the 1,000 or so French troops holding Dunkirk, from French garrisons in nearby towns. But soldiers would not willingly leave a fortiﬁed town before their arrears were settled, and in Ghent, where the French were heartily detested, magistrates would not give a stuiver; Bruges was willing to pay the Frenchmen, but only if they reinforced the garrison of Nieuwpoort, closer to Bruges. With no help in sight, Dunkirk soon accepted terms from Parma, as did Nieuwpoort.⁹ Within a month, privateers based in Dunkirk were taking prizes at the entrance to the Zuider Zee, and ships were unloading at Dunkirk supplies for Parma’s follow-up operation against the great cities of Flanders.¹⁰ Orange now shifted his headquarters to Delft in Holland. In Middelburg, where he went for a meeting of the States General, he found Zeelanders deeply discouraged. Zutphen, the back door to Gelderland, had just been taken by stealth (22 September),¹¹ while Parma’s men had already begun the methodical process of cutting off the waterways by which Ghent might be supplied, including the rivers Lys and Scheldt. In October, they drove off the defenders at Sas van Ghent—a lock that allowed barges from Ghent direct access to the Scheldt estuary—and occupied the Land of Waas, lying between the Sas canal and the Scheldt. To deny the enemy the grain of this breadbasket region, and create an inland lake across which Ghent might be supplied, Hohenlohe came ‘out of Holland with thirty small ships and about 2,000 men’, to cut the estuary dyke at Terneuzen and ﬂood the Land of Waas—an operation for which Orange took personal credit.¹² Yet Parma’s commanders continued tightening the noose, at Ieper and Bruges as well as Ghent. In March 1584, deputies from Ieper got through to Dordrecht for a last appeal to the States General: after holding off the besiegers for nine months, their resources were exhausted. But Orange knew of no way of helping Ieper, save through further negotiations with His Highness, the duke of Anjou.¹³ Ieper’s magistrates got the point: they signed terms of capitulation ⁹ Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, iii. 120, 144; Bor, Oorsprong, xviii. 371–2. ¹⁰ RSH 4, 7 August 1583; Stradling, The Armada of Flanders 7: Dunkirk was ‘an awkward harbour, to be sure, but one which might sufﬁce as a base for warships, and the reception of ﬂeets from Spain’. ¹¹ Swart, Willem van Oranje, 239; Bor, Oorsprong, xviii. 400–1. ¹² The Lys ﬂows into the Scheldt at Ghent, the Dendre a bit downstream. Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, iii. 165; Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, Reign of Elizabeth, hereafter abbreviated CSPRE, xviii. 194, Stokes to Walsingham, Bruges, 3 November 1583 (the quote), and Gilpin to Walsingham, Antwerp, 2 November 1583, 193; Orange’s instructions for Norris, Groen, Letter MCLIVa, viii. 372–3: to aid Ghent, and prevent the foe from seizing the navigation of Antwerp, he has occupied Ter Neuzen. ¹³ RSG iv. 375–6 (10 February 1584), the Four Members of Flanders (one of which was Ieper) ask the States General to aid Ieper; Holland offers twenty-ﬁve last of rye (about 2,000 bushels), but the other provinces had no better idea than to hasten the conclusion of ongoing negotiations with Anjou.

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on 9 April.¹⁴ In Bruges, Charles de Chimay, governor for the States General, was a Calvinist through the inﬂuence of his wife, but also a son of the duke of Aerschot. Deeply distrustful of Chimay, Orange sent 1,500 men from Zeeland to Sluys in the vain hope of bringing Chimay back a prisoner (April 1584)—even as delegates from Bruges were opening the discussions that led to terms of surrender (24 May).¹⁵ Dendermonde—on the right or Brabant bank of the Scheldt—was now the only point from which supplies could get through to Ghent. For Holland, the Flemish ports of Sluis and Ostende—even better harbours than Dunkirk—had great strategic value, but the industrial city of Ghent did not. Still, the Lords States understood that Ghent would be a great prize for Spain. Thus when Dendermonde needed 21,000 pounds for fortiﬁcation and victuals as well as garrison wages, Holland and Zeeland not only agreed to pay 14,000 (with Brabant paying 7,000), they also took the unusual step of authorizing their confreres in Brabant to borrow the 14,000 pounds on the Antwerp exchange, ‘at the charge of Holland and Zeeland’; apparently at Brabant’s request, lenders would be empowered, in case of default, ‘to place under arrest any inhabitant of Holland or Zeeland, together with his goods’. In fact, Dendermonde’s garrison of 800 held off the besiegers for some months, and when Spanish troops stormed the city they found that a second rampart had been thrown up inside the walls. But as Parma’s men began work on a canal to drain away the moat, the defenders lost hope. With Dendermonde’s surrender (17 August 1584), Ghent was isolated.¹⁶ Adolph van Meetkerke, president of the Council of Flanders, made a lastminute appeal to on behalf of Ghent. This time, the States General voted an extraordinary levy of 350,000 pounds for a ﬁeld army. While the 350,000 would cover two months’ wages for 1,500 ‘good German cavalry’, 2,000 landskechten, and 3,000 Englishmen, the provinces were to provide from their own garrisons a further 7,250 infantry and 1,400 cavalry. But even as the Antwerp magistrate Gerard van Prounink, called Van Deventer, was appointed collector for the extraordinary levy (10 September), Ghent was already negotiating with Parma; terms of capitulation were signed on 17 September. When Holland’s portion of the 350,000 pounds, amounting to 150,000, was actually collected a few months later, as an interest-free ‘capital levy’ divided among town burghers (125,000) and wealthy peasants (25,000), the money was said to be for ‘freeing Flanders and Brabant’, with no reference to Ghent.¹⁷ Meanwhile, before the month ¹⁴ Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, iii. 146, 149, 164, 187–8; RSG iv. 84–5 (30 September 1583), 375-6 (10 February 1584), 380 (5–6 March 1584). ¹⁵ Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, iii. 201–13; Swart, Willem van Oranje, 242. Swart believes Orange acted as he did in the knowledge that Chimay had made contact with Parma, Van der Essen thinks Chimay turned to Parma in the belief that Orange meant to be rid of him. ¹⁶ RSG iv. 617–19 (18, 19, 23 May 1584, the quotes); cf. RSG iv. 609 (11 April 1584); Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, iv. 4–6. ¹⁷ RSG iv. 423–6 (6 August 1584), 431 (20 August 1584), 436 (10 September 1584); RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99C, ‘Staat van repartitiegelden, 1580–1586’, 150,000 ‘arrested’ by the States of

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of September was out, workers from now-loyalist Ghent were setting up the foundations for a barrier to block the Scheldt, just downstream from Antwerp.¹⁸ Antwerp lies on the right bank of the Scheldt, just below (south of) a bend in the river. Fearing a possible attack from the estuary, Habsburg ofﬁcials had built three forts on each bank of the river, with sluice gates that could be opened to ﬂood the countryside north of Antwerp. Having persuaded Marnix van Sint-Aldegonde to assume command in Antwerp, Orange urged upon his long-time friend the necessity of opening the sluice gates on the right bank, so as to create an inland lake impassable to enemy troops. There was support for this proposal among the magistrates, but the butchers’ guild, backed by threatening words from commanders of the town militia, adamantly opposed the ruination of pasture land that supported, so it was said, 12,000 head of cattle. Only after Marnix’s lieutenants drove off an assault on Lillo, the key fortress on the right bank, were the sluice gates opened, so that the waters washed southward towards Antwerp. But the Kouwendijk, a counter-dyke running east from the Scheldt, remained above water. Needless to say, Parma gave orders for raising and fortifying the Kouwendijk; this prevented relief barges from reaching Antwerp, and also gave access to the river from parts of Brabant under Spanish control. Meanwhile work continued on the great barrier across the Scheldt, at a point between Lillo and Antwerp, resting at both enós on piles made up of tree trunks sunk three by three into the river bed.¹⁹ Since Antwerp itself could no longer support the garrison at Lillo, the Lords States of Holland willingly took over responsibility for this key fortress, controlling the Scheldt below Antwerp.²⁰ Under Justin van Nassau, admiral of Zeeland, an assault ﬂeet was mobilized at Bergen-op-Zoom, including garrison soldiers from Holland and Zeeland, supported by three successive extraordinary levies in which Holland, for its part, raised 75,000, 67,000, and 25,000 pounds.²¹ On 4 April 1585 some 200 Holland on 3 November 1584, as part of 350,000 agreed by the United Provinces ‘for the freeing of Flanders and Brabant’, including a capitale leening without interest for 125,000 from the towns, and 25,000 from ‘the richest peasants in the countryside’. The loans were to be repaid from the Contributie (verponding) for 1586, but this was not possible; in 1588, they were converted into Holland renten at 8.33%: RSH 1588, 36, 23 February 1588, and RSG vi. 187 (16 January 1588). ¹⁸ Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, iv. 15. ¹⁹ Ibid., ii. 217–32, iv. 2–15. Craft guilds, including the butchers, had a prominent role in one of the three ‘members’ of Antwerp’s city government. ²⁰ RSH 1585, 168 (March 1585). ²¹ RSH 1585, 202–4 (15 March 1585), Holland promises to reimburse two-thirds of the value of any ships lost while delivering victuals or munitions to Antwerp. RANH 11 February 1585, the 75,000 promised by the States of Holland for ‘soldiers in Bergen-op-Zoom, Sluys, Ostende, Lillo, etc.’; RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99C, this 75,000 was to be repaid from the 1585 verponding; RSG v. 147–9: 16, 20 April 1585, ‘for the ﬂeet before Antwerp’, the four provinces of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, and Friesland will raise 100,000, in which Holland’s share will be two-thirds; RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99C, this 67,000 was to be repaid from the 1586 verponding. Cf. RANH 240, 7 June 1585, ‘lest we seem to neglect Antwerp’, the Noorderkwartier has made arrangements to pay the second half of its quota in the 67,000. RSH 1585, 318 19 549 (28 August 1585), the 25,000 came in the form of a loan from ‘Jacob Schot, a merchant living in Delft’.

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vessels landed troops on the left bank of the Scheldt, where they recaptured the fortress of Liefkenshoek, opposite Lillo. The next step was to break through Parma’s barrier, using mine-ships devised by an Italian engineer in the service of Antwerp, Federico Giambelli; sent upstream from Liefkenshoek, the mine-ships duly exploded, but not at points that did substantial damage to the structure. The only remaining alternative was an assault on the Kouwendijk. Hohenlohe gathered 150 vessels from Holland and Zeeland, carrying English and Scottish companies. At dawn on 21 May, Kouwendijk’s Spanish and Italian defenders saw Hohenlohe’s ﬂeet anchored to the north, while, to their rear, Marnix brought up ships from Antwerp. The decisive battle came on 26 May: Hohenlohe and Marnix debarked from either side to cut the dyke, only to be repulsed, as Parma from one end and Camillo Capizucchi from the other fought their way along the seventeen-foot-wide strip of dry land to join forces at the gap.²² Antwerp opened negotiations with Parma in June, and in retrospect it may seem that the city’s eventual surrender (17 August) was a foregone conclusion. When the Lords States of Holland agreed in July to consider yet another extraordinary levy in July—50,000 pounds, as part of 100,000 to be raised by the four contributing provinces—the proposal was to use the money for preserving six positions still held by the States General south of the Maas, including the port of Bergen-op-Zoom and the two fortresses downstream from Antwerp, Lillo and Liefkenshoek. One might get the impression that, for Holland, maintaining a foothold on the south bank of the Scheldt estuary was more important than a last-minute effort to save Antwerp. In August, Holland’s deputies were instructed to see to it that ‘if (God forbid) Antwerp should fall’, the money coming from this levy should be used for Bergen-op-Zoom and the two fortresses.²³ Yet Antwerp’s supporters did not give up so easily. On 31 May the Lords States of Holland, reacting to a proposal from leaders of the Reformed Church in Delft, approved a ‘voluntary loan’ of 150,000 pounds, to be raised over the next three months from ‘lovers of the fatherland’ for the relief of the ‘good, faithful and famous commercial city of Antwerp’. Lovers of the fatherland were less generous than the dominees had hoped; on 15 August, two days before the capitulation of Antwerp, the voluntary loan was converted to a ‘capital levy’, in which contributors could deduct for any sums they had given voluntarily. But the imminent fall of Antwerp had also roused England’s Queen Elizabeth I to intervene against Spain. While negotiators worked out the terms of the Treaty of Nonsuch, by which Elizabeth would become ‘protector’ of the Netherlands, the earl of Leicester, a favourite at her court, oversaw the raising of an army. ²² Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, iv. 51–87. For the extraordinary levy in April, see previous note. ²³ RSH 1585, 401 (13 July 1585), 504–6 (15 August 1585). The focus on the two fortresses was justiﬁed by the argument that, if seized by Spain, they might be used for an assault intended to ‘divide Zeeland from Holland’.

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Thus when money for the capital levy was collected, it was used not for Antwerp, but for troops arriving in Zeeland under the terms of the Treaty of Nonsuch.²⁴ Meanwhile, Holland took steps to integrate Lillo and Liefkenshoek, on opposite banks of the Scheldt, into its system of forward defences on the south shore of the Maas–Scheldt estuary.²⁵ For the next 200 years, these fortresses—built to protect Antwerp against an attack from the sea—would serve instead to limit Antwerp’s access to the sea. Parma now turned his attention to Gelderland, but not because he planned an attack towards Holland. Rather, he could not govern the lands that were again under Spanish rule unless he met his responsibility to assure their supply of grain. For decades the Low Countries had depended on stocks of Baltic rye and wheat, entering the Maas–Scheldt estuary either directly, from the North Sea, or via Holland’s inland waterway. But, for lands lying south of the estuary, rebel control of the seas had cut this traditional supply corridor. Hence Parma looked upstream along the great rivers, particularly the Maas, along which only the towns of Grave and Venlo stood between Spanish Brabant and the neutral prince-bishopric of Liège. Grave, on the south bank of the Maas, was well fortiﬁed, and had in addition to the burgher militia a garrison of 500, commanded by Lubbert Turk, a young Gelderland noble. By January 1586, Mansfelt’s men were building sconces around Grave, and setting piles in the Maas for barriers on the downstream and upstream sides. In April, Hohenlohe, coming up from Heusden, cut the Maas dyke and brought enough land under water to send supply barges into the beleaguered city. In May, reinforced by some of the English troops who had come across with the earl of Leicester, he forced his way along the dyke road toward Grave, taking two castles and successfully launching a larger ﬂotilla across the ﬂooded land. Parma now came to take command in person. His twenty-four cannon, planted across the river, opened a breach in the walls, though the ﬁrst charge was repelled. But when burghers saw the Spanish camp preparing for a general assault, they lost heart, and their magistrates induced the garrison to open negotiations that led to a capitulation (10 June). Almost at once Parma headed upstream to a point opposite Venlo, where his men built a bridge of boats, and forced the city’s capitulation within a week (28 June).²⁶ ²⁴ RSH 1585, 233 (20 April), 288–90 (31 May), 476 (August 15); RSG v. 156–7: 22 July 1585, Holland has receipts from Antwerp for 25,000 pounds in goods and services (this was part of Holland’s quota of 40,000 in a sum of 50,000 needed immediately from all the provinces for Antwerp). ²⁵ Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, v. 12, after the fall of Antwerp, Holland and Zeeland post men and ships at Lillo and Liefkenshoek to block the Scheldt; Correspondentie van Robert Dudley, Graaf van Leicester, Letter XVI, lvi. 22–3 Gecommiteerde Raden of Zeeland to Leicester, Middelburg, 31 December 1585: Lillo, Lefkenshoek, and Ter Neuzen are in danger of being lost for want of pay for the garrisons, and Holland has taken these garrisons to its charge. ²⁶ Bor, Oorsprong, xxi. 699–700, 707–8, 712; CSPFSRE xx. 541–42, ‘News from Holland’, 11–15 April 1585; Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, v. 30. The States of Holland regularly maintained garrisons in Grave, but would not do so for Venlo: RSH 1583, 19 (4 May 1583).

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With fears of a grain famine eased, Parma might have turned back downstream, toward Holland. Instead, by order of Philip II, he continued his march upstream, for he had business in the electorate of Cologne, on the king’s behalf. Some years previously, Elector and Prince-Archbishop Gerhard Truchsess von Waldburg had married a canoness and proclaimed his allegiance to Protestantism. Protestant nobles of the territory rallied to his banner; for example, Adolf von Meurs, count of Neuenahr, signed on as Truchsess’s ﬁeld commander. But Cologne, a Catholic city, ardently opposed its Protestant prelate, as did the inﬂuential cathedral chapter. In 1583, Pope Gregory XIII deposed Truchsess, allowing the chapter to elect in his place Ernst von Wittelsbach, the younger brother of Duke Albert V of Bavaria. Meanwhile, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II appealed for help to his cousin Philip II, who directed Parma to send troops. Johann Casimir of the Palatinate, the would-be knight errant of the Calvinist cause, intervened in support of Truchsess, only to withdraw when so ordered by his brother, the count palatine, who did not wish to provoke the emperor’s wrath. Parma’s men thus forced the surrender of Bonn (January 1584), leaving Meurs’s castle of Rheinsberg, on the Rhine, as the only fortiﬁed place that still held for Truchsess. Under orders from Orange and the States General, Hohenlohe effected a juncture with troops loyal to Truchsess, but pulled back to Gelderland. Truchsess now took up residence in Arnhem, while Adolf von Meurs accepted appointment as stadtholder of Gelderland for the States General. But Meurs did not forget the embers of war in the archiepiscopal principality of Cologne: in May 1585 he captured the well-fortiﬁed city of Neuss.²⁷ Thus Neuss and Rheinsberg were the problems with which Parma intended to deal by continuing his march upriver after the capture of Venlo. To his rear, Sir Philip Sidney led several English companies from Zeeland into northern Flanders, where they took the small town of Axel, and set the Land of Waas under water a second time.²⁸ Meanwhile, Leicester had been leading the bulk of his English troops toward Grave, only to have his march interrupted when Lubbert Turk himself brought the news of Grave’s surrender. Enraged, Leicester had the young nobleman arrested on the spot, whereupon he was tried, convicted, and hanged for lèse-majesté; according to Bor, the surrender of a newly victualled town was, for the English earl, prima facie evidence of collusion with the enemy.²⁹ When Leicester turned his forces north-east, heading ²⁷ Franz Bosbach, ‘Köln, Erzstift und Freie Reichsstadt,’ in Anton Schindling and Walter Ziegler, eds., Die Territorien des Reichs im Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung, iii: Der Nordwesten (Münster: Aschendorff, 1991), 58–86, here 74. Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, iii. 176–85, v. 32. See also Truchsess’s instructions for Steensel van Manslo’s mission to Orange, dated Bilsten, 10 July 1583, Gachard, Letter DCCCXCVII, v. 149–52; instructions from Orange and the States General for a mission to Truchsess, dated Middelburg, 29 August 1583, C, Gachard, Letter CMVI, v. 167–70; Orange to Jan van Nassau, Delft, 22 February 1584, Groen, Letter MCLVII, viii. 313–20; and Roger Williams to Walsingham, Wesel, 9 March 1584, and Arnhem, 24 March 1584, CSPESRE, xviii. 371–2, 429–32. ²⁸ Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, v. 60. ²⁹ Bor, Oorsprong, xxi. 708.

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for Zutphen, Parma abandoned his plans for the Rhineland, turning back to Gelderland.³⁰ Parma’s reconquest of the cities of Flanders and Brabant was now complete, save for three harbour towns, Sluis and Ostende in Flanders, and Bergen-opZoom in Brabant. In June 1587 Philip II instructed his governor-general to capture all three ports, if possible, in preparation for the coming of the Invincible Armada the following year. Sluis seemed an easier target than Ostende, and was more important for support of the Armada than Bergen-op-Zoom. Still, Sluis lay practically within sight of Walcheren Island (Zeeland), and it had a garrison of 1,700 men. Also, using troops on Holland’s payroll, Hohenlohe and young Maurits of Nassau organized just now a punishing raid into northern Brabant, burning over twenty villages and taking a castle on the Maas near ’s-Hertogenbosch. Parma had to react, but he did so by sending to Brabant units he still had posted in the Rhineland, not those he was preparing for the assault on Sluis.³¹ When Leicester, returning from a visit to England, landed in Zeeland in July, his intention was to mount an attack on the besiegers of Sluis. But in an atmosphere of deep distrust between Elizabeth’s governor-general and the States of Holland (see Chapter 12), his plans foundered on promises that were either not kept, or misinterpreted, depending on one’s point of view. The relief army was to have 2,500 infantry from Hohenlohe, but only about 1,700 came; because Hohenlohe was responsible for the safety of Holland’s Maas frontier, he made his cooperation conditional on the arrival of replacement troops and supplies from elsewhere, but none were forthcoming. Following the surrender of Sluis (5 August), Leicester complained that he had received no more than 13,000 pounds of an emergency subsidy of 100,000 promised in a States General resolution of 23 July. In response, Holland’s gentlemen-deputies explained that Holland and Zeeland together had raised over 150,000 pounds for the defence of Sluis; as for the 100,000 from the most recent subsidy, the money was to be delivered within a month, but by then Sluis had already capitulated.³² Parma made attempts on Ostende and Bergen-op-Zoom in 1588, but both towns successfully defended themselves, with some help from Holland.³³ The defeat of the Armada, an enormous blow to Spain’s prestige, was what really ³⁰ Ibid. 750–1. ³¹ RSG v. 514–16 (13, 18 June, 9 July 1587); Bor, Oorsprong, xxiii. 9–10; Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, v. 136, 141. ³² Bor, Oorsprong, xxiii. 8, 325–36, 76; RSG v. 70–1703, 22–3 July 1585; Correspondentie van Robert Dudley, Graaf van Leicester, Letter DLXIX, lviii. 333–4, from Leicester’s grievances against the States of Holland, dated November 1587; Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, v. 128. ³³ For Spain’s conquests by 1589, see the map in Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 212; for the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, 221–2. Cf. RSH 1588, 22 (15 March 1588), the garrison in Bergen-op-Zoom (with garrisons in certain other towns in Gelderland and Overijssel) has to be paid, but Holland cannot pay, so Holland will forward these requests to the States of Utrecht and of Friesland; and 446-7 (22 October 1588, during the siege), a grant of 20,000 pounds for provisions for troops in Bergen-op-Zoom not on Holland’s payroll.

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marked the end of his string of successes. Parma had, however, permanently altered the political geography of the Low Countries. Even though the conﬂict continued for several decades more—the Dutch call it the Eighty Years War—the lands south of the great rivers that Parma had reconquered for Spain were to remain under Spanish control, save in Brabant’s northern corner, including Breda and ’s-Hertogenbosch. The Spanish Netherlands, and thus modern Belgium, was the legacy of Parma’s twelve-year tenure as governor-general (1579–91).

10 The Securing of Holland’s Forward Frontier, 1583–1588 To disrupt Parma’s siege operations the States General needed a ﬁeld army. But rebel provinces had all they could do to maintain the garrisons needed for defence. Help could only come, it seemed, from a powerful foreign prince. The duke of Anjou had been Orange’s choice, but after his assassination (July 1584) the States General turned to England. In the Treaty of Nonsuch (20 August 1585), Queen Elizabeth I accepted the title of ‘governor’ of the Low Countries, naming Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, as her governor-general. During his two periods of residence in the Low Countries (January–November 1586, and July–November 1587) Leicester had some successes but did not slow Parma’s momentum. Worse, troops of heavy cavalry from Germany, indispensable for a ﬁeld army, were recruited at great cost year after year, but every year failed to materialize. In the end, staunch patriots from cities like Ghent and Antwerp trod the path of exile, toward Holland or Zeeland, bringing the bitter conviction that it was Holland that had failed them in their hour of need. Holland in fact spent a good deal to defend Flanders and Brabant, but the Lords States put a higher priority on securing the approaches to Holland’s Garden. Garrisons no longer needed within Holland went to Gelderland or Overijssel. Here too Parma’s men gained strategic river towns—Grave on the Maas, Nijmegen on the Waal, Zutphen and Deventer on the IJssel. But troops paid by Holland held the line of the Rhine, and river towns just below those occupied by the foe. As the Armada entered the Channel, Holland’s forward frontier was diminished in circumference, but not breached.

PH A N TO M F I E L D A R M I E S In a 1583 memorandum to the States General, Orange envisioned a hundred infantry companies of 150 men for garrison duty, backed by 2,000 cavalry; for ‘service in the ﬁeld’, there must be a further 6,000 infantry, plus 1,500 cavalry. Yet a strike force of 6,000 foot and 1,500 horse was in Orange’s view ‘not sufﬁcient even to ﬁght a defensive war’; there should be 10,000 more infantry, plus 1,500 cavalry. But one could not get the added men by drawing down the

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garrison companies, for the foe ‘will not fail to assail those places divested of garrisons’.¹ A few months later, as Parma laid siege to Dunkirk, Orange had even fewer men for service in the ﬁeld than his war budget anticipated: 2,000 Swiss and 3,000 French, both contingents, it seems, from the companies brought by Anjou. By contrast, Parma had four tercios for operations in Flanders, possibly as many as 12,000 men in all.² This imbalance had to be addressed. Building an army with units from Germany, as Charles V had done, was never far from Orange’s thoughts. Early in 1583, Johann Casimir, younger brother of the count palatine of the Rhine, was ﬁghting in the electorate of Cologne on behalf of Gerhard Truchsess von Waldburg, a Protestant claimant to the prince-archbishopric. Hoping to see Johann Casimir and his men serve the States General once they had disposed of Truchsess’s foes, Orange was dismayed when Johann Casimir withdrew from the fray at the wish of his brother, who was under pressure from Emperor Rudolph II (November 1583).³ But the fall of Bonn (January 1584), his last major town, left Truchsess’s other commanders open for new employment: the count of Meurs, his ﬁeld-general, had 3,000 infantry; Eitel Heinrich von Kirchbergen, Meurs’s lieutenant, commanded 1,600 ‘good’ German cavalry. While the States General promised funds for Meurs, Orange got the States of Holland, without the participation of any other province, to raise 75,000 pounds for Eitel Heinrich by repartitie among the towns.⁴ Early in March Hohenlohe set out for Wesel, in the duchy of Cleves, to link up with Eitel Heinrich’s 1,200 mounted men. But when a Spanish force approached Wesel from Cologne, Hohenlohe, having no ‘commission’ to offer battle on the Rhine, withdrew to Gelderland.⁵ Eitel Heinrich’s men took up positions in Gelderland and Utrecht, but were soon causing trouble; by July, Meurs was told to ﬁnd out how much it would take to pay off and dismiss his ‘mutinous’ German cavalry.⁶

¹ Advice of Orange to the States General, 27 April 1583, Gachard, Letter DCCCXC, v. 133–41. Cf. CSPFSRE xviii. 285: Norreys to Herle, Dordrecht, 18 October 1583. ² Orange to Jan van Nassau, Antwerp, 10 July 1583, Groen, Letter MCXVIII, viii. 219–26; Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, iii. 219–20, four tercios; Parker, Spanish Road, 275, a tercio normally had twelve companies, and a Spanish company in the Low Countries consisted in theory of 250 men. ³ Truchsess’s instructions to Orange, 10 July 1583, Gachard, Letter DCCCXCVII, v. 149–52; instructions from Orange and the States General for a mission to Truchsess, Middelburg, 29 August 1583, Gachard, Letter CMVI, v. 167–70; Jan van Nassau to Orange, Dillenberg, 24 November 1583, Groen, Letter MCXXXVIII, viii. 274–83; and Orange to Jan van Nassau, Delft, 22 February 1584, Groen, Letter MCXLVII, viii. 313–20. ⁴ For Meurs (Adolf von Neuenahr) and Eitel Heinrich respectively, Ten Raa, Wijn, and De Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, i. 77–9, 89–92, 105–7, 223–5, and 138, 155, 158, 181. For the money earmarked for Meurs, RSG iv. 585: 12 January 1584. For the 75,000 for Eitel Heinrich, RAZH, 3.01.14, no. 99C, ‘Staat van Repartitiegelden 1580–1586’. ⁵ CSPFSRE xviii. 371–2, 429–32: Roger Williams to Walsingham, Wesel, 9 March 1584, and the same to the same, Arnhem, 24 March 1584. ⁶ RSG iv. 561–3, 567: 20 June, 5, 6 July, 13 August 1584.

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Meanwhile, Orange continued, despite mounting opposition, to uphold the alliance with Anjou. The duke had returned to France in June 1583, and was already suffering from the tuberculosis that soon claimed his life (June 1584). Nonetheless, the States General voted in the spring of 1584 an ‘extraordinary’ levy of 300,000 pounds on his behalf.⁷ Anjou’s death, followed by Orange’s assassination in July, set up a debate in the States General, with Holland a minority of one; under pressure from other provinces Holland agreed (6 October 1584) to join in sending to France a delegation authorized to recognize the duke’s elder brother, King Henry III, as their lord and prince.⁸ Hammering out the instructions for the delegation took a few more months,⁹ not without continuing suspicion of Holland’s intentions.¹⁰ The Netherlands delegation sailed for France in January 1585; they reached Paris in February, only to have the French king politely but unequivocally refuse their offer of sovereignty over the Low Countries (9 March 1585).¹¹ Some inﬂuential Hollanders were already promoting the idea of an alliance with England as an alternative—notably Paulus Buys of Leiden, a sometime ambassador to Elizabeth’s court, who had been advocate of the States of Holland since 1572.¹² In August 1584, as the States General discussed an embassy to England to inform Elizabeth of their dealings with France, Buys was proposed as one of the envoys, but rejected by Brabant and Flanders. On 5 October, the day before the States of Holland voted to join with other provinces in the mission to Paris, Buys resigned his position as advocate. In November, he wrote in a private capacity to Joachim Ortel, one of the States General’s envoys in England, that, unlike Flanders and Brabant, many in Holland had ‘little liking’ for French rule; Her Majesty could ‘make all things straight again’ by sending 3,000 or 4,000 troops, paid for four or ﬁve months.¹³ In fact, Elizabeth and her Privy Council had already decided to send William Davison to The Hague with an offer of military assistance. With an eye toward the embassy about ⁷ ‘Extraordinary’ levies are discussed in Chapter 11. RSH 1584, 136, 307–10, 336–7: 15 February, 5, 23 June 1584; RSG iv. 618–19, 623: 22, 23 May 1584; and RSG iv. 631–2: 9 July 1584. ⁸ RSH I584, 473, 508, 548, 562 (called 552), 569, 584–5, 589, 592–4, 601–10, and 611: 11 23, August, 5, 7, 11, 24, 26, 27 September, 3, and 6 October 1584. ⁹ See RSG iv. 485–511. ¹⁰ RSH 1584, 790: 17 December 1584, in response to queries as to whether they have ‘secret instructions’, Holland’s delegates are told to say they have no secret instructions—while keeping in mind that their secret instructions do not in any case contravene the resolution authorizing negotiations with France. ¹¹ RSG, v. 40–3; Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 217. ¹² CSPFSRE xviii. 630–1: William Herle to Elizabeth, Amsterdam, 1 August 1584; Buys is said to have described the idea as a proposal ‘from those of Brabant’. ¹³ RSG iv. 511–14; Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand, 207–8, and F. G. Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 1586–1587 (Utrecht: HES, 1988), 113 (foreign policy differences were only one of the reasons for Buys’s resignation); CSPFSRE xix. 123–4: Buys to Ortel, The Hague, 7 November 1584.

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to set off for France, however, the States General politely declined Davison’s proposal.¹⁴ Thus when Henry III refused the States General’s offer of sovereignty, Netherlands patriots looked to England. As Parma’s siege of Antwerp continued, negotiators in England worked out the terms of the Treaty of Nonsuch, signed by the Netherlands commissioners on 20 August 1585.¹⁵ Elizabeth was to maintain at her cost not the 5,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry Netherlands commissioners thought they had been promised, but 4,000 infantry and 400 cavalry; as surety towns, to be held until her expenses for the war had been repaid, Elizabeth would have Brill in Holland and Vlissingen (with the fort at Rammekens) in Zeeland. The States General would assume responsibility for another 4,000 English troops. When news of Antwerp’s fall reached England, both parties agreed (14 September) to an ‘Ampliation’ of the treaty: Elizabeth now agreed to pay for 5,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry, plus the garrisons of the two cautionary towns. The treaty and its Ampliation were accepted by the States General on 2 October.¹⁶ Troops were already crossing the Channel. At the beginning of September, Colonel John Norris asked leave of the States General to muster in Utrecht the 4,000 men on the queen’s payroll, for whom he had brought wages. Roger Williams, a man of experience in the Low Countries wars, believed that 6,000 men from the total force envisioned in the Ampliation should be kept for service in the ﬁeld, leaving no more than 3,000 Englishmen to be detached for garrison duty.¹⁷ Although Colonel Norris thought that even 3,000 garrison soldiers were too many, he agreed, at the behest of the States General, to post about 3,000 of his men to the defence of key towns, including Brill.¹⁸ Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, landed in Vlissingen in late December. In January 1586 the States General voted him ‘absolute’ authority over military affairs, and the same powers in civil affairs that had been exercised by governors-general of the Low Countries in the time of Emperor Charles V. This was more authority than Elizabeth had wanted him to claim,¹⁹ but not enough to bend the provincial States to his will. While the provinces had voted to continue, for one year, their regular monthly subsidy of 200,000 pounds, all parties understood that this sum could not support a ﬁeld army, for it did not fully cover the costs for the ¹⁴ RSG iv. 515: 8 December 1584; Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 217. ¹⁵ RSG, v. 73–5. ¹⁶ Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 43–7. ¹⁷ RSG v. 113–14: 2, 5 September 1585; CSPFSRE xix. 686, Williams to Walsingham, The Hague, 31 August 1585; cf. Sir Roger Williams, The Actions of the Low Countries (1572–1576), ed. D. W. Davies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1964). ¹⁸ RSG v. 118: 11 September 1585; CSPFSRE xx. 31: Davison to Burghley, 24 September 1585; Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, v. 7. ¹⁹ RSH 1586, 8–10: 8 January 1586; RSG v. 391–5: 9 January 1586; Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 42; Correspondentie van Robert Dudley, Graaf van Leicester, Letter 56, xix. 30–62: minutes of a 17 January 1586 discussion between William Davison, Elizabeth’s ambassador, and Leicester and his Council of State.

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town and frontier garrisons.²⁰ A ﬁeld army would require German heavy cavalry; both Leicester and the English court were in contact with Johann Casimir of the Palatinate.²¹ But if Low Countries cavalry demanded twenty-ﬁve pounds per man, meaning 50,000 pounds a month for 2,000 men, Germany’s highly valued ‘black horse’ companies demanded more; also, they did not set out for a campaign without having their ‘riding-money’ (aanrit) paid in advance.²² Hence in February Leicester requested of the States General an extraordinary subsidy of 400,000 pounds payable over the months of March to June. With the usual haggling among the provinces Leicester did not get ﬁnal approval from the States General until August.²³ Meanwhile, Parma had taken Grave and, further up the Maas, Venlo.²⁴ As for the English companies expected to march under Leicester’s banner, since their pay had been irregular they adopted the habits of soldiers of other nations: they would not leave the garrison or barrack towns until their arrears were settled.²⁵ Money from 400,000 pounds was needed instantly, even though the subsidy was to be raised (as usual) over a period of months. Thus the States General authorized Leicester to borrow up to 100,000, either against what Holland had consented for its quota in the levy of 400,000 pounds, or against the gemene middelen of the individual provinces. But Leicester and his English advisers wanted to borrow in the name of the States General, and could not do so until all the provinces had consented; they did not understand, or made tardy use of, the complicated Low Countries system of borrowing against the credit of individual provinces, particularly Holland.²⁶ The upshot was that Leicester ²⁰ See Chapter 11. ²¹ CSPFSRE xx. 336: memorandum, endorsed by Burghley, of a 30 January 1586 conversation at Grenwich on the terms proposed by ‘Casimir’; RSG v. 294: 3 July 1586, Leicester asks if his sending an emissary to Johann Casimir has been approved. ²² RSG v. 293–4: 20 June 1586, Leicester has written to the Council of State that if the 2,000 German cavalry are to come, he must ﬁrst have 30,000 pounds. ²³ Bor, Oorsprong, xxi. 728, Leicester tells the States General on 23 July 1586 that he had asked for the 400,000 on 1 February. RSH 1586, 135–6: at the 8 April meeting deputies are to bring their principals’ responses to Leicester’s request for 400,000 in March to June for a ﬁeld army; RSG v. 366, the draft act of consent for the 400,000; RSG v. 586, Leciester thanks the States General for their consent, but he needs the money in cash, not in instalments. ²⁴ Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, v. 48–62. ²⁵ Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 85–6; CSPFSRE xx. 447: Leicester to Burghley, Amsterdam, 15 March 1586: the poor English soldiers cannot be taken out to service because they cannot discharge debts owed in the places where they are. ²⁶ RSH 1586, 102: 17 March 1586, Leicester says he has raised 150,000 pounds for a ﬁeld army; RSH 1586, 135–7: 9 April 1586, Holland authorizes Leicester to ‘negotiate’ a loan in the amount of Holland’s quota in 300,000 of the 400,000; RSG v. 284: 23 April 1586, for 60,000 needed urgently, let Leicester borrow against the generale [gemene] middelen in sums divided among the various receivers, ‘as was done under the previous government’; RSG v. 342: 24 May 1586, Leicester is authorized to borrow 100,000 against the consent that some provinces have given toward the 400,000 extraordinary levy; RSH 1586, 299: 22 July–9 August 1586: since the provinces attached varying conditions to their consents to the 400,000 on 30 May, Leicester complains he has no ‘absolute obligatoire resolutie’ on which to base ‘security for repayment’ of loans; all he can do is to

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took the ﬁeld in June, with no German cavalry, and too late to be of any help at Grave or Venlo. He did capture Doesburg, threatening Zutphen, Spain’s outpost on the IJssel,²⁷ and thus forced Parma to abandon plans that he had for the Rhineland. Now, in August, there was again talk of raising German cavalry, this time in Brunswick, through arrangements made by the count of Meurs. These men demanded the traditional pay guarantees in the form of verbantbrieven from town governments, copies of which had to be posted in public in the main German cities along the North Sea and the Baltic. Five towns were found willing to afﬁx their corporate seals to such letters, but only after two months of discussion.²⁸ Meanwhile, Holland advanced 30,000 pounds for a force of cavalry, landsknechten, and pioneers, to be held in Utrecht for their arrival. But when Meurs arrived at the muster point (Brunswick, September 1586) the cavalry refused to form into companies without full pay for the ﬁrst month. Rather than risk offending the princes of Germany by marching through their lands 2,000 undisciplined (that is, un-mustered) cavalry, Meurs dismissed them.²⁹ Before he left for England (November 1586), Leicester asked that arrangements be made to engage the same 2,000 cavalry for action in 1587. Since the men had already appeared at the appointed muster place without getting paid, they demanded compensation for their pains, for which Holland agreed to offer as much as 40,000 pounds.³⁰ So as to give the men the pay-in-hand they demanded, while assuring the provincial States that they would actually serve in the Low Countries, the city of Bremen agreed to serve as broker. First, the States General was to place some 210,000 pounds on deposit in Bremen; the city’s magistrates would then pay out to the 2,000 cavalry, at the time of muster, some 52,000 in settlement of their claims for 1586, 19,000 as a sign-up bonus (voirdegelt), and about 71,500 for one month’s wages. They would not get their second month’s pay until the end of the second month, by which time they were expected to be serving in the Low Countries. Since money for the previous year’s claims had to reach to Bremen right away, lest negotiations fail, Holland agreed to raise its quota in the 52,000 (40,000) by having the gemene borrow against the middelen of individual provinces; RSH 1586, 302–9: 22 July–9 August 1586, the States now understand that Leicester did not actually borrow the 150,000 he said in March he had borrowed, but needs the money right away: let him borrow it against the 1587 Holland verponding; and RSH 1586, 354–5: 26 August–11 October 1586, Holland approves of the fact that Leicester has borrowed, against the gemene middelen, 100,000 pounds (of the 400,00) for Neuss, Rheinberg, and other needs. ²⁷ For the capture of Zutphen by men under Verdugo’s command (September 1583), see below. ²⁸ RSH 1585, 485–6, 493–4, 510–12, 654: 19, 23, 27 August, 6 October 1585. Middelburg, Dordrecht, and Amsterdam were asked for guarantees, Amsterdam, Delft, Enkhuizen, Harlingen, and Utrecht supplied them. ²⁹ Bor, Oorsprong, xxi. 751–2 (Meurs’s letter of 20 September from Brunswick); RSH 1586, 481: 3 November 1586, another use is decreed for money held in Utrecht for German cavalry who did not come. ³⁰ RSH 1586, 409, 521: 26 November–9 December, and 3 December 1586.

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middelen receivers borrow 20,000 pounds, and levying 20,000 by repartitie over the towns.³¹ On 2 May 1587 the States General agreed to an extraordinary levy of 200,000 pounds meant to cover these arrangements. But soon there were discussions of including this sum in a larger levy of 1,000,000 pounds, for which Holland’s quota was set at 600,000. The States General hoped by this means to induce Elizabeth I to an extra contribution of 500,000, so as to have the 1,500,000 needed to maintain, for four months, a ﬁeld army of 10,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry, and 1,000 pioneers.³² Leicester was back in the Low Countries by July, but as things turned out there would not be a ﬁeld army that summer either. Queen Elizabeth was unwilling to provide the extra 500,000 pounds (50,000 pounds sterling) promised by her ambassador, Lord Buckhurst; instead, she agreed to a further 150,000 pounds, which she delayed in sending. Hence the 1,000,000 pounds voted by the States General was reduced, and dedicated to other purposes.³³ Meanwhile, during August of 1587, the German cavalry were once again gathering at the appointed place of muster, this time near Bremen. To add to this force—and make sure the Germans did not cause trouble in the Netherlands—the States of Holland arranged for Meurs and Hohenlohe to bring ﬁve cavalry companies and ten infantry companies to meet them at the IJssel, which formed the border between Gelderland and Overijssel. According to Bor, it was expected that Meurs and the German horse would march north-east, to the fortiﬁed city of Lingen on the Ems, a former possession of the House of Nassau, currently held by an ally of Spain; its capture would have threatened Spanish Groningen from the south-east. Instead Meurs occupied the small town of Meppen, upstream from Lingen on the Ems. Meurs, a native of the Lower ³¹ RSH 1587, 13, 33, 35–6, 66–7, 86: 21, 31 January, 1 February (the 40,000 in loans), 28 February, 19 March 1587; RSG v. 594–5, 600–2, 676–7, 678, 609–10, 625: 17 January, 1 February, 31 January, 14, 21 February, 2 April 1587; and Correspondentie van Robert Dudley, Graaf van Leicester, lvii. 421–2, 453 (from Wilkes’s diary of July 1587, entries for 23 January and 16 February 1587). If (as it seems) the 143,071 pounds for two months’ wages was for the 2,000 cavalry only, this would work out to 35.77 pounds per month per cavalryman (as opposed to 25 pounds for Low Countries cavalry), not counting ofﬁcers’ pay. ³² RSH 1587, 89–90, 106–7, 135, 139, 151–2, 160, 177: 2 March, 13 April, 4, 6, 16 May (the request for 1,000,000 pounds, expecting 500,000 from her Majesty), 10 June, 2 July 1587; RSG v. 694–5, 698–9, 636, 644: 2 May, 6, 10 June, 1 July 1587; Correspondentie van Robert Dudley, Graaf van Leicester, lvii. 299–301, Letter CCCXLI, Buckhurst’s proposition to the States General, 31 May 1587, Her Majesty will provide one-sixth of the 1,500,000, the States General must provide the rest. ³³ On the mission of Lord Buckhurst ( Thomas Sackville), Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 165–6; RSG v. 704–5, plans for a ﬁeld army, including the 5,000 infantry and the cavalry on England’s payroll, and extra troops brought from England by Leicester; RSH 1587, 248: 11 September 1587: Holland reduces its 600,000-pound quota (for the levy of 1,000,000) to 500,000; RSG v. 520: 22 September 1587, the States General will use 6,000 pounds of the money on deposit in Bremen, destined for the German troops ‘alsnu verlopen’ (‘now run off ’) for what Bardesius proposes.

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Rhine region, wrote to Leicester and the States General that Meppen was well situated not only for blocking the ‘smugglers’ who brought goods down the Ems to Groningen, but also for securing a safe route for German infantry and cavalry, ‘who otherwise cannot get through, because Parma has blocked all the passages’. Willem Bardesius of the Council of State went to his native Amsterdam to raise money for the defence of Meppen on his own credit, but in vain; within days, Meurs’s precious German cavalry and landsknechten had melted away, and Meppen was abandoned.³⁴ Not too many years later, the United Provinces would have an effective ﬁeld army, under the command of William of Orange’s son, Maurits of Nassau. In 1591—the same year Parma’s tenure as Philip II’s commander in chief came to an end—Maurits captured four important fortiﬁed centres within a space of ﬁve months, including Nijmegen. This was but the ﬁrst in a long series of campaigns that would, by 1607, push out to the east and south the boundaries within which Parma’s conquests had conﬁned the rebel provinces.³⁵ For the period with which this book is concerned, however, the frustration of efforts to mount an offensive campaign exacerbated ongoing debates about the allocation of scarce resources—that is, in the main, Holland’s resources. Hollanders might be forgiven for thinking that trying yet again to buy a German cavalry corps would not be the best use of available funds.

H O L L A N D ’ S F O RWA R D F RO N T I E R In his proposed war budget of April 1583, William of Orange assumed that infantrymen on garrison duty would receive the customary monthly wage of 11.33 pounds, and cavalrymen twenty-ﬁve pounds per month.³⁶ Responding in July to the war budget as adopted by the States General, the States of Holland south of the IJ accepted responsibility for twenty-eight companies stationed in Holland, plus nineteen more posted beyond its borders.³⁷ For the month of December 1583, South Holland documented payments of 67,331 pounds in wages to 6,054 foot soldiers, the equivalent of forty companies of 150 men; the ³⁴ Bor, Oorsprong, xxiii. 29, 56–9; RSH 1587, 264–5: 29 September 1587, citing a ‘remonstrance from His Excellency’ (Maurits of Nassau), dated The Hague, 28 September: we have ordered Count von Neuenahr (Meurs) to capture Meppen, because the marshal of the prince-bishop of Münster has violated neutrality by allowing Spanish forces to camp there, ‘au chemin ou les nostres devroient passer’. This looks to be an after-the-fact order to Meurs, so Bardesius could recoup his expenses from state funds. Cf. Van Deursen, Maurits van Nassau, 71: capture of Lingen by Maurits, 1597. ³⁵ Ten Raa, Wijn, and De Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, ii. 14–34, ‘Aanvallende Oorlog’; see also Van Deursen, Maurits van Nassau, chapter V, ‘Het Leger’; and, for boundary changes, the maps in Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 212, 229. ³⁶ ‘Orange’s Advice to the States General’, 27 April 1583, Gachard, Letter DCCCXC, v. 133–41. ³⁷ RSH 1583, 247: 5 July 1583.

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account lists three other companies, plus ‘soldiers in the Veluwe’ (Gelderland) for which no payments were made that month.³⁸ In other words, it looks as if there were indeed forty-seven companies. The Noorderkwartier, which maintained its own accounts, was said by deputies south of the IJ to be responsible for a further twenty companies, but this ﬁgure was probably part of an ongoing argument between the two parts of Holland.³⁹ A pay list for January 1586, shown to Leicester, lists sixty-one infantry companies, of which ten were stationed in North Holland.⁴⁰ All in all, Holland seems consistently to have maintained about sixty companies—until 1587, when the Lords States transferred full command of Holland’s troops to young Maurits of Nassau.⁴¹ In March of that year, they promised the States General that Prince Maurits, ‘as governor and captain-general of Holland and West-Friesland, by the advice of the States of Holland’, would have disposal of ‘eighty companies of infantry and three cornets of cavalry [300 men], necessary for garrisons’.⁴² An account of payments made for the month ending 10 February 1587, though not easy to interpret, suggests that Holland south of the IJ now had sixty-three companies on its payroll.⁴³ If the Noorderkwartier increased its commitments proportionately, there would indeed have been eighty companies. At 11.33 pounds per man, monthly wages for 9,000 infantry (sixty companies of 150) would have been 101,970, amounting to 1,223,640 for a year; for eighty companies, or 12,000 garrison soldiers, the cost would have been 135,960 per month, or 1,631,520 per annum. To hold expenses down, Holland compelled most of its infantry companies to accept the idea of getting their monthly wages once every forty-eight days.⁴⁴ In other words, over a period of eight months (240 days) the men would receive the equivalent of ﬁve months’ wages; this would ³⁸ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 202, said to be an early seventeenth-century copy of an account summary prepared by Cornelis van Mierop, Holland’s receiver-general. A year later the Veluwe had four Holland companies: RSH 1584, 745: 1 December 1584. ³⁹ RSH 1583, 499–500: 12 December 1583; RAZH 3.01.14, no. 202, North Holland’s monthly quota for garrison wages is 22,500 pounds, which at 1,700 pounds per company of 150 would have supported thirteen companies at most. ⁴⁰ CSPFSRE xx. 339–40: January 1586, list of payments to garrisons in [of ] Holland, that is, Maurits of Nassau, Hohenlohe, and ﬁfty-nine [other] company captains. ⁴¹ For disputes between Leicester and the States of Holland, see Chapter 12. ⁴² RSH 1587, 34: 31 January 1587; RSG v. 680 ff.: 9 March 1587, list of conditions Holland attaches in consenting to its share of the 200,000 pounds per month to be provided by Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, and Friesland. ⁴³ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 205, ‘Staet of what Holland has already paid and still must pay for the [monthly] quota due 10 February 1586’. ⁴⁴ ‘Orange’s Advice to the States General’, 27 April 1583, Gachard, Letter DCCCXC, v. 133–41, suggesting that the garrisons be paid only every forty-eight days; RSH 1583, 149: 11 May 1583, danger of mutiny if the men are paid only every six weeks; RAZH 3.01.14, no. 2, for the last four months of 1585 the companies get two and a half months’ wages, save for Amsterdam’s companies, which are paid every thirty-two days; and RSH 1583, 4–5: 17 January 1583, and RSH 1584, 116–17: 10 February 1584, in settling their arrears, garrison companies are to be asked to forgo at least one and a half months a year, and to accept verbandt-brieven (obligatiën) in payment for the rest.

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reduce annual costs to 764,775 pounds for sixty companies, or 1,019,700 for eighty companies. Holland never had a large contingent of regular cavalry—236 men in December 1583, 190 in December 1585⁴⁵—but 200 men at twentyﬁve pounds per month would nonetheless amount to another 50,000 for the year—not counting what Holland spent in efforts to recruit German cavalry companies. For the year 11 September 1587–10 September 1588 there is a brief summary of payments for which Holland accounted to the States General. Apart from a small sum (85,484) for which there was prior authorization in the form of décharges from the receiver-general for the States General, Holland’s submission consisted of receipts for 1,941,513 pounds in expenditures, including 1,160,953 for infantry, 408,205 for cavalry, 105,406 for ammunition, 85,630 for victuals, and 82,687 for ofﬁcers’ pay.⁴⁶ Still other war-related expenses were not included in this tally. As of 1583, Holland maintained thirty-two warships on the rivers and the seas, at a monthly cost of 50,000 pounds, or 600,000 per annum.⁴⁷ Costs of fortiﬁcation are difﬁcult to gauge, because the States regularly made arrangements to divide the costs with local magistrates,⁴⁸ but 100,000 pounds a year would seem a reasonable estimate of costs paid by the province, since this is what the Lords States projected would be needed for 1587. (The following year, Maurits of Nassau, asserting his authority as commander in chief, presented the deputies with a fortiﬁcation budget for 130,000.)⁴⁹ Finally, in 1586 Holland presented Leicester with an estimate of about 154,000 in miscellaneous expenses for the year, including 90,000 for logijsgeld,⁵⁰ 24,000 for turf and candles for the men, 22,000 for ofﬁcers’ pay, and 7,800 for payments to the widows and orphans of soldiers.⁵¹ In sum, by 1588, Holland’s annual charges for the war were close to 3,000,000 pounds: 1,940,000 pounds in expenses for which accounts were rendered to the States General, including 1,020,000 for eighty garrison companies, counting the ‘month’ at forty-eight ⁴⁵ RAZH 3.01.14, nos. 202 (Hohenlohe’s 120 cavalrymen, Ritmeester Groenvelt’s 136), 203 (Hohenlohe’s 190 cavalry, in Geertruidenberg). ⁴⁶ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 274, ‘Bordereel’ listing ‘difﬁculties’ found in Holland’s second account to the States General, that is, for the year in question. Marginal notes record a further 85,484 in war-related expenditures, making a total of 2,026,997, as against 1,720,300 in reported income; thus Holland ‘overpaid’ by 306,697 pounds. ⁴⁷ RSH 1583, 247–50, 531: 5 July, 30 December 1583. Cf. CSPFSRE xix. 703–4, minute by Burghley: they have between sixty and seventy vessels at sea, at a cost of 60,000 [Holland] pounds per month. ⁴⁸ RSH 1583, 90, 142–3: 26 March, 7 May 1583. ⁴⁹ RSH 1587, 73: 4 March 1587; RSH 1588, 153–7: 11 May 1588. Cf. RSH 1586, 297–8: 9 August 1586, Amsterdam will not consent to a special levy for fortiﬁcations, unless it can deduct for ‘the 100,000 we have spent this year on our own fortiﬁcations’. ⁵⁰ ‘Lodging money’, to repay the cities whose magistrates paid the householders where garrison soldiers lodged. ⁵¹ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 195. The total given is 231,000, but I subtract about 62,000 for civil expenses, payable even in time of peace (e.g. day-money for deputies to the States, salaries of provincial ofﬁcials, wages for messengers, and pensions).

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days), and around 920,000 for additional costs, including 600,000 for warships.⁵² Keeping the garrison companies reasonably content was of course the main purpose of Holland’s monthly quotas to the States General, or rather the Union of Utrecht. Meeting in Middelburg in September 1583, during the siege of Dunkirk, the States General agreed to a combined monthly quota of 250,000 pounds, of which Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht together were responsible for 125,000; Zeeland was to pay 17 per cent and Holland the rest, minus the 10 per cent of Holland’s quota that was Utrecht’s share (in other words, the three provinces had monthly commitments of roughly 93,000, 23,000, and 9,000).⁵³ In August 1584, following Orange’s assassination, as part of a 300,000 total agreed to by all of the United Provinces, Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht raised their combined quota to 200,000 pounds per month, of which Holland owed two-thirds, or about 133,000. Because Friesland was included among the provinces responsible for the 200,000 (October 1585), from January 1586 Holland’s monthly obligation fell to 128,500.⁵⁴ These quotas continued through 1588.⁵⁵ To the frustration of Orange, and later of Leicester, these monthly or ‘ordinary contributions’ did not represent cart-loads of coin trundled off to a central bureau. Rather, they represented a ﬂow of paper by which the provinces documented payments made toward their quotas. Sums not spent for the wages of garrison companies and their ofﬁcers could be questioned by States General auditors, unless provincial ofﬁcials could show a décharge or payment authorization from ofﬁcials of the States General or the Union of Utrecht. Thus in the account for December 1583, mentioned above, Holland south of the IJ met its quota almost entirely through payments to the regular army, or ordinary garrisons.⁵⁶ But as Parma’s conquests continued, and the number of contributing cities declined, Holland became the treasure house of the Revolt. Thus from February to June of 1583 monies expended toward Holland’s quota included about 130,000 in payments to the Landraad in Utrecht, plus 30,000 for troops in Brabant (including some French companies), and 12,500 for ofﬁcers’ pay, transport ⁵² Liesker and Fritschy, Gewestelijke ﬁnanciën, Holland, give total war expenses of 1,866,822 pounds for 1585, and 1,842,036 pounds for 1586: Bijlage A.1, 494. ⁵³ RSG iv. 199: 10 September 1583; CSPFSRE xviii. 203: Segur-Pardeilhan to Walsingham, Dordrecht, 10 November 1583; RAZH 3.01.14, no. 202. ⁵⁴ RSG iv. 634–5: 9 August 1584; CSPFSRE xix. 336: Gilpin to Walsingham, Middelburg, ﬁrst letter of 21 March 1585 (Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht will give 200,000 per month); RAZH 3.01.14, no. 202, Holland’s quota for the ﬁnal months of 1585 is said to be 133,000; RSG v. 164–5: 12 October 1585; and Bor, Oorsprong, xxiii. 52–3: a summary approved by the States of Holland (18 September 1587) shows that Holland’s ‘ordinary’ contribution for the twenty-four months starting 10 January 1586 amounted to 3,084,067 pounds (128.503 per month). ⁵⁵ RSG v. 316–17, 371–2. 667–79, 679–89, 695: 12 January, 15 July 1586, 6 January, 9 March, 2 May 1587, and RSG vi. 203: 5 August 1588. ⁵⁶ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 202.

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of soldiers, and logijsgeld.⁵⁷ For the last four months of 1585, South Holland spent a mere 172,776 for the wages of its garrison soldiers and cavalrymen, but 314,365 for ‘miscellaneous items’, including about 86,000 for the war ﬂeets that had attempted to relieve Antwerp, 12,000 for provisions delivered to Lillo and Liefkenshoek, 45,000 for arrears of the admiralty, and 30,000 for ‘frontier cities and sconces payable from this budget’.⁵⁸ Since Holland paid the piper, Holland called the tune in terms of how money would be expended beyond its borders. Holland’s main towns were no longer seen as endangered; as threats arose, the States authorized magistrates to raise companies of local men, called waardegelders.⁵⁹ Civic militia companies from the larger towns, deemed more reliable than waardegelders, were posted to smaller towns along the frontier.⁶⁰ Most companies of professional soldiers were now stationed at Holland’s border, or in key towns or fortresses beyond the border. For example, in the December 1585 account, Holland south of the IJ paid for 4,610 regular infantry, with the largest concentration of regulars (1,945) along the great rivers. In Geertruidenberg, on the Hollands Diep, Hohenlohe commanded several companies of infantry and a troop of cavalry; at Heusden, upstream along the Maas, IJsselstein had 511 men. Towns in Gelderland had 1,109 Holland soldiers, with the largest garrisons in Grave (on the Maas), Tiel (on the Waal), and Culemborg (on the Lek). Apart from 312 men posted in small towns along the border with Utrecht, only 844 regular soldiers in Holland were paid at this time—mainly Amsterdam’s two companies of 300 and 285 men, which were in a category by themselves. Harlingen, a Frisian port of special interest to Amsterdam, also had 400 men on the payroll of Holland south of the IJ.⁶¹ The Noorderkwartier took responsibility for other Holland companies based in Friesland and Overijssel. At Zutphen (Overijssel), Jean-Baptiste de Tassis noticed that although the city’s recently built bulwarks were well manned, the old curtain wall was poorly guarded. He thus had an advance party scale the wall at night, while his main force hid in the dry moat, near the town gate; when the portals were opened early in the morning, Tassis’s men quickly overwhelmed the city. They failed, however, to occupy the opposite (west) bank of the IJssel, in the direction of Guelderland and Holland. Here a party of States General troops that happened to be in the vicinity built a sconce, which in subsequent years was ⁵⁷ RSH 1583, 247–50: 5 July 1583. ⁵⁸ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 203. ⁵⁹ e.g. RSH 1584, 748: 1 December 1584; Correspondentie van Robert Dudley, Graaf van Leicester, lvii. 53–4, Letter CCXII, Prouninck to Wilkes, Utrecht, 19 January 1587, a ‘secret’ levy of 2,000 infantry ordered by the States of Holland, in which Gouda’s quota is 100 men. See Chapter 12. ⁶⁰ RSH 1585, 210: 12 April 1585. ⁶¹ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 203. Only Amsterdam’s companies—commanded by two respected patricians, Herman van Roodenburg and Pieter van Neck Spieghel—were permitted to have as many as 300 men, and only they were paid every thirty-two days. It is likely that men posted in sensitive spots had a better chance of being paid regularly than did soldiers in garrisons in the larger Holland towns.

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Map. 5 The Eastern Frontier, 1585–1588

paid and supplied from Holland.⁶² Meanwhile, hoping to strike at the root of the problem—that is, Spanish Groningen—Holland soldiers based in Friesland took ⁶² Verdugo, Commentario de la Guerra de Frisa, 47–50; RSH 1583, 402, 445–50: 7 October 1583, money for men in the sconce ‘over’ Zutphen, and 14 November 1583, William of Orange says Zutphen has been lost because the provinces would not maintain a ﬁeld army; RSH 1584, 350, 474, 5 July 1584, Hohenlohe parleys with the foe from the sconce ‘over’ Zutphen, and 12 August

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part in a sea-borne assault aimed at securing control of the east bank of the Ems estuary (October 1583), from which Groningen was supplied; led by two Frisian commanders, the attackers captured three Spanish sconces, including Oterdum, which they refortiﬁed, and subsequently defended against two assaults by Verdugo and his men.⁶³ From Holland’s standpoint the only drawback to this operation was that the Frisian commanders mustered their raw recruits into companies on Terschelling, a Holland island at the mouth of the Zuider Zee. Friendly but undisciplined troops could do a great deal of damage to Holland’s Garden.⁶⁴ To the south, as Parma tightened his siege of Antwerp, it was widely expected that Holland, or its forward frontier, would be his next target. Utrecht threatened to reconsider its allegiance to the Union, unless Holland agreed to provide 50,000 pounds a month for Utrecht’s defence. The Utrechters appealed to what they must have known was the ﬁrst principle of Holland’s war strategy. Did the Hollanders prefer, they asked, ‘to ﬁght the war on your own ground, or on the ground of Utrecht and Gelderland’? If the latter, Holland had best make sure that 50,000 pounds per month was provided. In response, the Lords States of Holland promised to send the money; as a token of good faith, they at once dispatched two Holland companies to Wageningen, a Utrecht town seen as threatened.⁶⁵ In Gelderland, the States attempted to strengthen the defences of the province’s Upper Quarter, along the Waal and the Rhine, by having the count of Meurs admitted to membership in the Union of Utrecht, so as to ‘close off ’ the rivers to Spanish advances. But this new alliance caused anxiety in Nijmegen, on the south bank of the Waal; the city’s Catholic burghers, faced with the prospect of having to take in more mercenary soldiers, chose to go over to the king of Spain instead (March 1585).⁶⁶ On the other hand, Culemborg, on the Lek, agreed after some discussion to take in a garrison for the ﬁrst time, on condition that Holland would guarantee their pay; Culemborg was thus added to the list of towns held by companies ‘standing to the charge of Holland’.⁶⁷ 1584, Holland sends two garrison companies to help prevent the enemy from getting supplies into Zutphen. ⁶³ RSH 1583, 26–7: 9 February 1583; CSPFSRE xix. 143–4: 12/26 October 1583, ‘Flemish Advertisements’; Bor, Oorsprong, xix. 498, and xx. 560. ⁶⁴ RANH 20, 29 July 1583, people on Texel and Vlieland [just south of Terschelling] abandon their homes because they hear that the islands will be used for mustering—let the Frisian commanders instead use the Frisian island of Ameland; RSH 1583, 285: 2 August 1583, the Collegie is to prohibit the use of Terschelling for mustering; RSH 1583, 291, 305–6, 311–12: 7, 16, 20 August 1583, reports of a thousand soldiers on Terschelling, doing harm to the ‘poor inhabitants’, and also to trade, because the men are seizing passing ships; RSH 1583, 310, 334: 23 August, 5 September 1583, Holland provides arms and victuals to get the men off Terschelling; RSH 1583, 417: 20 October 1583, claims by Terschelling for damages done (27 July–14 September). ⁶⁵ RSH 1585, 426–8, 433–5, 498–503: 26, 27 July, 24 August 1585; and, for the grain, Bor, Oorsprong, xx. 620. ⁶⁶ Bor, Oorsprong, xviii. 559, 563–6. ⁶⁷ RSH 1585, 29–30 (14 January), 205–7 (20 March), 271–2 (7 May), 346 (22 June), 352 (25 June).

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In discussions with confederate provinces, the Lords States insisted that most of Holland’s money was spent ‘for the assistance of our allies, and for troops stationed beyond our borders’.⁶⁸ This was more or less true, but it glided over the fact that troops ‘beyond the borders’ were positioned so as to protect Holland’s Garden. This strategic logic seems to have been widely understood. In the difﬁcult months after Orange’s assassination, when all the confederate provinces but Holland wanted to offer sovereignty to Henry III, France’s ambassador to The Hague threatened that the king would abandon the United Provinces unless Holland relented. Gouda’s magistrates, notoriously timid in their support of the war,⁶⁹ now presented a forceful justiﬁcation of forward defence, a strategy that did not require the assistance of foreign potentates: In the previous war [1572–6], there was little revenue to be found, when our cities were unfortiﬁed, and divided from one another, we had no understanding of how easy it would have been to defend all the land passages by which [the enemy] could enter Holland and Zeeland, and we struggled in great peril to gain mastery over the foe at sea. Nonetheless, we were of good courage, and resisted all his power for ﬁve years. Now we have ample means for steady pursuit of the war. All our cities are defended by stout advance posts, and every approach to Holland, no matter how small, is likewise carefully protected, thanks to the foresight of His Princely Grace of beloved memory. We command absolutely over fresh water and salt water alike, so that the enemy has no power at all on the sea. Must we then be so frightened by the mere news of the enemy’s approach? If Espruneaux [the French ambassador] shrugs his shoulders, must we become so timid that we cast away all hope of defending ourselves?⁷⁰

In the end Gouda was outvoted; a majority in the States agreed to continue its participation in discussions with agents of the French crown.⁷¹ But Gouda had put into words Holland’s plan for the war—to defend Holland’s Garden at its ‘approaches’. When Nijmegen went over to the king, Adolf von Meurs, now the governor of Gelderland, built a large sconce opposite the city, on the north bank of the Waal. Just as the sconce at Zutphen obstructed a thrust toward Holland from that city, this sconce obstructed danger from Nijmegen; also, downstream on the Waal, Holland garrisons held the town of Tiel (Gelderland) and Loevenstein Castle (just inside Holland). But when Nijmegen’s militia, aided by royalist troops, stormed the sconce, Spain gained a bridgehead on the north bank of ⁶⁸ RSH 1585, 38–42: 17 January 1585. ⁶⁹ For Gouda’s consistent advocacy of peace negotiations with Philip II, Hibben, Gouda in the Revolt, 217–32. ⁷⁰ My translation of Bor, Oorsprong, xix. 489–95, a memorandum from Gouda dated 23 September 1584, and read to the deputies on 25 September. Cf. RSH 1583, 301–3: 13 August 1583, Holland sends a delegation to ask that it please His Excellency ‘to consider whether the country may be defended and preserved, with the help of God, by the resources of the country and its inhabitants’. ⁷¹ RSH 1584, 584–5, 593–4, 601, 611: 24, 27 September, 3, 6 October 1584.

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the Waal. Accordingly, ofﬁcials in Holland south of the IJ deployed more forces to the east and south. In October 1585, Meurs and Maarten Schenk van Nijdeggen—an able loyalist commander who had languished in captivity until Meurs persuaded him to change sides—secured the line of the Rhine by driving the Spanish out of a sconce they had built upstream from Arnhem, where the IJssel—running toward Zutphen and Deventer—splits off from the Rhine.⁷² Meanwhile, Diederik Sonoy, as governor of North Holland, sent two of his companies to the hitherto ungarrisoned Gelderland towns of Harderwijk and Elburg, on the south shore of the Zuider Zee; Amsterdam put 150 of its men in Naarden and another 150 in Utrecht, strengthening the small garrisons there. These deployments aimed at preventing Spain’s bases at Zutphen and Nijmegen from being used as a ‘gate into Holland’.⁷³ Schenk also managed to create a problem for Spain upstream from Nijmegen, by erecting a strong sconce at ’s-Gravenwaard, where the Waal splits from the Rhine. At about the same time, Leicester recaptured the important sconce opposite Nijmegen, on the north bank of the Waal, and then advanced along the IJsel toward Zutphen—this was the move that forced Parma to abandon his Rhineland offensive.⁷⁴ In January 1587 both the city of Deventer and the sconce opposite Nijmegen were betrayed to Parma by two English commanders whose loyalty Leicester had guaranteed, despite suspicions among Netherlanders.⁷⁵ Gelderland, the gateway to Holland, was now open to attack. As a countermeasure, Holland and the States General took renewed interest in the lingering civil war upstream along the Rhine, in the electorate of Cologne, described in the Prologue to Part IV. Schenk offered to renew the conﬂict in Cologne if given guarantees of support. Holland promised 20,000 pounds per month, in return for assurances from the States General that this sum would be deductible from Holland’s monthly quota of 128,500. For the States General, and surely for Holland as well, the aim was ‘to divert the war beyond the borders of our country’. In December Schenk recaptured Bonn for Truchsess, forcing Parma to build up his own deployments in Cologne. Through 1588, the States General supported ⁷² Bor, Oorsprong, xx. 648, the sconce at IJsseloort, above Arnhem; Ten Raa, Wijn, and De Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, i, 79. ⁷³ Bor, Oorsprong, xviii. 559, 563–6; CSPFSRE xix. 347: Davison to Walsingham, The Hague, 11 March 1585, Meurs has occupied and is fortifying a spot on the river across from Nijmegen; and ix. 383: the same to the same, 26 March 1585, those of Nijmegen have captured the fort made by Meurs. Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, v. 24–9, Verdugo’s idea for using Zutphen (taken by stealth by Jean Baptiste de Tassis in November 1583) as a ‘gate into Holland’. ⁷⁴ Bor, Oorsprong, xxi. 712, the ‘Schenkenschans’ at ’s-Gravenwaard; CSPFSRE xx. 657–8: Lord North to Burghley, Arnhem, 23 May 1586, recapture of the sconce opposite Nijmegen; Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, v. 62, and Bor, Oorsprong, xxi. 750–1, action around Zutphen (August 1586). ⁷⁵ For William Stanley (at Deventer) and Roland York (at the sconce), Bor, Oorsprong, xxii. 878–80, and Parker, The Dutch Revolt, 220–1. Stanley was a Catholic, as were many of his mostly Irish troops.

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Schenk’s defence of Bonn, the sconce at ’s-Gravenwaard, and Meurs’s castle at Rheinsberg.⁷⁶ In sum, while Parma concentrated on Flanders and Brabant, Holland focused on defending positions in Utrecht, Overijssel, and Gelderland, on the rivers along which Holland itself might be invaded. Neither strategy directly countered the other. By 1588, Parma had succeeded in reclaiming almost all of Flanders and Brabant, while his commanders made gains in Gelderland (Grave, Venlo, Nijmegen) and in Overijssel (Zutphen). But Union of Utrecht garrisons, mostly paid by Holland, checked Spain’s advance through Gelderland by holding their ground on the west bank of the IJssel, below Grave on the Maas, and along the line of the Rhine. This line, though pushed back somewhat, was still a forward frontier for Holland’s Garden. ⁷⁶ RSG v. 617–18, 680, 526–7: 12, 9 March, 30 December 1587; RSG vi. 28–9, 166–7: 23 May, 20 July 1588.

11 Holland’s Pyramid of Credit As Holland’s gemene middelen became the most important revenue of the confederate provinces, the Lords States were the more determined to keep control of these precious cash receipts. To cover the gap between revenues and war expenses, Holland’s government borrowed, as before, from town burghers, through repartiti¨en levied by the magistrates, and loans raised by ﬁscal ofﬁcials. To pay off debt the States imposed higher and higher taxes on real property (verpondingen); these levies were collected by town magistrates, who used the proceeds to repay burgher-lenders. But the settlement of short-term loans demanded still more cash; hence the States in 1586 revived the use of long-term renten, now issued by the town governments, in the name of the province. Holland’s war debt thus rested on a pyramid of credit, with the States at the top, burgher-lenders at the bottom, and urban magistrates playing the crucial mediating role. Burghers entrusted funds to the Lords States to keep the war going, but only because each transaction was guaranteed by their town corporations. GEMENE MIDDELEN As Parma’s conquests diminished the number of contributing provinces, Holland’s monthly quota bulked ever larger in the war budget of the Union of Utrecht. In 1583, Holland was responsible for 93,000 of a total of 250,000 pounds per month (37 per cent); in 1584, 133,000 of 300,000 (44 per cent); and from 1586 to 1588, 128,500 of 200,000 (64 per cent).¹ Holland’s gemene middelen were thus the most important revenue of the United Provinces. For each tax included in the gemene middelen, collection rights were auctioned every three or six months, under the supervision of commissioners appointed by the States. Those who won the bids had to make payments on their tax-farm contracts to the receiver-particular of that district. After the account Jacob Muys presented for 1575 (see Chapter 8), no receiver-general seems to have included income from the gemene middelen in his account. Absent a centralized control, town governments often held back receipts to content creditors, particularly their own ¹ Chapter 10, nn. 53, 54.

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burghers.² Some accounts kept by receivers-particular are preserved, but for the years 1579–1595 I have found only one such account, which looks like a special case.³ The sum total of quarterly gemene middelen was a closely guarded secret, kept within the walls of the Ridderzaal in the Binnenhof at The Hague, the meeting place for the Lords States, not to be shared even with the States General, whose deputies met, from 1583, on the ﬂoor below. The issue was security for public credit: by controlling information on the gemene middelen, the Lords States made sure that they alone had the right to make assignations on the income, and thus to contract loans on this basis. Within the States General there was no doubt resentment of Holland’s control over its revenues. Hence there was an effort to create a revenue stream that would be administered by the Generality, not by the provinces. In November 1583, Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht agreed to a States General proposal for new levies to help ‘continue the war’. There were ﬁve in all: convoy fees for shipping from one province to another (not just to foreign lands); added taxes on foreign wines and beers; a further two stuivers per barrel on domestic beer; ﬁfty pounds per hundred measures of imported salt reﬁned in the United Provinces; and twelve stuivers per barrel of soap boiled in the United Provinces.⁴ These new taxes were described as ‘the means reserved to the Generality’,⁵ or simply ‘the ﬁve species’. For all of the United Provinces, monthly income from four of the ﬁve species (not counting convoy fees) was estimated at 30,000 in December 1583, 23,000 in April 1584, 40,000 in January 1585. Since Holland’s herring ﬁshery was exempted,⁶ one may wonder how much income the salt tax produced, but for ² e.g. RANH 21, 3 August 1583, North Holland instructs its receiver-general, Hendrik van Wou, to ‘hold back’ from the verponding receipts 20,000 ‘for the payment of old debts here’. Also RANH 21, 13 December 1583: on behalf of the States General’s Treasurer of War, Cornelis Sandelijn comes to collect 22,500 pounds to be spent at the direction of the prince of Orange, but since garrisons in the Noorderkwartier had to be paid, Sandelijn does not get his money. Cf. RSH 1583, 377–8: 16 September, since the 36,000 lent by the burghers of Delft in March falls due in October, and cannot be paid from the receipts of Delft’s receiver-particular, Mierop, the receiver-general, is to suspend payment on all other assignations until he has taken care of Delft’s loans. ³ RAZH 3.01.28, no. 1106, ﬁrst account of Meester Pieter Hanneman as receiver-particular for Delft and Delﬂand, 1 January–31 October 1575, and no. 1695, ﬁrst account of Reynier van Neck as receiver-particular for Amsterdam and Amstelland, 14 March–31 December 1578. For the years 1579–88 I have not found any such accounts at RAZH or at the town archives I have consulted. The Gemeente Archief te Gouda (Oudarchief. nos. 3708–11) does preserve a summary of accounts for the years 1593/4–1601/2, possibly because Gouda’s receiver-particular, Frans Kegeling, had to declare bankruptcy. ⁴ RSH 1583, 221–3, 450–1: 15 June, 14 November 1583. ⁵ e.g. Correspondentie van Robert Dudley, Graf van Leicester, lvii. 442–6, portion of Letter 442 (Wilkes’s diary of July 1587), entries for 6–7 January 1587: the moyens reservez are proper to the Generality, not to any one province. ⁶ RSH 1583, 450–2: 14 November1583, the tax on reﬁned salt was to be paid by the ﬁrst buyer before it left the salt-works, save that buyers from the herring ﬁshery were to have their payments reimbursed; RSH 1588, 342: 5 September 1588, the ﬁshers will get their money back from the farmer of the tax, in return for giving him receipts supplied by the clerk of the receiver-general of the States General. Cf. RSG iv. 642–4: 19 December 1584, remonstrance of Maurits of Nassau to

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March 1585 the taxes on beer and wine in Holland were expected to yield about 8,250.⁷ Yet it is not clear that the Generality (as distinct from the provinces) actually controlled the income. In January 1584 the States General agreed to place the new imposts on salt, soap, and domestic beer ‘in the hands of His Excellency’ (Orange), who was then authorized to ‘negotiate’ loans for 50,000 pounds on these taxes for military units not on the war budget. But Holland had already authorized its receivers-particular to borrow 25,000 against the same incomes.⁸ After Orange’s death, Holland and Zeeland agreed that income from the ‘ﬁve species’ should count toward each province’s monthly quota in the States General war budget.⁹ When the earl of Leicester demanded that the imposts on salt and soap and domestic beer be delivered into his hands, the States General repeatedly demurred: these taxes were needed to help each province meet its monthly quota.¹⁰ By keeping the all-important gemene middelen under their control, the Lords States ensured that Holland’s debt securities remained the best choice for prospective lenders. Yet they had no way of countering the rhetorical advantage always held by those who claimed to speak for the ‘general’ or common good of the whole country, as distinct from the interests of the several provinces. The duke of Anjou, though technically sovereign of the Low Countries from 1581, could not make this argument very effectively, because he was never truly accepted as the ruler of the land. Hence when he demanded that the incomes of all the provinces be gathered into a ‘common purse’, the States General put him off with excuses. William of Orange resisted the idea of being made sovereign, yet when he made the same point, rather more forcefully, no province ventured to disagree openly; Holland’s deputies claimed to have always believed ‘that all the middelen and the revenue they produce should be brought into one purse, making a treasury, standing at the disposal of the general government’. But when the States General formally agreed that ‘all contributions generally accorded shall come into one purse’ each province had reservations. Holland asserted that although ‘we believe it would be more useful to the common cause to give disposition over all the money to His Excellency and the general government’, money collected in Holland still had to pay for Holland’s regular charges, including the garrison companies.¹¹ the Raad van Staat: little comes of the ‘three species’ (taxes on salt, soap, and the extra two stuivers per barrel of beer) because of ‘sinister practices’ of salt-producers in Holland. ⁷ RSH 1583, 531–2: 30 December 1583; RSH 1584, 226: 13 April 1584, estimated income for the tax on salt was reduced from 10,000 to 4,000 per month; RSH 1585, 33–6, 150–1: 17 January, 8 March 1585. ⁸ RSG, iv. 588, 598: 20 January, 24 February 1584; RSH 1583, 508: 14 December 1584. ⁹ RSG v. 165: 12 October 1585. ¹⁰ RSG v. 214, 323, 339–40, 353: 16, 7 February, 12 May, 11 June 1586; RSH 1586, 311–12: 22 July–9 August 1586; and entries in Wilkes’s diary for January 1587, cited above, n. 5. ¹¹ RSG iv. 181–2, 204–5, 589, 595: 18 March, 7 November 1583, 8, 9 February 1584; cf. RSH 1583, 446–9: 14 November 1583, in a written ‘argumentation’ (betoogh), His Excellency asks the

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Orange made it clear that he wanted the middelen themselves placed in his hands, not just a cash sum ‘equivalent thereto’. Zeeland was amenable to His Excellency’s wish on this point, but Holland was not: the gemene middelen had to remain under provincial control, for the revenues were ‘still obligated’ to the receivers-particular who had pledged their own credit in raising loans against their future receipts. Holland did agree to a plan whereby the 600,000 pounds charged against the gemene middelen could be paid off by other means, so that the middelen could eventually be delivered ‘free and clear’ to His Excellency¹²—but of course new debts on the middelen accumulated in the interim. In the end, Orange and his Council of State got no more than they already had: the right to review and challenge accounts submitted by the provinces, showing payments in fulﬁlment of their quotas. After Orange’s assassination, Hohenlohe and the Council of State again brought up the idea of a centralized administration of ﬁnances. On 6 December 1584, Holland offered to place the ﬁve species in Hohenlohe’s hands, and to provide the Generality with 80,000 pounds a month for the months of January to March, provided that Holland was authorized to use the money to pay for its garrisons and its naval expenses. This offer made very little available to the Generality, and young Maurits of Nassau (or his advisers) got the point. Maurits noted that the ﬁve species were not even being collected in the main Holland towns; he also pointed out that Holland’s offer of 240,000 pounds over a four-month period really amounted to 60,000 per month, not 80,000.¹³ Under pressure, Holland agreed to place the entire income from the gemene middelen in the hands of the Council of State, but only on condition that the money ﬁrst be spent to pay the garrisons standing at Holland’s charge.¹⁴ Thus Holland’s money was still to be spent as the Lords States wished. English observers took note of this wrangling between the general government and the provinces. Having little grasp of how divided sovereignty worked, they assumed that a decentralized administration of ﬁnances was necessarily corrupt and inefﬁcient. As Roger Williams wrote in 1584, ‘They may keep in camp 15,000 men if their contributions be gathered into one purse.’ Such views had support in the Low Countries as well. In 1585, Jacob Valcke, a Zeelander and member of the Council of State, gave an English agent a list of reasons why provincial revenues had not been put into a common purse: ‘the partiality provinces to lay aside their suspicions, so that ‘all the common contributions shall be placed under one administration . . . so that all the revenues come into one treasury, as if in a single purse’. ¹² RSH 1584, 29–30, 44–5: 10, 18 January 1584; RSG iv. 595: 9 February 1584; RSH 1584, 222–4: 13 April 1584. ¹³ RSG iv. 641–2, 642–4: 6 December, 19 December 1584. For Holland’s reply, RSH 1585, 39–40: 17 January 1585, if assignations made by the late William of Orange on the ﬁve species in Holland are counted as part of its quota, Holland’s contribution will indeed be 80,000 per month. Cf. Van Deursen, Maurits van Nassau, 26, at this point ‘Maurits surrounded himself with the men who had enjoyed William’s trust’, including Nicolaes Bruynincx. ¹⁴ RSH 1585, 150: 8 March 1585, income estimated at 74,000 pounds per month.

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of towns and provinces, keeping their contributions to their own use’; the ‘dishonesty’ of ofﬁcials who levy the taxes; and ‘the general corruption of the States, which have sought to enrich themselves’.¹⁵ When Leicester arrived some months later, he thought he knew what the problem was. The new governor-general wanted the combined provincial quotas of 200,000 pounds a month ‘delivered’ to him, ‘so that the payment of soldiers may henceforth be done even-handedly by the high authority (overhandt)’. The provinces could hardly refuse to cooperate. For the ﬁrst monthly instalment, payable 10 February 1586, there was no money to be had from Holland’s gemene middelen, because of current debts, and recent assignations; hence the full 133,000 pounds due from Holland had to be raised by a repartitie on the towns.¹⁶ For the next month’s quota, ‘those of the treasury with His Excellency’ contacted Holland’s receivers-particular directly, bidding them send in their receipts ‘clear’, that is, without deductions for outstanding assignations; when the receivers-particular protested that they could not fail to satisfy their creditors, the States of Holland authorized them to transfer these debts to other incomes.¹⁷ Though Amsterdam ﬂatly refused to cooperate,¹⁸ Holland did its best over the next several months to ensure that its quota to the Generality was paid in cash,¹⁹ not in receipts for sums already paid out. But as relations with Leicester deteriorated (see Chapter 12), the Lords States reverted to their former position: for the year beginning 10 January 1587, Holland reclaimed control of its gemene middelen.²⁰ Despite Leicester’s ¹⁵ CSPFSRE xix. 50–1, Williams to Walsingham, 4 September 1584 (to keep men ‘in camp’ meant having a ﬁeld army); xix. 791, 7 June 1585?, ‘Mr. Valcke’s answers to questions concerning the state of the Low Countries’. Cf. xx. 394, 25 February 1586?, ‘Memorandum on the United Provinces Council of State’, ‘Valck, well affected’; and Kluiver, De Souvereine en Independente Staat Zeeland, 122. ¹⁶ RSH 1586, 43–4: the quote, 6 February 1584; RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99C, ‘Staat van repartitiegelden’, 1580–6: the last item is for a repartitie of 132,906 for Holland’s quota in the 200,000 a month promised to His Excellency, as ordered by the States on 6 February 1586. ¹⁷ RSH 1586, 86–7, 122–3: 6 March 1586, the States orders the receivers-particular to send on stated sums to Joris de Bye, receiver-general of the States General; 7–17 March 1586 (the quote), receivers-particular are authorized to transfer their debts to the verponding. ¹⁸ RSH 1586, 70–1, 122–3: 14 February 1586, Amsterdam’s deputies have no instructions to consent to the plakkat ordering a transfer of the gemene middelen to His Excellency; 7–17 March 1586, they have no instructions to depart from the hypotheek given to their city, e.g. the provision that their garrisons were to be paid from local gemene middelen receipts. ¹⁹ RSH 1586, 97, 101: 7–17 March 1586, all but Amsterdam and Gorinchem agree to use what remains of the gemene middelen for the months of December to February for the 133,000 due 10 March; to anticipate part of what is due for the 1586 verponding for the 133,000 due 10 April; and to use the gemene middelen for March for the 133,000 due 10 May, all on the understanding that Mierop and the receivers-particular will borrow in excess of 100,000 pounds to pay off outstanding assignations on the March gemene middelen. Cf. RSH 1586, 297: 22 July–9 August 1586, Mierop has 30,000 pounds on hand, let him send it on to De Bye. ²⁰ RSH 1586, 446: 8 October 1586, the gemene middelen will not again be placed in the hands of His Excellency, unless the garrisons for which Holland is responsible are assured payment from

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247

protests, his ofﬁcials henceforth got only receipts, not the 133,000 a month in cash.²¹ Historians may be grateful that Leicester got the States to release information on Holland’s gemene middelen. Early in 1586 Elizabeth I’s ambassador, William Davison, was given a summary of provincial income for the years 1578–85.²² Gemene middelen receipts may be expressed as annual monthly averages:²³ 1578—68,224 1579—63,490 1580—68,135 1581—69,520

1582—72,308 1583—79,208 1584—80,017 1585—88,214

This report was not intended to give Davison a false picture of Holland’s income; as will be seen in Chapter 12, some towns represented in the States were ardent supporters of the English alliance, and they will not have allowed the earl of Leicester to be misled. In fact, as Table 5 shows, estimates of the value gemene middelen farm contracts mentioned in States of Holland resolutions are not very different from ﬁgures the Davison report gives for the preceding three- or six-month contract term. The Davison report also gives a total of 92,707 per month for the period January–March 1586, and projects an increase to about 95,000 pounds a month for the period between 1 April and 30 September, because of three new taxes put into effect ‘since the arrival of His Excellency’ (Leicester).²⁴ Returns for 1 April–30 September 1586 were actually a bit better. In a summary prepared ‘for the current year 1586’, and presented that summer to Davison’s successor Thomas Wilkes, monthly income in Holland for ‘all the farmed gemene middelen’ the convoyen. Since Leicester was adamant about banning trade with enemy lands, on which the convoyen depended (see Chapter 12), the import of this resolution is clear. ²¹ RSH 1587, 56, 72: 18 February 1587, Maurits of Nassau is named governor of Holland and captain-general of its troops, and 4 March 1587, the gemene middelen for the 1 April term are to be auctioned ‘in the name of His Excellency, without expressing the name of His Excellency’; RSH 1587, 238, 253: 3 September 1587, the gemene middelen are not ceded to Leicester, but Holland will ‘respond’ to him for its ordinary quota; and 15 September 1587, Leicester demands that the [monthly] contributions be placed in his hands, but Holland persists in its previous resolutions. ²² RSH 1586, 62: 12 February 1586, to Leicester’s question about the gemene middelen, the States reply that they have shown him, through the queen’s ambassador, ‘de imposten en middelen tegenwoordig loop hebbende, en wat somme van penninghen ter maendt uytbrengen die in pacht zyn uytgegeven’. The summary (next note) ends with the period January–March 1586, for which farm contracts would have been signed in late 1585. ²³ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99B, ‘Estat sommier tant des charges de la guerre au terre que du revenue des moyens generales au payment dicelles destinees, aynsi quelles sont descheus en Hollande 1577–1586’, published by Liesker and Fritschy, Gewestelijke ﬁnanci¨en, Holland, as Bijlage A.2, 497–503. ²⁴ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99B, ‘Estat sommier’: while the farm contracts for 1 October 1585 through 31 March 1586 yielded 92,707 per month, gemene middelen income for next six months is estimated at 95,000 because of the new levies: on blanched linen (farmed at 11,732 for six months), vinegar (3,591), and salt (9,531), yielding 24,854 in all, or 4,142 per month.

248

A New Republic, 1583–1588 Table 5 Monthly gemene middelen income, as reported in different sources RSH or RANH

Davison report

26 October 1583: 70,000 13 April 1584: 72,000 15 September 1585: 100,000

April–September 1583: 73,039 January–March 1584: 68,741 April–September 1585: 91,075

Sources: RSH 1583, 428: 26 October 1583, the gemene middelen are 30,000 pounds short of Holland’s monthly quota of 100,000; RSH 1584, 226–7: 14 April 1584; and RANH 18, 15 September 1585.

in Holland was projected to be 99,202 pounds, not counting a further 3,400 for excises that were ‘collected, not farmed’, and 2,500 pounds per month from border communities that were permitted to pay off Spanish commanders so as not to be attacked, provided they gave a like sum to the Lords States. By this expanded deﬁnition, Holland’s income had risen to 105,102 per month.²⁵ Finally, in April 1588, the monthly income of the gemene middelen was estimated at 120,000 pounds, not counting 5,000 reserved for improving Holland’s fortiﬁcations.²⁶ As in former years, the States borrowed against future gemene middelen receipts, either to make sure the garrison companies got their wages, or for urgent military needs beyond Holland’s borders.²⁷ In a bad month, charges for interest and principal on these loans could exceed gross gemene middelen receipts by as much as 100,000 pounds.²⁸ The total burden of debt charged against the gemene middelen was estimated at 415,000 pounds in March 1584, 600,000 in April of that year, 400,000 in March 1588.²⁹ In May 1586, the Noorderkwartier, where about a ﬁfth of the gemene middelen income was collected, had debts of 60,000 pounds.³⁰ Even if only some of this debt was paid as the loans came due, the net gemene middelen receipts available for new expenditures in any given month may ²⁵ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99E, copy from the end of the sixteenth century, ‘Staat sommier vande lasten van Holland . . . vorde loopende jaere 1586 geleydt ende gedestineert’. The farmed middelen of Zeeland were said to yield 24,658 per month. Cf. RSH 1586, 329: 22 July–9 August 1586, a staat of the ‘particuliere loopende lasten’ of the States of Holland for the current year has been given to ‘Willekens’, the queen’s ambassador. ²⁶ RSH 1588, 123: 15 April 1588, if the 400,000 pounds in debt with which the gemene middelen are burdened can be paid off, the net (zuyvere) income would be 120,000 per month, not counting the 5,000 for fortiﬁcations. ²⁷ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 201, ‘Staat van penningen gelicht tot vervalling van extraordinaire oncosten, waarvan de gemene middelen belaast staan’: a total of 139,301, borrowed at the usual rate of 12%, plus the 1% brokerage fee. ²⁸ RSH 1586, 97: 7–17 March 1586. ²⁹ RSH 1584, 169–70, 222–4: 18 March, 13 April 1584; RSH 1588, 123: 15 April 1588. ³⁰ RANH 18, 13 May 1586. Cf. RSH 1586, 58: 12 February 1586, net income for the gemene middelen in the Noorderkwartier is said to be 20,000 pounds per month; at this time, total income, according to the report for Davis (RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99B) was 92,707 per month.

Holland’s Pyramid of Credit

249

have been reduced by a third, a half, or even more. The only solution was to borrow still more.

THE PYRAMID OF CREDIT In the space of ten years, Holland’s gemene middelen income almost doubled, from about 68,000 per month for 1578 (in the Davison report) to a projected 125,000 per month for 1588³¹—roughly equivalent to the 128,500 per month that was then Holland’s quota in the Union of Utrecht’s war budget. But the war budget made no allowances for emergencies. Hence the States General regularly called for extraordinary levies, in which Holland’s share grew larger and larger. Table 6 lists these levies for the years 1583–7, together with those initiated by the States of Holland in 1588. Table 6 Extraordinary levies, 1583–1588 Raised by Holland 1583a 1584b 1585c 1586d 1587e 1588f

c.36,000 150,000 217,000 321,257 500,000 500,000

States General total

Purpose

150,000 350,000 365,900 500,000 1,000,000 —

Payment of Anjou’s troops Freeing of Flanders and Brabant Relief of Antwerp/English troops Field army for Leicester Field army for Leicester Mutinies in Holland/admiralty

a

RSG iv. 182–3: 26 March 1583; RSH 1583, 90–1: 26 March 1583. 3.01.14, no. 99C, ‘Staat van repartitiegelden, 1580–1586’. the two extraordinary levies of this year, in which Holland was responsible for 67,000 of 150,000 for the relief of Antwerp, and 150,000 of 215,900 for English troops for the relief army, RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99C, and RSG v. 108, 24 July 1585. d RAZH 3.01.14, no. 204, ‘Staet int kort ofte bordereel vande quotas van Holland, 1586–1588’, item one; Bor, Oorsprong, xxiii. 52–3, gives exactly the same numbers, which suggests that he had seen the account in question. e Holland’s quota in the 1,000,000 was originally 600,000, but as the ﬁeld army was never brought together, only 500,000 of the 600,000 was collected. f RSH 1588, 73–4, 241–2, 353–4: 4 March, 5 July, 10 September 1588. b RAZH c For

Counting extraordinary levies and the ‘ordinary’ monthly quotas together, Holland owed the States General roughly 5,800,000 pounds over three years (11 January 1586–10 January 1589). In fact, the military expenses that Holland ³¹ This would be equivalent to an annualized increase of slightly less than 6.5%. Cf. De Vries and Van der Woude, The First Modern Economy table 6.1, 200: The price of Netherlands rye increased from 175 grams (6 oz) of silver per 100 kg (220 lb) in 1550–70 to 269 in 1590–1600; thus from the mid-points of both periods, 1560 to 1595, the price would have increased by about 1.3% per year.

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submitted for review by the States General during this period were close to 6,000,000 pounds, or 2,000,000 per annum.³² Gross income for the gemene middelen was about 1,500,000 per year, and the net of disposable income was a good deal less. To cover the gap, however large it was, the Lords States continued to turn to Holland’s wealthy inhabitants. In 1585, when Holland needed 25,000 pounds toward a levy of 40,000 for the relief of Antwerp, Jacob Schot, a merchant of Delft, agreed to put up the entire sum, provided that Delft’s magistrates stood surety for him; this the magistrates did, once they in turn received what was called a ‘reversal’ (renversael), that is, a counter-guarantee from the Lords States, signed by ‘all the deputies attending the current session’.³³ This transaction neatly illustrates the pyramid of credit by which Holland kept up its contributions to the war: the prime lender was guaranteed against loss by the primary guarantors (the town magistrates, in their private names as well as in the name of the town corporation), who in turn were guaranteed by the deputies making up the Lords States, both in their private names and in the corporate name of the province. But it was seldom possible to raise this much money by negotiating with one wealthy individual. More commonly, the Lords States addressed themselves to Holland’s burghers in the aggregate, through the intermediacy of the town corporations. A town’s quota in these repartiti¨en was usually proportionate to its quota in the tax on real property known as the verponding.³⁴ On occasion, ‘wealthy peasants’ (rijke boeren) were also required to make loans.³⁵ Most repartiti¨en were intended to raise money for military priorities beyond Holland’s borders, as determined either by the States General (in voting an extraordinary levy), or by the States of Holland. Table 7 lists twenty-seven repartiti¨en in which Holland raised nearly 2,400,000 (about 400,000 per year) between 1583 and 1588. Most repartiti¨en promised interest at 12 per cent until the loans were redeemed. But for an extraordinary levy for 150,000 in September 1584, for ‘freeing Brabant and Flanders’ (item J), the States decreed a wealth tax or capitale impositie; loans would run free of interest, for sixteen months, until redeemed from the verponding of 1586. Holland’s countryside was assessed for 25,000 of the total, through a ³² RAZH 3.01.14, no. 204, ‘Staet int kort ofte bordereel vanden ordinaris ende extraordinaris quota van Holland jegens andere provincien’, items one and two: between 11 January 1586 and 10 January 1589, Holland owed 5,832,866, and submitted receipts for expenses totalling 5,986,668. ³³ RSH 1585, 366–7: 8 July 1585. ³⁴ e.g. RSH 1583, 33–4: 11 February 1583, relative to item B of Table 7; RSH 1584, 52: 20 January 1584, relative to item F. For item D, the States adopted a quota system in which Amsterdam owed not (roughly) twice as much as Delft, as in the verponding, but three times as much: RSH 1583, 402–3: 7 October 1584. For item G, the repartitie or assignment of quotas was done by William of Orange: RSH 1584, 190: 22 March 1584. ³⁵ RSH 1584, 52: 20 January 1584, for item F, villages are to be assessed, because towns in the Noorderkwartier object that the countryside pays nothing in repartiti¨en. Item J was a capitale impositie (tax on capital) that was to run interest free until repaid from the 1586 verponding; 125,000 was to be raised from loans by burghers in the towns, 25,000 from loans by rich farmers: RSH 1584, 494–5: 17 August 1584.

Table 7 Repartiti¨en in Holland, 1583–1588 Holland 55,000 36,000a 60,000b 14,000 17,000 75,000 46,000 64,000 52,200 150,000 75,000 67,000 100,000 150,000 112,000 33,000 150,000 132,906 133,000 25,000 125,000 30,000 20,000

150,000

27,000

350,000 150,000 215,900 50,000

150,000

Date (RSH)

Purpose

Assigned on

21/10/82 26/3/83 12/8/83 2/10/83 24/11/83 19/1/84 22/3/84 8/6/84 5/7/8 2/11/84 10/2/85 27/4/85 9/7/85 12/7/85 24/7/85 25/7/85 31/11/85 1/1/86 6/2/86 15/5/86 28/8/86 26/10/86 1/2/87

Ipswich merchants, Merchant Adventurers Anjou’s troops, relief of Eindhoven Garrisons in Heusden, Geertruidenberg Defence of Arnhem (Gelderland) Mutiny of Bergen-op-Zoom garrison Cavalry from Cologne, under Eitel Heinrich Troops in the ﬁeld army Troops in the Veluwe (Gelderland) For gemene middelen money given to Anjou Freeing Brabant and Flanders Needs of the general government Relief of Antwerp Garrisons in Holland Wages for English infantry, cavalry Monthly quota shortfall, June–August Relief of Antwerp Garrisons: Holland, Lillo, Ostende, etc. Monthly quota for January 1586 Monthly quota for February 1586 Arrears for item F, grain sent to Antwerp Last quarter of 400,000 for ﬁeld army, + supplement Hollander debts, formerly assigned on Brabant For negotiations with the 2,000 German cavalry

Verponding Verponding Verponding Verponding Convooien Verponding Verponding Verponding Revenues of 1586 Verponding Verponding Verponding Verponding Verponding Verponding Verponding Verponding Verponding Verponding

Holland’s Pyramid of Credit

A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. J. K. L. M. N. O. P. Q. R. S. T. U. V. W.

States General

Gemene middelen

251

252

Table 7 Continued

a The

States General

Date (RSH) Purpose

Assigned on

200,000 100,000 200,000 200,000

1,000,000c

16/5/87 4/3/88 9/7/88 10/9/88

Verponding Verponding Verponding Verponding

To raise 2,000 German cavalry, 3,000 infantry To quiet mutinies among Holland’s garrisons For the mutiny among the Geertruidenberg garrison For the admiralty, against Spain’s Armada

money was to have been raised by repartitie, but some of it came instead from the gemene middelen: see item I. by which cities anticipated their quotas for a later verponding. Annual totals: 1583—210,285 1584—387,200 1585—687,000 1586—445,906 1587—220,000 1588—500,000 Grand total—2,640,391 Annual average—419,565 c At this time, Holland’s overall share in the 1,000,000 extraordinary levy for a ﬁeld army (with another 500,000 expected from England) was estimated at 600,000. This repartitie was for the 200,000 needed in Germany ‘immediately’. Sources: item B, RSH 1583, 90–1, 26 May 1583; item C, RSH 1583, 295, 12 August 1583; item M, GAA, inv. no. 5044, no. 85, Treasurers Extraordinary for 1588/9; item N, RSG v. 108, 24 July 1585; item Q, RSG v. 156, 20 July 1585; item S, RSH 1586, 183–8, 15–24 May 1586; items U, V, RSH 1586, 345/6, 357–8, 26 August–11 October 1586, also GAA, inv. no. 5044, no. 82, Thesauriers Extraordinaris, 1586/7, ‘Penningen aan den Heren Staten’; item W, RSH 1587, 34–5, 1 February 1587; item X, RSH 1587, 151–2, 16 May 1587; item Y, RSH 1588, 73–4, 4 March 1588; item Z, RSH 1588, 241–2, 5 July 1588; item AA, RSH 1588, 353–4, 10 September 1588. For all other items, RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99C, ‘Staat van repartitiegelden, 1580–1586’. b Loan

A New Republic, 1583–1588

X. Y. Z. AA

Holland

Holland’s Pyramid of Credit

253

levy of 0.3 per cent on the capital wealth of all farmers worth 500 pounds or more.³⁶ Since the deputies could not agree on whether on not to use the verponding quotas for the 125,000 due from the cities, they made a one-time only assessment, in which Dordrecht owed 10 per cent of the 125,000 (12,500), Haarlem 7 per cent (8,750), Delft 13 per cent (16,250), Leiden 6 per cent (7,500), and Amsterdam 18 per cent (22,500).³⁷ Towns were to raise these loans ‘from the richest’, as determined by the magistrates.³⁸ Treasury records in Leiden and Amsterdam permit a comparison of how the quotas were raised in two very different cities, the one still recovering from the terrible siege of 1573/4, the other the dynamic centre of Holland’s new prosperity. As might be expected, Leiden fell short of its goal, collecting only 6,144 in loans from 135 persons,³⁹ while Amsterdam far exceeded expectations, raising 54,675 from 351 lenders.⁴⁰ The Amsterdam loans paid only 10 per cent interest, as opposed to the 12 per cent authorized by the Lords States. Nonetheless, there were plenty of subscribers, possibly because the loans in Amsterdam ran interest free for only four months, not the sixteen months envisioned by the Lords States.⁴¹ Many Amsterdammers who provided capital on this occasion participated also in two other loans, one for 25,610 in February 1584, and another for 16,175 in April 1585.⁴² Of those who had provided loans in February 1584, 62 per cent were also subscribers to the capitale impositie,⁴³ as were 61 per cent of those who provided loans in April 1585.⁴⁴ Conversely, of the 351 persons who subscribed to the capitale impositie, there were only ninety-two who did not subscribe to one or both of the other loans. Among them were two men of great wealth—the ﬁnancier Julius Willekens and the Baltic grain merchant Arent Hudde—who gave little more than the hundred pounds evidently set as a ³⁶ RSH 1584, 478–9: 15 August 1584, the quotas used in 1584 were used again to levy 25,000 on the countryside in 1585 (item N); RSH 1585, 431–3: 27 July 1585. ³⁷ RSH 1584, 543–4, 570: 1, 12 September 1584. Using the verponding assessment would have required Amsterdam to pay a good deal more, perhaps as much as 60,000. In the verponding, as ‘redressed’ for collection in 1584 (RAZH, 3.01.14, no. 462), Amsterdam was assessed for 30,036, Delft for 10,000, Dordrecht for 8,750, Leiden for 5,706, and Haarlem for 5,630. ³⁸ RSH 1584, 478–9: 15 August 1584. ³⁹ Stadsarchief van Leiden, van Manen, no. 10159: arrangements for repayment of loans made by burghers in 1584 and 1585. ⁴⁰ Gemeente Archief van Amsterdam, hereafter abbreviated as GAA, 5044, Accounts of the Treasurers Extraordinary, no. 5A. ⁴¹ GAA 5044, Accounts of the Treasurers Extraordinary, no. 5A: the loans are said to be for four months, from 9 September 1584 until repaid 27 February 1585. Cf. GAA 5044, no. 81, Account of the Treasurers Extraordinary for 1584/5, under ‘Penningen van den Heren Staten’: 95,339 pounds ‘assigned to the city by settling of accounts (liquidatie) with the Lords States, to be received from forty-six cities and villages in the 1585 verponding, for sums raised in Amsterdam by anticipation, with interest’. ⁴² GAA, 5044, 5A; it looks as if these loans in Amsterdam correspond to items F and L of Table 7 respectively. ⁴³ i.e. 216 of 339. ⁴⁴ i.e. 140 of 226.

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minimum by the magistrates.⁴⁵ They presumably had better things to do with their money. In the aggregate, the ninety-two who provided loans only for the capitale impositie lent an average of 124 pounds,⁴⁶ while the other 269 subscribers lent an average of 167 pounds. In Leiden as well as in Amsterdam, two categories of subscribers to the capitale impositie may usefully be segregated out, as in Table 8. Table 8 Lenders in the capitale impositie for 125,000 pounds, 1584 All lenders Total/lenders/average Leiden Amsterdam

6,144/135/46 54,675/351/156

Magistrates and ofﬁcials Women Total/lenders/average Total/lenders/average 993/14/71 6,000/20/300

1,635/31/53 6,700/45/149

Sources: As in nn. 37–8.

Magistrates and ofﬁcials in Leiden put up more than the average lender, but only a bit more.⁴⁷ Also prominent among lenders were members of the former Dirkist ruling group in Amsterdam, forced into exile in 1578; Amsterdam would not readmit them as burghers, but Leiden did, perhaps on the understanding that they apply their wealth to the patriot cause.⁴⁸ In Amsterdam, lenders who can reasonably be identiﬁed as magistrates put up about twice the average loan, led by 1,000 pounds from Willem Pouwelszoon, a wealthy merchant and member of the vroedschap.⁴⁹ Amsterdam’s town fathers were, not surprisingly, better placed to meet the traditional expectation that men in authority must put some of their wealth at the service of their city or country. In each city women lenders provided about the average amount. By custom, widows and other women—or those acting on their behalf—put a premium on safe returns. One may infer that women lenders in the capitale impositie were conﬁdent of getting their money back. If they also expected some payment of interest, despite ⁴⁵ Both lent 150 pounds; for the two men, Elias, De Vroedschap van Amsterdam, sub nomine. ⁴⁶ Seventy-one of the ninety-two lent 100 pounds; there are no loans in smaller amounts. ⁴⁷ In addition to persons investing ﬁfty pounds or more whose ofﬁcial titles are given, I also count as a ‘magistrate’ one ‘Jehan des Maistres, elder of the French [Reformed] community’. ⁴⁸ Jan Gerritszoon Egberts (62.10), Hendrik Egberts (75), Jacob Pieterszoon van Amsterdam (60), and Adriaan Janszoon Kantert (100); a different section of the same account, recording interest paid on loans due in March 1587, has entries for Zybrant Buyck van Amsterdam (68.15) and Joost Buyck and his children (125). ⁴⁹ Meester Willem Baerdes [i.e. Willem Bardesius], 600; Adriaan in’t Cromhout, burgermeester, 600; Dirk Janszoon Graeff, oudt-burgermeester, 500; Willem Pouwels, with Aef Gerijstdochter [his wife?], 1,000; Egbert Roelofszoon, 400; and Jan Verburgh, burgermeester, 400. For these men, see Elias, De Vroedschap van Amsterdam, sub nomine. One also sees a few prominent merchants involved in the Baltic trade: Jan Jeliszoon Valckenier, 300; Jacob Pieterszoon Coppit, 300, and Jacob Janszoon Vink, 300. Coppit and Vink were elevated to the magistracy a few years later.

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the fact that this loan was to run interest free, they would not have been entirely wrong.⁵⁰ Was patriotism by itself sufﬁcient to induce Hollanders to open their purses? To raise funds for the relief of Antwerp in 1585, the dominees and elders of the Reformed Church in Delft proposed a ‘voluntary contribution’ (willige contributie). Embracing this idea, the Lords States issued on 31 May a proclamation to be posted in each town. On a given day, burghers and inhabitants were to remain in their houses, while two ‘qualiﬁed and loyal persons’ made a ‘circuit’ of each neighbourhood, accompanied by a clerk and a notary to record what each person was willing to lend. To ease resentment about wealthy burghers who were not lending anything, local ofﬁcials were authorized to promise that donors in the ‘voluntary contribution’ would be ‘relieved’ in the next repartitie, or at least have their loans repaid in a more timely way.⁵¹ This plan, though carefully conceived, did not work. On 8 July 1585, the Lords States decided that the 150,000 pounds needed (item N in Table 7) would be collected not as a gift but as a ‘tax on capital, whereby the voluntary contribution shall cease’. But, unlike all other repartiti¨en decreed during these years, there was to be ‘no restitution’ of the 150,000; in other words, this was indeed to be a tax, not a loan.⁵² Some burghers reacted to this novelty by moving from one town to another, ‘in the hope of not being assessed as high in the contribution’. Hence the States decreed that all such people would be required ‘to raise their quotas, just like other inhabitants of the towns they have left’.⁵³ In the end, however, this repartitie too had to be treated as a loan, not a tax.⁵⁴ The repartiti¨en were not the only short-term debts that had to be repaid, for the district collectors of the gemene middelen were constantly raising loans for one reason or another. During the year 1585, for example, resolutions by the Lords States required Holland’s receivers-particular to obligate themselves for loans totalling 168,000 pounds, repayable, in principle, from their future gemene middelen receipts.⁵⁵ In April 1586 the Lords States ordered the receivers to raise 140,000 pounds; as of May 1586, they had raised 143,900.⁵⁶ Later that ⁵⁰ See above, n. 41. ⁵¹ RSH 1585, 233, 288–90, 293–7: 20 April, 31 May, 1–2 June 1585. ⁵² RSH 1585, 361–4, 369–70. 431–3: 8 , 10, 27 July 1585. Those who had given in the ‘voluntary contribution’ would have their gifts recognized as part of the tax on capital. ⁵³ RSH 1585, 476: 15 August 1585. ⁵⁴ For the means by which the capital was reimbursed, see the ﬁnal section of this chapter. ⁵⁵ RSH 1585, 161–2, 317–18, 367–8, 512–13, 667–8, 678–9: 11 March, 19 June, 1 July, 27 August, 2, 9 November 1585. ⁵⁶ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 99D, copy from late sixteenth century, ‘Penningen Maio 1586 op interest gelicht ende betaelt ten comptoir van [Cornelis van] Mierop’: Lodensteyn (receiver-particular for Delft) had loans outstanding for 29,000 pounds, the Noorderkwartier for 24,000, Jan Pieterszoon Reael (Amsterdam) for 19,000, Mierop himself for 10,300, and other receivers for lesser amounts. Cf. RSH 1586, 97, 160: 7–17 March, 9–19 April 1586, the 133,000 for Holland’s war budget quota due on 10 May was to have come from the gemene middelen for March, but since the March receivers are burdened with over 100,000 pounds in debts and other assignations, let the receivers

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year they were told to raise another 100,000.⁵⁷ Altogether, receivers’ loans may have raised about as much money as the loans organized by local magistrates. For example, in 1587, when 40,000 pounds was needed ‘within eight days’ to prevent the much-sought-after German cavalry from breaking off negotiations, the towns had to provide half through a repartitie, and the receivers the other half.⁵⁸ If there was a rough parity between the two kinds of borrowing, Holland will have borrowed about 800,000 pounds per annum. How were debts of this magnitude to be repaid?

T H E VERPONDING The verponding was set at rates meant to yield approximately 100,000 pounds from real property all across Holland.⁵⁹ In fact, the sums that receivers wrote into the ‘income’ section of their accounts were a bit larger: the ﬁrst verponding, in 1581, was expected to bring in 119,285 pounds, including 32,482 (27.2 per cent) for Holland north of the IJ.⁶⁰ As the costs of war rose, the States decreed multiple verpondingen, including six in 1583, three to be collected in the ﬁrst half of the year and three in the second.⁶¹ This level of taxation was maintained through 1586, but for 1587 and 1588 the States mandated two more verpondingen, or 800,000 pounds in all.⁶² Whereas payments for the gemene middelen were collected by the excise farmers and remitted to the receivers-particular, verponding receipts were collected by town magistrates and village assessors,⁶³ who rendered borrow what is needed for six months at 12% (the magistrates of the towns are to ‘help them with their credit’), with loans to be repaid from the verponding. ⁵⁷ RSH 1586, 310: 22 July–9 August 1586; this was toward the 250,000 Holland owed in the 400,000-pound extraordinary levy granted to Leicester by the States General. ⁵⁸ RSH 1587, 35–36: 1 February 1587. ⁵⁹ RAZH 3.01.25, item 3: the ﬁrst of these post-1572 levies, the 1581 verponding, was ‘geraempt op hondert ponden’, i.e. ‘estimated at a hundred [thousand] pounds’. ⁶⁰ RAZH 3.01.13, no. 25, ‘Verclaering’ of what North Holland paid in four taxes on real property: the tenth penny on rental value in 1561, the hundredth penny on property values in 1569, the verponding of 1581, and the six verpondingen of 1584; sums for all of Holland are also given. For 1584, the ﬁgures are 667,036 for all of Holland, and 189,675 (28.4%) for the Noorderkwartier. In Holland accounts of this era, ‘income’ meant what the receiver was entitled to collect, not what he actually collected. ⁶¹ RSH 1583, 33–4: 11 February 1583, the total to be collected this year is raised from 400,000 to 600,000 pounds. ⁶² RSH 1584, 167–8, 242–3, 342–4: 17 March, 27 April, 23–5 June 1584, the levy for that year is set at 400,000, then 500,000, then 600,000. RSH 1584, 424: 21 July 1584, the States consent to a levy of 600,000 for 1585. RSH 1586, 71: 14 February 1586, let the verponding for 1587 be at the same level as in 1586. RSH 1587, 151–2: 16 May 1587, let the levy for 1587 be raised from 600,000 to 800,000 pounds. RSH 1588, 180, 387: 25 May, 3 October 1588, the verponding for this year is set at 600,000, then raised to 800,000. ⁶³ RSH 1584, 122–3: 11 February, in each village, let the sheriff, together with the ‘schepenen, gezworene, or whatever they are called’ (that is, the village aldermen), name three suitable men, who will be ﬁned twenty-ﬁve gold reaels if they refuse to serve. After being sworn in, they will ‘estimate

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accounts to the receivers-general: Cornelis van Mierop for Holland south of the IJ, Hendrick van Wou (later Jan Aelbrechtszoon Raedt) for the Noorderkwartier. For the ﬁrst three verpondingen of 1583, expected to yield 337,516 in all, Cornelis van Mierop was entitled to receive 253,137 pounds from Holland south of the IJ; he claimed the Noorderkwartier was responsible for 84,379, or 28.6 per cent of the total.⁶⁴ Meanwhile, the States reduced the rate of taxation from a tenth to a twelfth penny on rental income, meaning an expected yield about one-sixth lower, or 250,000 for three verpondingen.⁶⁵ In 1584, in the course of a dispute between the two parts of the province, the verponding was ‘redressed’, so as to have North Holland pay more than it wanted to (25 per cent instead of 21.5 per cent of the total), but still less than Mierop thought was proper.⁶⁶ Table 9 Half-year assessments (two verpondingen) , as ‘redressed’ in 1584 Holland south of the IJ Cities Countryside Totals

38,849/34,316 172,405/149,452 211,254/183,768

Noorderkwartier 9,307/9,653 48,772/50,219 58,079/59,872

Grand totals 48,156/ 43,969 220,997/199,671 268,953/ 243,640

Note: The ﬁrst set of numbers comes from the redressment commission’s report, revised in 1584 but giving the sum that was to have been assessed for the ﬁrst half of 1583, RAZH 3.01.29, no. 452; the second comes from RSH 1584, 693–4: 7 November 1584. The connection between the two sources is indicated by the arbitration commission’s declaration (RSH 1586, 459: 4 August 1586) that Amsterdam’s quota should ‘remain’ at 15,000—i.e. it should enjoy a reduction, as the other cities did. The total for Amsterdam in the redressment commission’s assessment for 1583 was 15,018.

To reach the goal of 600,000 pounds for 1584, Mierop was instructed to levy six verponding assessments, expected to bring in 693,000 for all of Holland. According to the States resolution, the extra 93,000 would allow Mierop to exempt Holland’s charitable institutions (godshuysen), whose properties had been included in the assessment.⁶⁷ That Mierop actually ‘summoned’ Holland’s towns and villages for this large a sum in 1584 is not clear. In subsequent years for which data is available, the quotas for Holland south of the IJ were everything according to its true value’ (rechte valeur). Their registers (cohieren) shall say how many rods of land measure the place has, how many feet there are in a rod, and how many ‘thumbs’ in a foot. ⁶⁴ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 91, ‘Staat van ordinaris ende extraordinaris verpondingen, 1583–1606’, item 1. Mierop’s total for all of Holland for the ﬁrst half of 1583 was thus 354,600. ⁶⁵ The commission’s instructions are copied at the beginning of its report to the States, RAZH 3.01.29, no. 452. ⁶⁶ RSH 1584, 56, 222–4, 242, 312–13, 358, 426–7, 459, 490: 21 January, 13, 27 April, 6 June, 6, 21 July, 4, 17 August 1584. ⁶⁷ RSH 1584, 493: 17 August 1584.

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480,751 (1585) and 488,631 (1590). Adding North Holland’s quotas would give totals a bit larger than 600,000.⁶⁸ How much money was actually collected is another matter. Towns got credits on their verponding assessments for war-related expenses previously incurred,⁶⁹ and some parts of the province got exemptions. The most notable example was the Land van Heusden, in Holland’s vulnerable south-eastern corner, which paid nothing in 1584, because towns and villages in this border region had to pay protection money (verding) to Spanish commanders in neighbouring Brabant.⁷⁰ Other districts were late in their payments, forcing the receivers-general to borrow money, with interest charged against the ﬁnal total. One document lists towns and villages that had some 125,000 pounds in verponding arrears ‘for this present year of 1586’.⁷¹ If Holland’s receivers-general levied 600,000 pounds, and actually collected 550,000, it was a good year. The verponding was intended for repayment of loans charged to but not payable from the gemene middelen. But portions of the income could be earmarked for immediate military needs. For example, in 1584, to help meet the States General’s budget for a ﬁeld army, the States of Holland mandated that 50,000 a month be taken from the verponding for as many months as might be necessary.⁷² Verponding receipts might also be used toward settling the embarrassing long-term debts that weighed on Holland’s credit reputation, like the loans by England’s Ipswich merchants⁷³ and Merchant ⁶⁸ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 91, items 2 and 4. If the Noorderkwartier was assessed for approximately 21.5% of the whole sum, the total assessments for these years would have been 612,421 and 622,460. Had South Holland’s 1584 quota (183,768) been tripled, it would have owed 551,304. ⁶⁹ RSH 1583, 178, 442: 4 June 1583, Schiedam gets credit for money spent on its fortiﬁcations; 12 November 1583, Brill gets credit for money spent on the High Bridge. ⁷⁰ RAZH 3.01.13, no. 27, note after the ﬁfth subtotal, for the Land van Heusden. By contrast, a staat of ‘reductions’ granted to towns and villages in Holland south of the IJ for the verpondingen of 1584–90 gives the very modest sum of 18,363: RAZH 3.01.14, no. 86. ⁷¹ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 91, item 3. ⁷² RSH 1584, 424, 496: 21 July, 17 August 1584, because Holland’s quota (150,000) pounds) is needed ‘promptly’, and no more than 50,000 can be raised from the gemene middelen, 50,000 must be taken from the verponding both this month and the next; cities are told not to ‘withhold’ any of the money for repayment of their loan quotas in recent repartiti¨en. ⁷³ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 91, item 1: Mierop reports income of 398,692, including 253,137 for the ﬁrst half year’s verponding in Holland south of the IJ, plus 110,992 in ‘anticipations’ by the cities of their quotas for the second half of the year, and 34,563 from the gemene middelen. He reports payments of some 540,000 pounds ‘according to the register’ (not copied here), plus 15,773 to ‘the Ipswich merchants’, and 102,655 toward principal and interest due for the anticipations by the cities. That Mierop could carry such a large overpayment (151,176) is an indication of the solid credit that Holland’s receiver-general had, barely a year after assuming his ofﬁce. Cf. RSH 1582, 309–10: 24 August 1582, the States decree a 300,000-pound verponding for 1583, for debts owed to the count palatine, the Merchant Adventurers, and the Ipswich merchants; RSH 1581, 653–4: 23 December 1581, an answer to the merchants of Ipswich concerning the 35,000 they are still owed; RAZH 3.01.14, no. 231, ‘Staat’ of Holland’s debts as of July 1582, third item: the merchants of Ipswich are owed 51,114, payable over four years, in which Zeeland’s quota is 17%; the last instalment was due 31 October 1581, and with interest, as of 31 July 1582, the total is reckoned at 24,569.

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Adventurers.⁷⁴ (The largest of all such debts, the remnant of the 500,000 pounds owed to the German cavalry commanders for the 1572 Mons campaign, was taken care of by a transfer to the claimants of former ecclesiastical properties in Holland).⁷⁵ Nonetheless, the few summary accounts that have survived indicate that most of the money collected was indeed applied to the settlement of short-term debt: that is, for repartiti¨en levied on the towns, and receivers’ loans. In 1585, when Mierop expected 480,751 in verponding income from Holland south of the IJ, he paid 112,064 for principal and interest on loans raised by the receivers in south Holland,⁷⁶ and 333,082 to fourteen cities for principal and interest on loans by their burghers.⁷⁷ In 1590, Mierop expected 721,061 in income for the verpondingen in Holland south of the IJ; against this sum he paid out 334,697 for loans raised by the receivers, including himself,⁷⁸ and 259,648 to cities for burgher loans. That payments were made ‘to’ cities does not mean that Mierop collected money from the towns and then sent it back. Rather, since a town’s magistrates were responsible for collecting the verponding quota, they repaid local lenders directly, trading their payment receipts for d´echarges from the receiver-general’s ofﬁce in The Hague. In 1586, when money from the verponding was needed for shortfalls in Holland’s monthly quota in the war budget, all the cities except Amsterdam and Gorinchem agreed to postpone until 1587 repayment of the 1584 and 1585 burgher loans that had been assigned on the 1586 verponding. One could ignore the stubbornness of Gorinchem, which owed 4,552, or 0.75 per cent in a levy of 600,000 pounds, but not that of Amsterdam, which owed 37,695, or 6.3 per cent. Amsterdam’s burgomasters agreed to a compromise: they would have ‘receipt’ of the levy for 1586, to repay their burghers, but they would at the same time ‘anticipate’ the 37,695 due in 1587 by raising new loans to be repaid at the ⁷⁴ RSH 1584, 607–8: 4 October 1584, Mierop is to take 50,000 pounds toward the 100,000 owed to the Merchant Adventurers from the second half of this year’s verponding; RSH 1584, 753–5: 3 December 1584, the ﬁrst 50,000 has been paid in cash, and ﬁve cities [trading with England] have signed obligati¨en for the rest: Dordrecht, Delft, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Enkhuizen. RSH 1585, 27–8: 12 January 1585, North Holland owed 12,000, Holland south of the IJ 38,000. The latter sum Amsterdam was to raise in two instalments of 19,000, each being repaid by Mierop from the city’s verponding quotas due 3 September 1585 and 3 September 1586. ⁷⁵ RSH 1584, 668–9, 720–32: 2, 24 November 1584. ⁷⁶ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 91, item two; loan repayments to the eight receivers-particular for the gemene middelen make up all but 5,605 of this total, and the sums are roughly proportionate to loan repayments to the cities where they were based: 29,759 to Jan Pieterszoon Reael (Amsterdam), 19,909 to Lodensteyn (Delft), 15,408 to Thomas Rochus (Dordrecht). ⁷⁷ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 91, item two: the eleven south Holland cities with voting rights in the States, plus The Hague, Weesp, and Woerden. The largest totals were for Amsterdam (95,136), Delft (50,609), Dordrecht (41,354), Haarlem (28,181), Rotterdam (27,006), Leiden (23,737), Gouda (21, 378), and The Hague (20,570). ⁷⁸ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 91, item four; in the account cited in the previous note Mierop repaid himself only 3,558 for loans, but this time he repaid himself 60,000.

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usual rates (12 per cent interest, plus a 1 per cent brokerage fee) from the 1587 verponding.⁷⁹ This transaction is recorded in detail at the city level. Starting in 1584, Amsterdam created a new magistracy, the Treasurers Extraordinary, to handle monies collected locally on behalf of the Lords States.⁸⁰ In the 1586/7 account, the Treasurers Extraordinary ‘paid’ the Lords States 37,695 for the city’s verponding quota of that year, and at the same time ‘deducted’ 37,695 for the repayment of loans raised by Amsterdam’s burghers in 1585.⁸¹ The account for 1588/9 shows that Mierop ‘paid’ Amsterdam 43,726, representing the 37,695 that the city ‘anticipated’ in 1586, plus interest and brokerage fees to 31 July 1587.⁸² This probably means that while Mierop paid cash for the interest due, Amsterdam’s magistrates used the receipts of the 1588/9 verponding to repay the capital on loans from 1586. As indicated in Table 9, verponding income came more from the countryside than from taxes on property within town limits. Accordingly, the States adopted the practice of assigning loans raised by the towns, or by the receivers-particular, on the verponding quotas of individual villages⁸³ (there were also quarrels about which city got its debts assigned on the quota of a particular village ﬁrst).⁸⁴ Yet even if rural as well as urban verponding receipts were mainly allocated to the settlement of debts, 600,000 or even 800,000 a year was not enough to keep up with Holland’s short-term debt. Again and again, loans assigned on the ⁷⁹ RSH 1586, 96, 142–4: 7–17 March, 10 April 1586. RAZH 3.01.13, no. 25, item four, half a year’s verponding for 1584, 2,276 for Gorinchem, 15,018 for Amsterdam. Thus Amsterdam’s quota rose from 30,036 in 1584 to 37,695 in 1586, an increase of more than 25%. ⁸⁰ Their brief did not extend to the gemene middelen, still collected by the receiver-particular appointed by the States on the recommendation of the burgomasters, Jan Pieterszoon Reael. But Reael was sometimes called upon to deploy on behalf of his city the credit that he owed to his provincial ofﬁce: GAA 5044, no. 81, account of the Treasurers Extraordinary for 1584/85, under income: 26,650 from Reael, because the burgomasters asked him to borrow at the usual rates (12% interest plus 1% brokerage fee) the 27,000 needed for Amsterdam’s quota in a repartitie to which the States consented in November 1585. ⁸¹ GAA 5044, no. 82, account of the Treasurers Extraordinary for 1586/7, ‘Penningen van de Heren Staten’, and ‘Betaelt aen de Heren Staten’. ⁸² GAA 5044, no. 84, account of the Treasurers Extraordinary for 1588/9, ‘Penningen van den Heren Staten’. ⁸³ RSH 1584, 607: 3 October 1584, for 24,000 needed at once to prevent ships’ crews from mutinying, Mierop is to take the money from ‘the readiest incomes of the current Contributie [verponding]’; for repayment of the sums thus ‘taken’ he is assigned on [the verponding quotas] of villages in Rijnland, Delﬂand, and Schieland. RSH 1586, 7: 7–8 January 1586, because the schroymeesters in Dordrecht have refused to pay their quotas in the 1584 and 1585 verpondingen, Dordrecht cannot collect the verponding from villages in Zuid-Holland (‘South Holland’), its rural hinterland, so as to repay its loans; RSH 1586, 347: 26 August–11 October 1586, a proposal that cities shall have, from their own verponding quotas and those of surrounding villages, as much as may be needed to repay certain obligations assigned on the verponding. ⁸⁴ RSH 1586, 120–1: 7–17 March 1586, Delft has to be assigned on the verpondingen of 1587 or 1588 for debts that were to have been repaid from the 1585 verponding of the village of Rijnsaterwoude, since the money has already been taken by Amsterdam.

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verponding had to be ‘continued’.⁸⁵ If Holland’s well-to-do citizens were to keep providing the credit that kept the wheels of war turning, some further means of satisfying them had to be found.

T H E TOW N S A S F I S C A L I N T E R M E D I A R I E S : A M S T E R D A M I have not found any indication of the total of new short-term Holland obligati¨en outstanding for these years,⁸⁶ but it may have been in the range of 1,600,000 pounds: 400,000 for new repartiti¨en each year, plus a like sum for the repartiti¨en of previous years that had not yet been repaid; and 400,000 in receivers’ loans,⁸⁷ plus a like sum for the receivers’ loans of previous years that not yet been repaid. At 12 per cent interest, with an added 1 per cent brokerage fee, the carrying charges for a capital debt of 1,600,000 would have been around 208,000 pounds a year—enough for ten or twelve infantry companies. In the Habsburg era, the Lords States had mastered the art of ‘reducing’ shortterm loans to long-term debt in the form of renten, so that the original capital sum never had to be repaid. Also, because known revenues were earmarked for interest payments, the rates for redeemable annuities (losrenten) were usually less than for short-term loans. Depending on the mix of losrenten and higher-interest life-renten, the conversion of short-term debt to renten may have involved not just cancellation of the principal, but also a net reduction in interest costs (determining whether this was so or not in a given case would have required a not-yet-invented actuarial science).⁸⁸ But this was an option that could not now be exercised, or so it seemed. Since the suspension of payments on pre-1572 Holland renten, there was little interest in new renten issued by the States. In April 1586, the permanent committee of the States assembly—the Gecommiteerde Raden—summoned the deputies to consider a new idea. They proposed that city governments compel their burghers to buy States of Holland losrenten at 1:14 (7.14 per cent), or life-renten at 1:7 (14.28 per cent), so as to use the capital to repay repartitie loans. The deputies did not like the plan. It was not ⁸⁵ RSH 1583, 33–4: 11 February 1583, loans raised at 12% in 1581 and 1582, which were to have been repaid from this year’s verponding, will have to be continued another year; RSH 1586, 345: 26 August–11 October 1586, the deputies discuss alternative means for settlement of some 300,000 in loans from previous years that had been assigned to the verpondingen of 1587 and 1588 and now, it is clear, cannot be paid from these revenues. ⁸⁶ See Chapter 8, nn. 77, 78. ⁸⁷ Well beyond the period covered in this book, the lending activities of the receivers grew apace with Holland’s war budget. At the time of his death in 1607, Mierop alone had obligati¨en outstanding for a total of 1,065,364: RAZH 3.01.14, no. 332, ‘Staet van obligatien by wylen Cornelis van Mierop als ontvanger-generaal van Holland genegotieert’. ⁸⁸ For the beginnings of actuarial calculations in the seventeenth century, in connection with rate-setting for States of Holland life-renten, Dirk Houtzager, Hollands Lijf- en Losrenten voor 1572 (Schiedam: H. A. M. Roelant, 1950). In Belgium and the Netherlands today, many a savings bank still has the word Lijfrentenkas as part of its ofﬁcial name.

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‘practicable’, they said, to ﬁnd buyers for such renten, whether by voluntary or ‘involuntary’ means. Further, since it would ‘injure the credit’ of both the Common Land and the cities to have the proposal bruited about, they took the unusual step of insisting that there be ‘no further summons on this point’. Over the next several months the Gecommiteerde Raden slightly revised their strategy. To ‘preserve the credit of the Lords States’, they now suggested that 300,000 pounds in repartitie loans that were to have been repaid from the verpondingen of 1587 and 1588 should instead be ‘reduced’ to States of Holland renten at higher-than-usual rates: 1 : 12 (8.33 per cent) for losrenten, and 1 : 6 (16.25 per cent) for life-renten. Though the plan was not rejected outright this time, ‘many cities’ found it problematic and wanted time for reﬂection. Meanwhile, however, the Lords States made a step in this direction: the 62,500 pounds needed in October (the ﬁrst of two such levies for item U of Table 7) would be raised not by having cities induce their burghers to make loans payable in six months, but by inducing them to buy losrenten at 1 : 12 or lijfrenten at 1:6.⁸⁹ The crucial decision came when the deputies added a new twist. Creditors would receive in settlement of their loans ‘proper los- or lijfrentebrieven’, but these would be issued by the magistrates of their own town or village, not by the States. This procedure was now to be applied for both halves of the just-mentioned 125,000, and for the 150,000 loan raised in 1584 to relieve Ghent (items U and J in Table 7). To pay annual interest on the new renten, magistrates were authorized to hold back from their verponding quotas ‘as much as is needed to disburden them of this obligation’. Lenders would also receive ‘letters of indemnity’ from the Common Land (that is, the States), but a clause providing that they could choose to have their rentenbrieven issued by the Lords States (instead of by their town or village) was stricken from the ﬁnal resolution, ‘at the behest of the cities, such as Amsterdam’.⁹⁰ In March 1587, when 100,000 pounds was needed toward the recruitment of German cavalry, the deputies sparred over various plans for raising the money. Amsterdam then proposed ﬁnding the 100,000 through a sale of renten, ‘as we have twice raised 62,500’.⁹¹ Rotterdam, Gorinchem, and Brill objected that renten had ‘no credit’ for their burghers. Nonetheless, the States decided to try to ⁸⁹ RSH 1586, 140, 345–6: 8–9 April, 26 August–11 October 1586. ⁹⁰ RSH 1586, 347: 26 August–11 October 1586. The resolution says that cities and villages will ‘receive’ from the verponding the money they need for interest payments, but since local governments collected this revenue and remitted it to the receiver-general, ‘receiving’ was tantamount to ‘withholding’. The accounts of Amsterdam’s Extraordinary Treasurers (GAA, inv. no. 5044, no. 85, 1589/90) speak of sums ‘deducted’ (gecort) from what the city owes for the verponding, so as to pay interest on the renten. Cf. RSH 1586, 477: 30 October 1586, although the repartitie for the relief of Ghent had been stipulated to run for two years without interest, it was decided that a sum equal to a year’s interest at 6.25% would be added to the capital. ⁹¹ The reference is to item U of Table 7.

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raise the money through a sale of renten.⁹² What actually happened only becomes clear from two resolutions dated 4 August 1587. First, the sum needed was now not 100,000, but 200,000 (item X of Table 7). Second, renten-buyers were to receive rentenbrieven issued ‘on behalf of the Common Land’, but by their respective cities and villages. Finally, village magistrates who issued rentebrieven were to receive the same letters of indemnity from the Lords States that were given to town magistrates.⁹³ The precise form of the rentebrief that renten-buyers in the villages were to receive was not ﬁxed until February 1588: ‘The States of Holland promise that the Sheriff and Sworn Men of shall pay and their heirs each year the sum of ’, in recognition of losrenten bought at the rate of 1:12, or 8.33 per cent. This procedure was to be applied for repayment of loans made by villagers in the 150,000 raised in 1584 for the relief of Ghent, and the 200,000 to which the States consented in July 1587 (items J and X of Table 7).⁹⁴ In September 1588, the deputies were deliberating whether 400,000 in repartitie loans raised during the current year, originally assigned for repayment on the verpondingen of 1589 and 1590, should instead be ‘reduced’ to renten.⁹⁵ The account of Amsterdam’s Treasurers Extraordinary for 1588/9 indicates that a total of 145,800 in loans by the burghers, corresponding to the city’s quotas for items J, M, R, S, and X of Table 7, was to have been reduced to renten. In fact, while some burghers opted to have their loans repaid, the creditors for 106,853 in loans had agreed to the stipulated conversion of their debts to renten; interest charges for these renten amounted to 15,665, or 14.6 per cent of the capital.⁹⁶ Summary accounts for the verpondingen that have survived for subsequent years indicate that Mierop ‘paid’ Holland’s cities and villages 164,000 pounds in interest ‘for renten in the cities and the countryside’ in 1591, and 136,317 for ‘los- and lijfrenten of the cities’ in 1593.⁹⁷ Assuming an interest-to-capital ratio of 14.6 per cent—as in Amsterdam—this would mean that the States had converted to renten about 1,123,287 in loans from all Hollanders.⁹⁸

⁹² The phrase ‘renten at 12%’ perhaps ought to read ‘renten at 1:12,’ that is, 8.33%. Renten rates were always quoted as proportions, not percentages. ⁹³ RSH 1587, 73, 203: 4 March, 4 August 1587. ⁹⁴ RSH 1588, 47–8: 28 February 1588, the rural share of these loans had been 25,000 in 1584, and 40,000 in 1587. One should not assume that all of the debt was capitalized at 1:12, since the towns, if not the villages, had licence to sell lijfrenten. ⁹⁵ RSH 1588, 381: 24 September 1588; cf. items Y, Z and AA of Table 7, amounting to 500,000 pounds. ⁹⁶ GAA, inv. no. 5044, no. 83, under ‘Bodelonen’ and other payments.; it seems that interest payments for the same series of loans, listed as the ﬁrst item under ‘Expenditures’, represent payments to those who did not choose to have their loans converted to renten. ⁹⁷ RAZH 3.01.14, no. 335 (1591), and no. 343 (1593). ⁹⁸ 164, 000 × 12 = 1, 968, 000; 136, 317 × 12 = 1, 635, 800.By rights, the rate of capitalization should be estimated as higher than 12:1, since an undetermined portion of the renten sold were high-interest life-renten.

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This return to ‘States of Holland’ renten, now controlled by the towns, represented in part a contest between the town corporations and the Common Land for market share, amid a visible rebound in the market for government securities. During the 1570s, smaller cities like Brill and Gorinchem were authorized by the States to suspend payment on their own pre-1572 renten; as late as 1583 and 1584, both cities sought renewal of the suspension.⁹⁹ More prosperous towns, like Delft, sensed that their burghers were ready for new investments of this kind. In January 1586, Delft asked for licence to market up to 32,000 in los- and life-renten, to repay debts the town corporation had incurred through using its own funds to help meet some of the city’s ﬁscal obligations to the Lords States. Over the objections of the college of nobles, the Lord States granted permission to issue new renten, not just to Delft, but to any other city that might request it.¹⁰⁰ But if prospective buyers had conﬁdence in the town corporations, deputies to the States were probably correct in saying that their burghers would have no conﬁdence in renten issued and managed by provincial authorities. The Lords States were far away, in The Hague. But people knew their own lord burgomasters, and expected them to look out for the interests of fellow townsmen; also, potential investors probably had a sense of the revenues they controlled. In this respect The Hague itself was the exception that proves the rule. Holland’s administrative capital was a handsome if small urban agglomeration, dotted with the elegant town houses of nobles and high ofﬁcials. Nonetheless, since The Hague had never been walled, it ranked as a mere village (dorp), and was thus not represented in the States. The Hague did have burgomasters (as of 1559), but their authority was overshadowed by that of the bailiff, who was appointed by the stadtholder. Socially, town ofﬁcials stood in the shadow of members of the provincial administrative colleges, notably the Hof van Holland and the Chamber of Accounts. Lodovico Guicciardini captured the paradox of The Hague’s status by describing it (1567) as ‘the most beautiful, the richest, and the largest open village in all of Europe’.¹⁰¹ When the Lords States cast their eyes about Holland in search of prospective lenders, they saw in The Hague not an absence of walls but the presence of wealthy nobles and ofﬁcials. Four governing colleges in The Hague were directly assessed for repartitie loans: the town or village magistracy, headed by the bailiff; the Hof van Holland ; the Chamber of Accounts; and the Hoge Raad (for appeals ⁹⁹ RSH 1583, 377: 16 September 1583, Brill seeks a six-year renewal of the six-year atterminatie (granted in November 1577) for renten-interest due since 1576, on condition that it begin paying interest due for the current year; RSH 1584, 218/219: 13 April 1584, Gorinchem seeks a renewal of its atterminatie, and is granted the same terms given to Brill—it must pay interest due for the current year, plus half a year’s interest for the old debts, until its arrears are paid. ¹⁰⁰ RSH 1586, 31–2: 30 January 1586. ¹⁰¹ Wagenaar, ‘Dat de regeringe niet en bestaet by het corpus van de magistraet alleen’: De Soci¨eteit van’s Gravenhage (1587–1802) (Hilversum: Verloren, 1999), chapters 1 and 2.

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from the Hof van Holland and other provincial courts), established in 1581. To meet their assessments, members of the colleges had to borrow on their own account, and they complained of disadvantageous rates (14 per cent), because The Hague had no ‘rich merchants’ to serve as lenders. They noted too that, unlike the wealthier towns, the village had no income of its own (or none to speak of ) to help in meeting repartitie quotas.¹⁰² Nonethless, the quotas assigned to The Hague in successive repartiti¨en rose from 4.8 per cent of the total (April 1584) to 5.2 per cent (June 1584), then 6 per cent (September 1584). In 1588, however, The Hague’s assessment was reduced to 4.5 per cent.¹⁰³ This more favourable treatment reﬂects the fact that the four colleges had taken measures to defend their interests. From January 1586 they were invited to send representatives to sessions of the Lords States at which assessments were made for the repartiti¨en. In April 1586 the four colleges agreed to create a new corporation, ‘The Society of The Hague’, empowered to oversee the raising of repartitie loans decreed by the Lords States, and also to administer new excise taxes (for which approval was granted by the States) earmarked for repayment of the loans.¹⁰⁴ In effect, because The Hague lacked an urban corporation with authority to mediate between the interests of the burghers and the demands of the Lords States, its leading men created a special kind of corporation to serve the same purpose. Amsterdam occupied the heavy end of the spectrum of economic and political weight in Holland. In other towns, urban excise revenues were not fully at the disposal of the magistrates, because the Lords States had in the 1570s reserved a portion of the urban beer and wine excise receipts to themselves, as part of the gemene middelen. But Amsterdam, not then incorporated in the Holland of William of Orange, was not subject to this limitation.¹⁰⁵ For the last half of 1578—i.e. after the Alteratie—receipts for the so-called great excise in Amsterdam (including taxes on beer and wine) suggest an annual total of about 36,000 pounds, a ﬁgure consistent with previous levels under the pro-Spanish government from 1572 to 1578. Thereafter, average annual receipts rose to more ¹⁰² Wagenaar, ‘Dat de regeringe niet en bestaet . . . ’, 62–5. The Hoge Raad was a supreme appellate court, replacing the Grand Council of Mechelen, as was consonant with the decision by the United Provinces in 1581 to renounce their allegiance to Philip II. ¹⁰³ RSH 1584, 249–51: 28 April 1584, The Hague is responsible for 2,208 of 46,000 pounds ( Table 7, item G); ibid. 322–3: 8 June 1584, 3,329 of 64,000 ( Table 7, item H); and ibid. 543–4: 1 September 1584, for 6% of the 125,000 to be raised by the cities in the 150,000 repartitie originally meant for the relief of Ghent ( Table 7, item J ); RSH 1586, 43–4: 6 February 1586, The Hague is assessed for 7,992.10 of 133,000 pounds ( Table 7, item S); ibid. 345–6: 26 August–11 October 1586,for 3,750 of 62,000 ( Table 7, item U); and RSH 1588, 292: 1 August 1855, for 9,000 of 200,000 ( Table 7, item Z). ¹⁰⁴ Wagenaar, ‘Dat de regeringe niet en bestaet . . . ’, 64–9. The Society was dissolved early in 1592, as soon as repartitie loans from previous years had been fully repaid, but then re-established later the same year, to administer new funds intended for the rebuilding of The Hague. ¹⁰⁵ An important observation, for which I am indebted to Professor Marjolein ’t Hart of the University of Amsterdam.

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than 55,000 for the years 1579–83, and 61,500 for 1584–8.¹⁰⁶ Beginning in 1584, the city also had important incomes from the sale of lands and houses that had once been part of Amsterdam’s ecclesiastical establishment.¹⁰⁷ By 1588, the Treasurers Ordinary were able to pass on to their successors for the following year a sum of credits roughly equal to the great excise revenue.¹⁰⁸ Thus when the Lords States needed cash, Amsterdam had it: in January 1585, 8,500 for Christopher Huddleston of the Merchant Adventurers; in February 1585, an ‘anticipation’ of its 13,500-pound quota in a current repartitie, for soldiers that were to be taken out of Holland (and sent to Brabant) as quickly as possible; in March 1587, 18,000 for Maarten Schenk and his men in the Rhineland.¹⁰⁹ Beginning with the ﬁscal year 1584/5 the Treasurers Extraordinary, a new magistracy, managed dealings between the city and the Lords States, such as raising loans from burghers for the repartiti¨en, and collecting the annual ﬁftieth penny tax on the value of houses within the city walls, from which Amsterdam’s quota in the ordinary verponding was paid.¹¹⁰ The two colleges of ﬁscal magistrates worked closely with each other, and with Jan Pieterszoon Reael, the receiver-particular for the gemene middelen in Amsterdam and the surrounding district. Thus during 1588/9, the Treasurers Extraordinary paid the Treasurers Ordinary the annual 8 per cent interest due for a sum the latter had provided for the city’s verponding a few years earlier; they also paid Reael 12 per cent on 24,550 pounds he had borrowed in his own name during the summer of 1587, to help meet Amsterdam’s repartitie quotas.¹¹¹ Like many other towns in Holland, Amsterdam obtained from the Lords States permission to declare a moratorium in the payment of interest on city renten. But in this case the moratorium applied only to renten sold by Amsterdam’s pro-Spanish government between 1572 and 1578, and it also seems to have been intended mainly as a means of reducing the interest rates. Soon after the requisite permission had been granted (October 1578), Amsterdam’s vroedschap declared that the moratorium would not apply to those who agreed to have their ¹⁰⁶ GAA, Tresoriers Rekeningen, 1573–88; the great excise included the excises on beer and vinegar (always more than half the total), wine, brandy, and grain. Numbers in these accounts have to be multiplied by six, since Amsterdam’s treasurers still reckoned in the pond Vlaams of 240 silver groats. ¹⁰⁷ GAA, Tresoriers Rekeningen, 1584, under income, subsection extraordinary income; 1585, under income, subsection sales of houses, lots, and cloisters; 1587, under income, subsection sale of houses. ¹⁰⁸ GAA, Tresoriers Rekeningen, 1588, last few pages: 15,742 in payments due for the excises, plus 89,287 in other debts owed to the city, minus 46,462 in debts owed by the city, for a total of 58,102 in credits, plus 3,3708 in cash on hand. ¹⁰⁹ GAA, inv. no. 5044, Rekeningen of the Tresoriers Extraordinaris, no. 81, 1585/6, under expenses, ‘Penningen aan den Heren Staten’: Huddleston was owed 10,000, but seems to have accepted the smaller sum in order to have cash in hand; no. 85, 1588/9, under expenses, ‘sums anticipated at the behest of the Heren Staten, and not repayable’. ¹¹⁰ Their accounts are extant only from the year 1585/6: see previous note. ¹¹¹ GAA, inv. no. 5044, under expenses, subheading for messenger wages and miscellaneous items.

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losrenten at 1:14 or 1:15 converted to 1:16, or similar reductions for life-renten; if one brought one’s rentebrief to city ofﬁcials, to have the new, lower rate written on the back, one would still collect interest.¹¹² Already in November 1579 Amsterdam received permission from the Lords States to sell new renten, to compensate burghers whose property the city fathers required for improvement of the fortiﬁcations.¹¹³ Meanwhile, the city also raised a two-year loan from its burghers to carry out the improvements. The loans were to be converted to renten, with 12 per cent interest for the two years, but those who wished to do so could have two-thirds of their capital refunded.¹¹⁴ Then, starting with the ﬁscal year 1586/7, the Treasurers Extraordinary took over the selling of new renten on the corpus of the city:¹¹⁵ sales totalled 36,320 in 1586/7, and 70,537 in 1587/8.¹¹⁶ One begins to understand why Amsterdam in these years had plenty of burghers willing to lend to the city at 10 per cent, so that the magistrates could pass on the money to the States as Amsterdam’s quota in a repartitie, for which the city then collected 12 per cent interest from the Lords States.¹¹⁷ To come back to a point mentioned earlier in this chapter, it can now be seen that the impressive growth in gemene middelen receipts—from about 70,000 pounds a month in 1583 to about 125,000 in 1588—ﬁts into a larger picture. An increase of nearly 80 per cent over a ﬁve-year period cannot be explained by changes in the structure of taxation, for the new taxes added to the packet of gemene middelen during these years were few in number, and seem not to have brought in much revenue.¹¹⁸ The explanation for the growth of gemene middelen income—and likewise for the growth in Amsterdam’s urban excise receipts—surely lies in Holland’s economic boom, dated from about 1590 by ¹¹² GAA, Tresoriers Rekeningen, 1578, pp. 85, 89; the renten in question amounted to about 45,000 pounds in annual interest. ¹¹³ GAA, Tresoriers Rekeningen, 1580, p. 60; 1581, p. 61; 1584, under income, subheading sales of renten, and p. 70, a copy of the octroy from the Lords States allowing sale of the renten for the purpose stated. ¹¹⁴ GAA, Tresoriers Rekeningen, 1583, ﬁrst leaf. ¹¹⁵ The change may be related to the fact that the Treasurers Extraordinary were now also in the business of converting repartitie loans into renten in the name of the Lords States. ¹¹⁶ GAA, inv. no. 5044, 83 and 84, both under income. ¹¹⁷ GAA, inv. no. 5044, nos. 82–5: loans by burghers (with the rates indicated) are the ﬁrst item under ‘Income’, while a subsequent subsection, ‘Money from the Lords States’, shows payments by Mierop for the principal and interest of repartitie loans. ¹¹⁸ To my knowledge, the only taxes added during these years were the three new levies mentioned in the Davison report of 1586, discussed in the ﬁrst section of this chapter. Other new taxes were added to the panoply of excises collected by Holland, but not for the purpose of increasing gemene middelen revenue. For example, in 1584, when the excise on a barrel of domestic beer worth two pounds or more was raised from twenty-four to twenty-eight stuivers, the increase went for paying interest on old Holland renten, not for the costs of the war. Cf. RSH 1584, 172, 222–4: 19 March, 13 April 1584, a doubling, for six months, of the gemene middelen excises on horned beasts and sown land; this was expected to raise 13,000 per month, or 84,000 in all, to be used for paying Holland’s debts.

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some economic historians, by others as early as 1585.¹¹⁹ Thus the urban excise and gemene middelen increases—along with rising number of newcomers, many from the war-torn southern Netherlands¹²⁰—may be seen as early signs of the spectacular expansion that made this small province ‘the ﬁrst modern economy’. Amsterdam, the treasure house of Holland’s ﬁnances, was also the leading edge of the new prosperity. But this point is best understood within the context of developments to be discussed in the next chapter. ¹¹⁹ De Vries and Van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: for example, the chapter on ‘Industry’ takes 1585 as a dividing point (p. 272), as does a table showing the rate of growth for taxes on maritime trade (p. 367). ¹²⁰ Ibid. 280–1.

12 Partisan Strife, 1583–1588: Holland and its Critics During Leicester’s tenure as governor-general, debates about strategy (Chapter 10) and ﬁnance (Chapter 11) were aspects of a larger political struggle. Inﬂuential and partly overlapping groups—partisans of the States General, refugees from the southern provinces, and ardent Calvinists—saw in the English earl an antidote to the overweening power of Holland’s States assembly. It was in particular the debate about trade that galvanized opinion along party lines. Was Holland’s mercantile elite growing rich by supplying the Spaniards? Or, as Hollanders contended, did the whole country have an interest in not allowing north German ports to take over trade between the Netherlands and the Baltic? During his ﬁrst stay in the Netherlands (1586), Leicester had some success in rallying opinion behind him against policies favoured by Holland. Yet because he mistrusted the country’s traditional elites and their cherished rights, Holland was able to mend its fences, joining in a States General consensus on behalf of established privileges. In 1587 Leicester returned, determined to break the power of Holland’s urban oligarchies by appealing over their heads to true patriots, that is, the civic militia companies and the Calvinist clergy. People did in fact raise the governor-general’s banner here and there, but when coups planned by his backers ﬁzzled in most places, he gave up, and went back to England for good, leaving in his wake a rash of dangerous garrison mutinies. This factional conﬂict had its counterpart in the realm of ideas. Some of Leicester’s partisans promoted the doctrine of popular sovereignty, making ultimate authority in the United Provinces reside in the people themselves. Responding for the Lords States, Gouda’s town pensionary asserted that the authority of the urban oligarchies had been recognized within town walls since time out of mind, and was properly exercised through the States assembly. This is the clearest statement one is likely to ﬁnd of how Holland’s rulers understood the basis of their power.

TRADING WITH THE ENEMY There are considerations that seem to cast doubt on the idea that Antwerp’s fall (1585) was the reason for Ansterdam’s rise. For example, although Amsterdam

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had more immigrants from the southern Netherlands than any other northern city (perhaps 30,000 by 1600),¹ the newcomers did not bring great fortunes; those who made their fortunes here came as young men, not as established merchant princes.² Also, Amsterdam did not take over the ‘rich trades’ in sugar and spices, formerly centred in Antwerp, until the 1590s, after successful offensives by Prince Maurits had made the United Provinces a more promising base for business.³ Nonetheless, as noted in Chapter 3, Clé Lesger has made a convincing case that what happened in 1585 provides the key to Amsterdam’s growth. Prior to 1572, just as Antwerp specialized in the rich overland trade to Germany, and in the ﬂow of goods to and from the south and west (including sugar and spices from Portugal’s overseas possessions), Amsterdam concentrated on the more modest trafﬁc to the east and north, including Baltic grain imports.⁴ This was the trading system that was radically disrupted by Antwerp’s fall. Thereafter, rebel forces blocked its access to the sea: garrisons paid by Holland held the forts on the Scheldt below the city, while Zeeland warships patrolled entrances to the estuary. Thus was formed, along the line of the great rivers, ‘a boundary that divided in two the historic core region of the Low Countries’.⁵ Even prior to 1585 shipment via the Scheldt was problematic: this may help to explain the jump in Amsterdam’s grain imports between 1580 and 1584⁶—Baltic cargoes bound for Antwerp could travel more safely (even if at greater cost) via the Zuider Zee and the inland waterway. It seems too that Rhineland wine-dealers, evading the Dordrecht staple, now sent their wares to the Baltic via Amsterdam instead of Antwerp.⁷ Yet Amsterdam had not yet taken over Antwerp’s function as a maritime gateway to the south and west. According to convoy-fee data for 1584, Asian spices were not reaching Amsterdam by sea, and only 2 per cent of the rye imported from the Baltic was re-exported to destinations beyond the Low Countries.Thus for the limited time-frame covered by this book, Amsterdam’s prosperity still depended on taking in goods from the north and east, and forwarding them to internal markets in other Low Countries provinces.⁸ Precisely this kind of trans-shipment was at issue as the States General sought to formulate trade policy. The more Parma advanced through Flanders and Brabant, the more Holland’s traditional re-export markets became enemy country. Areas under threat from Spanish forces demanded restrictions on a trade in foodstuffs that was likely to end up by supplying Parma’s siege armies.⁹ Yet as more ¹ Asaert, De Val van Antwerpen, 136–46. ² Oscar Gelderblom, Zuid-Nederlandse kooplieden en de opkomst van de Amsterdamse stapelmarkt (1578–1630) (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000), 242–59; summary in English, 250–4. ³ Israel, The Dutch Republic, 307–15. ⁴ Chapter 3, nn. 46–9. ⁵ Lesger, De Handel van Amsterdam, 123–5 (the quote, 124). ⁶ Chapter 9, n. 21. ⁷ Chapter 9, n. 36. ⁸ Lesger, De Handel van Amsterdam, 68–86; cf. 149–68. ⁹ Kernkamp, De Handel op den Vijand, 140; cf. RSG iv. 591–2: 9 February 1584, trade to the enemy under licenten is reinstated, save for named places where Spanish forces are encamped; and

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and more territory was lost to the United Provinces, Holland’s contribution to the war budget became more and more important,¹⁰ and its views—e.g. that one had to have licenten (and thus trade with the foe) to support the war ﬂeet¹¹—carried proportionately more weight. In fact, neither the restrictive nor the liberal trading policy achieved the goals promised by advocates. Hollanders were right in contending that embargoes did not stop supplies from getting to the enemy. For example, in October 1582 the Landraad east of the Maas, having accepted Holland’s argument that Cologne, Wesel, and Hamburg proﬁted by sending supplies to provinces loyal to Philip II, decreed a ‘reopening of the streams’, allowing shipments of foodstuffs upriver from Holland.¹² When the duke of Anjou halted the collection of licenten (May 1582), he promised France’s collaboration in the economic isolation of the common foe; but there were persistent reports of French merchants doing as they pleased. Thus the trade embargo as prolonged by the States General in March 1583 included not just the pro-Spanish provinces of the Low Countries, but also the ports of northern France.¹³ On the other hand, while proponents of freer trade could easily produce estimates of the revenue to be raised by licenten,¹⁴ no estimate could gauge the ability of merchants and goods to evade the tax collector’s eye.¹⁵ The back-and-forth alternation between trade restrictions and trade on payment of licenten need not be followed in detail. What matters is that persistent political alignments formed on either side of the debate. Holland itself was not unanimous: Dordrecht posted its own warships to guard against illegal shipments across the Maas, and its deputies to the States often had instructions forbidding them to support any abridgement of restrictions on the trade of foodstuffs to the foe.¹⁶ Nonetheless, deputies sent to the States General by the majority in the States of Holland consistently opposed policies that would cede the trade with Buckhurst to Elizabeth I, Greenwich, 9/19 June 1587, Correspondentie van Robert Dudley, Graaf van Leicester, Letter CCCLVI, lvii. 333–4, a report that 200 ships from Holland and Zeeland carry victuals under licenten to Sas van Ghent, near Parma’s army. ¹⁰ See Table 6. ¹¹ Cf. Chapter 10, n. 47: as of 1583, Holland maintained thirty-two warships on the rivers and seas, at an estimated cost of 50,000 pounds per month. ¹² RSH 1582, 389–91, 448–9. 519: 12 August, 19 September, 4 November 1582. The quid pro quo was that Holland provided 20,000 pounds for the defence of Lochem in Overijssel. Cf. Chapter 7, n. 112, and Kernkamp, De Handel op den Vijand, 125–8. ¹³ Kernkamp, De Handel op den Vijand, 128–37; RSH 1583, 58, 74–5. 75–6: 4, 23, 28 March 1583. ¹⁴ e.g. Nicolas Carenzone to Walsingham, 22 May 1584, CSPFSRE xviii. 508–11: a proposal to raise 565,000 pounds by taxing the trafﬁc of various sectors as per the author’s estimates. Cf. RSH 1587, 49–50: 14 February 1587, Holland estimates that setting licenten at a certain rate could bring in 500,000 or 600,000 pounds a year. ¹⁵ Kernkamp, De Handel op den Vijand, 140–1, citing resolutions of the States General, e.g. a decision (December 1583) to prolong the period during which trade with the foe is allowed, because not enough revenue has been raised. ¹⁶ RSH 1584, 582–3: 14 September 1584; RSH 1587, 15: 22 January 1587. Cf. Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 59. For Dordrecht, Chapter 9 nn. 35, 36.

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loyalist provinces to parties outside the Low Countries.¹⁷ For this position the Lords States found almost no support outside Holland’s borders. Trading with the foe was sure to be opposed by endangered regions, like Flanders in 1583, or Brabant in 1584.¹⁸ Zeeland, though a seafaring province, did everything possible to prevent trafﬁc with the enemy.¹⁹ (Zeeland’s mariners seem to have been more interested in freebooting than in merchant shipping).²⁰ Finally, in the autumn of 1585, Utrecht made its voice heard. The captains of the capital city’s burgher militia companies, having gained a hearing in the States General, urged the deputies to maintain the full rigour of a current ban on the export of foodstuffs, notwithstanding modiﬁcations unilaterally decreed by the selﬁsh Hollanders; in their view the Amsterdammers in particular would do anything for gold. When Holland complained to the States of Utrecht about this untoward behaviour, the captains of the burgher companies wrote to Amsterdam’s civic militia companies, appealing, albeit in vain, for the backing of their social peers and fellow patriots.²¹ The States of Holland were locked in a duel with the States General. In October 1582, when Holland got the Landraad to ‘reopen the streams’, the States General disavowed this action by its creature, the Landraad, and also raised the rates for convoy fees, without consulting Holland. When deputies from Holland came to complain, they were told that once the streams were closed again the rates could come down.²² In the late summer of 1585, the States General voted, at a moment when Holland’s deputies were not present, to ban the export of foodstuffs in all directions, including to the Baltic. Nonetheless, the Lords States of Holland instructed collectors of the convoy fee in Amsterdam to allow passage to the ¹⁷ For the ‘reopening of the streams’ in October 1582, above, n. 12; March–June 1583, Holland delays publication of a States General ban on grain exports, then unilaterally reopens the sale of licenten (Kernkamp, De Handel op den Vijand, 137–8); RSG iv. 628: 22 June 1584, Holland will not allow publication of a States General placard suspending the collection of licenten for export trade, unless ‘substitute means’ to pay the debts assigned on licenten revenue are placed in the hands of His Excellency; Bor, Oorsprong, xx. 646 (September 1585), the States of Holland, overriding a States General ban on the export of all victuals to the Baltic, instruct convoy-fee collectors in Holland to allow passage of herring and salt. ¹⁸ Stokes to Walsingham, 4 August 1583, CSPFSRE xviii. 56–7, and 15 December 1583, CSPFSRE xviii. 271; RSG iv. 611: 3 May 1584. ¹⁹ RSH 1583, 19: 25 January 1583, Zeeland will sequester all vessels laden with grain, including ships from France and from Holland; Bizarri to Walsingham, [May 1584], CSPFSRE xviii. 526–7, three merchant ships laden with provisions, contrary to a recent export ban, are taken ‘by those of Flushing’; Correspondentie van Robert Dudley, Graaf van Leicester, Letter VII, 23 October 1585, a ban on the export of victuals urged by the Gecommiteerde Raden of the States of Zeeland; Kernkamp, De Handel op den Vijand, 140, Zeeland opposes a decision by the States General to reinstate collection of licenten in order to raise money; cf. 177, Zeeland blockades the Scheldt against Hollanders seeking to export cheese and other foodstuffs to the southern Netherlands; George Lecester to Walsingham, Middleburg, 29 August 1585, CSPFSRE xix. 685–6; RSH 1586, 243: 24 June–1 July 1586, an Enkhuizen merchant ship has been seized in Zeeland. ²⁰ Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 90: Zeeland-based privateers ‘applied the strictest [trade-ban] decrees existing’. The population of Middelburg was swelled by immigrants from the southern Netherlands, not friendly to those who seemed to comfort to the foe: Kluiver, De Souveraine en Independente Staat Zeeland, 56–7; Asaert, De Val van Antwerpen, 164–6. ²¹ Kernkamp, De Handel op den Vijand, 169–13. ²² Ibid. 127–8.

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Baltic of foodstuffs commonly sent in that direction, including dairy products, herring, and salt. Not without reason, the Hollanders pointed out that one could hardly expect Baltic grain-dealers to send their wares to Holland without getting something in return. But it was this unilateral deﬁance of the will of the States General that roused the indignation of Utrecht’s burgher militia captains.²³ The contest was unequal, but in two opposing ways. Holland’s ﬁnancial resources gave this one province an inﬂuence far out of proportion to its solitary vote in the General States. But the States General, speaking for the whole United Provinces, held the moral high ground. In the hard-headed economic competition among the trading zones of north-western Europe, Holland gained a victory every time it managed to get trade with the Spanish provinces reopened. But in the battle for the hearts and minds of true patriots, the States General gained a different kind of victory every time they stood for the common good, even if Holland’s apparent selﬁshness could not be curbed. The correspondence of Elizabeth I’s ofﬁcials and diplomatic representatives reﬂects a States General perspective. Their natural suspicion of divided sovereignty was strengthened by the contacts they cultivated in the Netherlands. For example, in August 1583, Sir Francis Walsingham, a member of the queen’s Privy Council, and a known supporter of true religion in England, had a letter from Bruges: ‘The Four Members [of Flanders] are aggrieved with Holland and Zeeland, because they send their own ships to Nieuwport and Dunkirk with victuals and other needful things, which much helps the enemy, in whose government all things are scant.’ In August 1585 Walsingham had a similar communication from Middelburg (Zeeland): ‘They of Holland lately gave liberty that all men might carry victuals to the enemy, paying licence, but this was speedily overthrown by Zeeland and others better affected to the cause.’ To this writer, Holland’s selﬁshness was but one example of a larger problem: ‘Generally the people of Holland as well as Zeeland and other places cannot resolve themselves of better success in the wars than heretofore they have had, so long as they are governed by their States, without a governor that may command all.’²⁴ When deputies from the States General offered sovereignty to Queen Elizabeth in the summer of 1585, they framed their petition for help in similar language, which was incorporated in a proposal to the Privy Council by Lord Burghley, the queen’s chief adviser: For the . . . avoiding of such confusion as has happened amongst them, consisting of multitudes of towns and diversities of provinces, being in a manner an equality, and no one giving place to another in order and direction for their defense, . . . therefore they do all offer to be advised and directed in all things that may tend to strengthening of themselves, their towns and people . . . as well as their contributions of money and victuals for the maintenance of their army as for the defense of their towns and places ²³ Ibid. 168–72. ²⁴ Stokes to Walsingham, Bruges, 4 August 1583, cited in n. 18; George Lecester to Walsingham, 29 August 1585, cited in n. 19.

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with garrisons, by such noble person of English blood as her Majesty shall name and send unto them.²⁵

Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester (1533–88), had long been angling for command of an English army in the Netherlands. In his younger days, Dudley, widowed in 1560, saw himself as a suitor for the queen’s hand; in this as in other matters Elizabeth’s intentions remain unknown, but she made him earl of Leicester, and he remained in her favour. Though Dudley’s military experience was limited to a campaign in France in 1557, he had an important career in the councils of state. His family was among the progenitors of English Puritanism,²⁶ and Leicester himself was a generous patron of scholars and churchmen of a Calvinist persuasion, a strong proponent of measures for the repression of Catholicism, and an obvious target for English Catholic propagandists.²⁷ Like others among the European Calvinist community, he saw the uprising against Philip II as a great opportunity for the advancement of true religion. Thomas Wilson, England’s ambassador to The Hague (1574–77), had a private commission from Leicester: when Wilson in 1576 suggested to William of Orange an English expeditionary force for the Netherlands, he spoke for the earl, not for the queen. Elizabeth rejected the idea (1578), leaving Leicester bitterly disappointed.²⁸ But he did not lose hope, as one may glean from the letters of English agents in the Low Countries.²⁹ Now, in 1585, he at last got his mandate, to command the armies of the States General, and rein in the selﬁsh tendencies of the provinces.

L E I C E S T E R A S G OV E R N O R - G E N E R A L , J A N UA RY – N OV E M B E R 1 5 8 6 Leicester’s reception can hardly have been more enthusiastic. After defeats at the hands of Parma, and Anjou’s failure to halt his advances, here at last was succour from abroad that promised to be effective, and from a Protestant sovereign. The States General welcomed Leicester by voting him, as governor-general, more authority than was allowed for in his orders from Elizabeth.³⁰ After some ²⁵ Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 37–43 (the quote, 43). ²⁶ His father John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, was lord protector for the boy-king Edward VI. Upon Edward’s death (1553), the Dudleys plotted to prevent Mary Tudor’s accession by enthroning Lady Jane Grey, a descendant of Henry VII, married to one of Robert’s elder brothers. ²⁷ For the polemical tract known as Leicester’s Commonwealth, published anonymously in 1584, see Derek Wilson, Sweet Robin: A Biography of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1533–1588) (London: H. Hamilton, 1985), 251–68; see also Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 7–22. ²⁸ Wilson, Sweet Robin, 236–40. ²⁹ See the letter of 29 August 1585 from George Lecester, cited in n. 19: ‘ . . . so long as they are governed by their States, without a governor that may command all . . . In that consideration the people generally cry out for my lord of Leicester.’ ³⁰ Chapter 10, n. 19; cf. Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 65, ‘Elizabeth had forbidden Leicester to accept a formal function from the States.’

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disagreement about how his Council of State would be chosen, Leicester agreed to pick ﬁve of those nominated by the provincial States, and choose ﬁve more; one of the latter was Paulus Buys, a native of Utrecht and former pensionary of the States of Holland, who had been an early and inﬂuential proponent of seeking help from England.³¹ Strong backing for Leicester in the States General explains why the States of Holland were compelled to do for Leicester what they had refused to do for His Excellency of beloved memory, William of Orange. On 10 February 1586, barely a month after his ﬁrst appearance before the States General, Holland’s monthly quota for the Union of Utrecht and the States General (133,000 pounds) was delivered in cash to the new governor-general, to be used as he saw ﬁt. To pay the monthly wages of Holland’s garrisons, for which this money had hitherto been jealously guarded, the Lords States had to impose on the province’s burgher-lenders a repartitie loan of like amount.³² Thus the most important revenues³³ of the wealthiest province were for the ﬁrst time brought directly into a common ‘purse’. Save for Holland, the provinces represented in the General States also favoured prohibiting any trade in foodstuffs that might support the enemy directly or indirectly. Without waiting for Holland to formulate its objections, the Council of State proposed, and the States General promulgated (4 April 1586), the strictest trade ban yet: no victuals were to be exported anywhere without the governor-general’s consent.³⁴ Here too, at least on paper, was a degree of control that William of Orange had never had. The fact that Leicester achieved as much as he did in these early days of his tenure has perhaps not been sufﬁciently appreciated by historians.³⁵ The governor-general’s star began to wane during the summer: lacking funds to pay soldiers their arrears, or to hire German cavalry, he did not take the ﬁeld until June 1586, when he was too late to prevent the loss of Grave and Venlo. Leicester can hardly be blamed for the creaky pace of ﬁscal negotiations in the Low Countries, which meant that the 400,000-pound subsidy he requested in February was not ﬁnally approved by the States General until August. Where he did fail was in not availing himself of the traditional remedy for this traditional problem, which was to borrow against the sums that had already been pledged by individual provinces, including Holland.³⁶ He might better have understood the need for doing so, had he made friends among the privileged estates: urban oligarchies (especially in Holland and Zeeland), colleges of nobles, ³¹ Oosterhoff, Leicester in the Netherlands, 66–8; Chapter 10, n. 12. ³² Chapter 11, nn. 16–19. ³³ While Holland’s monthly contribution in February 1586 was 133,000 pounds, gemene middelen receipts for the quarter January–March 1586 averaged 92,707: see Table 5. ³⁴ Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 89–93, indicating practical obstacles to the enforcement of this decree; Kernkamp, De Handel op den Vijand, 180–9. ³⁵ The common view is gently expressed by Wilson, Sweet Robin, 271: ‘The problems of the Netherlands vastly overtaxed him.’ Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 5, strikes a mildly revisionist tone, aiming ‘to give Leicester and the Leicesterians a fair hearing’. ³⁶ Chapter 10, n. 26.

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particularly important in the inland provinces (Utrecht, Gelderland, Overijssel), gentlemen-farmers in Friesland,³⁷ and the clerical gentlemen of Utrecht’s ﬁve chapter churches, which in this Protestant republic were still represented in the provincial States. Instead, the English Calvinist aristocrat saw the people in power as the root of the problem;³⁸ in particular, he made it clear that he would tolerate no ‘merchants’ among his advisers.³⁹ Among Netherlanders who had presented themselves to English correspondents as willing supporters of a new order of things,⁴⁰ Leicester discerned an alternative base of power. These men were refugees from territories recently conquered by Parma, ⁴¹ and/or ardent Calvinists, like Leicester himself, and/or partisans of strong central institutions, responsible to the States General.⁴² One was Gerard Prouninck, a refugee Calvinist from’s-Hertogenbosch now living in Utrecht. Another was Adrianus Saravia, originally from Hesdin (Artois), who had been a Calvinist minister in Ghent, whence he was sent (1582) as an emissary to Walsingham. Now a professor of theology at Leiden, he assured Walsingham that ‘all the best people’ in Holland were persuaded that ‘England must rule or at least defend these provinces’, for a Spanish victory here would imperil true religion in England as well. Still another was Bartholomeus Grifﬁus Buys, town pensionary of Gorinchem, who presumed to instruct Walsingham on the constitution of the Low Countries: This democracy ought to be abolished, and this inﬁnite number reduced to one. As the Council [of State] is composed of many and divers humors, its resolutions cannot be

³⁷ Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 74–6, and, on Friesland, 121–3. ³⁸ Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines, 170: Leicester found that ‘the power of local elites formed the greatest obstacle to religious as well as political reformation’. ³⁹ Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 67; cf. the letter cited by Wilson, Sweet Robin, 283: Leicester describes the deputies to the States General as ‘mere churls and tinkers’. ⁴⁰ The quotes in this paragraph are from CSPFSRE xix. 483 ff.: Prouninck to Davison, Utrecht, 29 May 1585; Saravia to Walsingham, Leiden, 8 June 1585; Gryphius Buys to Walsingham, The Hague, 8 June 1585. For Prouninck, E. H. Kossman and A. F. Mellink, eds., Texts Concerning the Revolt of the Netherlands (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 206–11, 269–72. For Saravia, Willem Nijenhuis, Adrianus Saravia (c.1532–1613) (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 92–101. For Grifﬁus Buys, Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand. ⁴¹ Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 80–2; Osterhoff provides little evidence for the interesting observation that ‘There was a growing conviction, especially in the maritime provinces, that the loss of Brabant and Flanders . . . was not in all respects an evil.’ ⁴² c.25 February 1586, CSPFSRE xx. 394, a recommendation of men said to be well affected ‘to the crown’: Walraven van Brederode (a Holland noble); Sebastian van Loosen (pensionary of Gorinchem, who had served as Holland’s representative in Zeeland), Willem Bardesius of Amsterdam; Jacob Valcke and Josse Teelink from Zeeland; Dr Elbertus Leoninus of Gelderland, Paulus Buys of Utrecht; and Adolph van Meetkerke (former president of the Council of Flanders); see the references in Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand; Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands; and (for Valcke) Kluiver, De Souvereine en Independente Staat van Zeeland. Leicester chose all of them for his council, but, according to Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, v. 130, reposed the most conﬁdence in the two English council members, Killegrew and Gilpin, and the two Flemings, Meetkerke, and Daniel de Burchgrave, a secretary.

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brought to a point as soon as necessity requires . . . That is why we must have a monarch or a governor who commands us absolutely.

Some of these backers stood by Leicester until the bitter end of his tenure as governor-general, in November 1587. Zeelanders on his Council of State remained loyal,⁴³ as did Dordrecht and Gorinchem, towns in Holland that looked across the Maas into enemy country.⁴⁴ But Leicester either turned against or alienated many of his early supporters, like Paulus Buys,⁴⁵ Willem Bardesius of Amsterdam, and the count of Meurs.⁴⁶ Hohenlohe, Holland’s senior military commander, may have supported Leicester initially, but not for long.⁴⁷ Many whom the governor-general elevated to positions of importance were both reliable Calvinists, and refugees from the southern provinces. Elizabeth had mandated the establishment of a Chamber (or Council) of Finance in the Netherlands, for oversight of revenue collection and disbursement. Thus Leicester announced formation of a Chamber of Finance, for which he chose ﬁve men: the count of Meurs; Sir Henry Killegrew, a fellow-countryman; Reynier van Aeswijn, lord of Brakel in Utrecht; Daniel de Burchgrave, former procurator-general of Flanders; and, as treasurer-general, Jacques Reingout, an erstwhile ﬁnancial ofﬁcial in his native Brabant. Three clerks were also appointed: Sebastiaan van Loosen of Gorinchem, Josse Teelinck of Zeeland, and Paulus Buys, now of Utrecht. Holland’s monied towns, whose burghers largely paid for the war by their loans, were conspicuous by their absence. On 26 June 1586 Leicester explained to the Council of State that the Chamber of Finance would have responsibility also for prosecuting those who violated the ban on trade with the enemy. He seems not to have understood that the States General had abolished (1580) the Council of Finance that dated from the Habsburg era, without creating a replacement. Also, even some members of the Council of State ⁴³ Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 93, 96. ⁴⁴ For Sebastiaan van Loosen of Gorinchem, above, n. 42; Bartholomeus Grifﬁus Buys (above, n. 40) was pensionary of Gorinchem until 1584. Cf. Wilkes to Leicester, The Hague, 12 March 1578, Correspondentie van Robert Dudley, Graaf van Leicester, Letter CCLXVIII, lvii. 145–51: Dordrecht and Gorinchem have refused to accept the 30 January States of Holland placard reinstating the issuance of licenten for trading with the foe. ⁴⁵ Buys, ‘an Erastian of strong anti-Calvinist leanings’, remained a member of the Council of State but was critical of Leicester; in July 1586 Leicester allowed him to be arrested and imprisoned in Utrecht: Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 113–15. ⁴⁶ Bardesius remained on the council, but seems more and more to have disagreed with the governor-general. When Leicester appointed Utrecht’s magistrates, he ignored Meurs’s prerogatives as stadtholder of Utrecht, Gelderland, and Overijssel. See the references to both in Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands. ⁴⁷ After a raid into Brabant (August 1586), Hohenlohe and ‘other Netherlands lords’ found it very strange that Leicester pardoned and took into his service an English captain who had just surrendered Aelst (Flanders) to the enemy, not long after he had ordered the summary execution of Lubbert Turk, the Netherlands nobleman who surrendered Grave. Bor, Oorsprong, xxi. 750 (Prologue to Part IV, n. 29). See also the entries in Wilkes’s diary for 17 November 1586, and Wilkes to Leicester, The Hague, 4–14 January 1587, Correspondentie van Robert Dudley, Graaf van Leicester, lvii. 428–429, and Letter CXCVIII, lvii. 21.

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A New Republic, 1583–1588 Fig. 7 Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, pensionary (advocate) of the States of Holland, 1586–1618. Claes Jansz. Visscher, ‘Johan van Oldenbarnevelt’, in Emmanuel van Meteren, Belgica: Historie der Nederlandsche ende haerder naburen oorlogen ende geschiedenissem (4 vols., The Hague: van Wouw, 1614), James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota Libraries.

(Buys) protested the choice of Reingout, a man of dubious reputation; others (Bardesius) protested that the customary machinery for prosecuting smugglers was bypassed in favour of the new council.⁴⁸ These disputes allowed Holland to open a wedge between Leicester and the other provinces. The States of Holland, led by the advocate, Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, prepared, with Zeeland, a joint remonstrance, of which Leicester received a copy in late July, together with an oral summary in Italian. The two provinces gave three reasons for abolishing the new Chamber of Finance: the Treaty of Nonsuch provided that ﬁnances would be administered by the Council of State; the States General had abolished the previous Council of Finance; and ‘lovers of the fatherland’ could not trust Reingout, a man whose wife still lived in the lands of ‘the common Foe’, and who had petitioned the States General for a suspension of payments on his own debts. To ‘content Holland and Zeeland’, Leicester promised in an apostille dated 6 August 1586 that he and the Council ⁴⁸ Article 3 of Holland’s remonstrance, RSH 1586, 288–95: 22 July–9 August 1586, together with Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 93–5, where the author fails to see that a good word for Reingout by (it seems) Jacob Valcke does not mean that ‘The Dutch themselves acknowledged his ability.’

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of State would retain control of ﬁnances.⁴⁹ Matters did not end here. Because refugees from Brabant and Flanders were seeking to ‘divide His Excellency from Holland and Zeeland, and thus carp at our previous remonstrance’, the two provinces agreed on a second remonstrance in September or early October. Contrary to ideas put forward by ‘certain inquiet spirits’, experience had shown that tax farmers were better at collecting the gemene middelen than appointed ofﬁcials; His Excellency was paying ‘too much attention to men from Flanders and Brabant’.⁵⁰ One of the ‘inquiet spirits’ referred to was Reingout, whom Holland was also pursuing directly. A deputy of his, Stephen Peret, then in Gouda, had been imprudent enough to say ‘in a large company’ that Holland and Zeeland were ‘great enemies of the fatherland’. A nobleman of unquestionably Orangist credentials, Willem van Zuylen van Nyvelt, was sent to arrest Peret and seize his effects; among his papers were letters from Reingout on new ideas for taxation by which Reingout and Peret might proﬁt handsomely. This led to the detention of Reingout, on charges of plotting to enrich himself.⁵¹ The Reformed Church was another pillar of support for Leicester. As he explained to the provincial States assemblies in a Latin missive (June 1586),⁵² ‘In the presence of Her Most Serene Majesty, your legates especially commended the cause of true religion,’ and ‘as we were coming hither she directed our particular concern to this matter’. Therefore, because working for the beneﬁt of the Church of God ‘clearly pertains to the ofﬁce we hold’, he has by his authority ‘ordered a synod of the ministers of all the provinces to be convened’ in The Hague. Leicester was not able to attend this fourth national synod of the Reformed Church, but he threw his support behind the church order crafted by the assembled dominees, and pressured the States assemblies to accept it as binding for their respective provinces; the Hollanders gave their consent, but with important qualiﬁcations.⁵³ As protector of the Church, the governor-general also took note of a problem in Holland’s Noorderkwartier. In Holland south of the IJ, the incomes of former Catholic church property by which ministers and schoolmasters were to be supported were administered by a receiver appointed by the States. In North Holland, urban magistrates administered church goods located within ⁴⁹ RSH 1586, 288–95: 22 July–9 August 1586. An apostille, written in the margin, was the ofﬁcial reply to a petition or remonstrance. ⁵⁰ RSH 1586, 372–9: 26 August–11 October 1586 (the remonstrance has to have been later than Leicester’s placard against exports to the foe, dated 28 August, to which reference is made). ⁵¹ RSH 1586, 328–9, 379, 418, 441, 500, 503–5: 22 July–9 August, 26 August–11 October, 26 September, 4 October, 12, 15 November 1586; RSH 1587, 21: 27 January 1587. Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 93–6. ⁵² RSH 1586, 234: 24 June–1 July 1586. ⁵³ Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines, 174–5. For Holland’s response, RSH 1586, 405–06: 26 November–9 December 1586, the church ordinance recently made by order of His Excellency at the national synod shall be followed, but the Lords States and city magistrates shall retain their rights as to the appointment and removal of ministers and schoolmasters.

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town limits. For the countryside, the States of the Noorderkwartier initially appointed Guillaume Mostart as collector, but when village magistrates insisted on having the same rights as their urban counterparts, the States decreed that rural church incomes would be collected, ‘as in olden times’, by the churchwardens of village churches.⁵⁴ Yet rural North Holland was notorious for the fact that local authorities did little to prevent Catholics from gathering for large open-air services.⁵⁵ Hence the dominees of the Noorderkwartier appealed to Leicester, through Diederik Sonoy, the military governor, and Bardesius, his erstwhile adviser:⁵⁶ His Excellency must not permit the administration of these incomes to remain in the hands of village ofﬁcials ‘who are for the most part enemies of the true religion’. Leicester obliged, by reappointing Guillaume Mostart to the position he had brieﬂy held nearly ten years earlier. But village magistrates refused to surrender their church-goods account books to the new collector. To force their compliance, Sonoy began quartering soldiers in recalcitrant villages—until North Holland’s college of deputies protested vigorously. The States of Holland south of the IJ, now apprised of Mostart’s appointment, saw it as a dangerous precedent. Despite Leicester’s declaration to the States General that the administration of church goods was under his authority, the Lords States of Holland resolved ‘unanimously’ that all such income ‘has been reserved, and shall remain reserved, to the disposal and administration of the States of Holland’.⁵⁷ The closest that Leicester had to a territorial base of support was the city of Utrecht.⁵⁸ The captains of the burgher militia companies spoke for a bygone civic tradition, in which the craft guilds had representation on the city council. It seems too that they had an afﬁnity for the new religion: among the Calvinists who made up around 10 per cent of Utrecht’s population in the 1580s, more than half were members of the craft guilds or their families.⁵⁹ Meanwhile, to consolidate their position in city government, Utrecht’s patrician elite⁶⁰ converted the annually elected city council to a vroedschap whose forty members would serve for life ⁵⁴ RANH 12 February, 22 April, 11 July, 14 November 1577, and 5 January, 10 January 1578 (the quote). ⁵⁵ Chapter 9, n. 45; Bor, Oorsprong, xviii. 365. ⁵⁶ Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 124. ⁵⁷ Bor, Oorsprong, xxi. 759 (ﬁrst quote); Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 124; RSH 1586, 353: 26 August–11 October 1586 (second quote). ⁵⁸ For this paragraph and the next paragraph, Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines, 134–44, 170–6; Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 101–20. Where the accounts differ I follow Kaplan. The centre of a prosperous rural economy, and a large ecclesiastical establishment, Utrecht was historically known for its resident nobility, its clerical gentlemen, its burghers with investments in land, and its politically powerful craft guilds. When Utrecht beame a Habsburg territory (1528: see Chapter 3), Charles V abolished the rights of the guilds to representation on annually elected city council. The civic militia companies, a last venue for guildsmen, were abolished by Alba in 1567, but re-established in 1573 by the royalist stadtholder Boussu. ⁵⁹ Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines, 138–45. ⁶⁰ Some were members of the Jacobskerk congregation, known for a broad-church Protestant theology and sacramental discipline that was very much at odds with Calvinist orthodoxy: see Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines.

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(January 1585). In response, the burgher captains induced the provincial States of Utrecht to accept as stadtholder the count of Meurs, a strong Calvinist, who was already stadtholder of Gelderland and Overijssel. Meurs asserted his authority by removing twenty-six members of the vroedschap; his new appointees were Calvinists, in some cases of lower social standing than their predecessors. Leicester chose Utrecht for his residence, and did what he could to strengthen the hand of burgher captains and their Calvinist allies. He started by authorizing the arrest of Paulus Buys.⁶¹ Next, to cleanse the city of possible traitors, Leicester, the burgher captains, and the now-Calvinist vroedschap made a joint list of sixty men who were to be exiled from the city, on suspicion of holding correspondence with the enemy. Among those expelled (31 July) were gentlemen-canons of Utrecht’s chapter churches, but also leaders who had guided Utrecht into the Orangist camp, like Floris Thin, advocate of the States of Utrecht. In October, while Meurs was away on campaign, Leicester had two of his lieutenants ﬁll vacancies in the magistracy. Several appointees were exiles from the southern Netherlands, including Prouninck, who became one of the burgomasters. Holland’s gentlemen-deputies understood that what had been done to a man of Floris Thin’s stature might also be done to them as well. Their second remonstrance to Leicester included a protest that ‘public authority’ in Utrecht ‘is virtually taken away altogether’, despite assurances to the contrary in the Treaty of Nonsuch. The Lords States further asked whether Leicester would approve residence in The Hague for Thin and six other former ofﬁcials in Utrecht (he did). They protested as well that Paulus Buys had never been given a hearing; and they questioned whether Prouninck was ‘lawfully’ declared to be a burgomaster of Utrecht, because he had not been resident for ten years, as required in Utrecht’s privileges. These carefully worded resolutions gave Holland the legal ammunition it needed in the States General. When Prouninck came to The Hague for a meeting of the States General, as one of the deputies duly accredited by the States of Utrecht (11 November), Holland made the unusual proposal of refusing to recognize his credentials. Leicester intervened, but to no avail, for on this point Holland had a majority: Utrecht’s delegation was divided, Zeeland and Friesland backed Holland’s resolution.⁶² Meanwhile, Thomas Wilkes had arrived in Utrecht, with instructions to prepare a report on the state of affairs in the Low Countries for the queen and her council. Wilkes listened carefully to deputies from Holland, and to the Utrecht exiles. Because of his report, Elizabeth’s letter of October 1586 instructed Leicester to satisfy the States of Holland with regard to his choice of ﬁnancial advisers, the case of Paulus Buys, and the Utrecht exiles. In general, he ‘should ⁶¹ Above, n. 46. ⁶² RSH 1586, 313–14, 372–9, 443–4, 504: 22 July–9 August, 26 August–11 October, 7 October, 15 November 1586; Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 116–19. Deputies from Friesland, Gelderland, and Overijssel had not yet arrived.

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not irritate the States, and grow too popular, for that they were wise men’.⁶³ For the Lords States of Holland, the apparent weakening of Leicester’s position was an opportunity. Though couched in conditional terms, their resolution of 8 October 1586 envisioned that the gemene middelen for 1587 would no longer be given ‘into the hands’ of the governor-general.⁶⁴ At the same time, Holland had no wish for Leicester to return home; so long as he remained in the Netherlands, the queen would be less tempted to make a bargain of her own with the king of Spain, forcing on the maritime provinces a peace they did not want.⁶⁵ But when it became known that the governor-general was to be recalled for consultations, the Hollanders presented him with yet another remonstrance; in keeping with his latest instructions from Elizabeth, Leicester responded by promising further modiﬁcation of the rigorous restrictions on the export trade, as promulgated in his and the States General’s placard of 4 April. In fact, a more recent placard (4 August) had already sanctioned trade to lands that were ‘next to’ territories of the enemy; Holland’s ofﬁcials interpreted this clause as allowing the reintroduction of trade with the foe, under licenten. At the end of January 1587, the States General voted to approve sending grain and other foodstuffs to the enemy, ‘for as much as can be obtained in licenten’, so as to raise money for a ﬁeld army.⁶⁶ Everything Leicester had accomplished toward centralizing the ﬁnancial administration of the country was now undone. More importantly, instead of capitalizing on animosity to Holland in the States General, his policies induced the provinces to draw together in defence of their traditional privileges.

I N S U B O R D I N AT I O N , S E D I T I O N , A N D M U T I N Y, 1587–1588 The failure of Leicester’s plans for reorganizing the government did not mean that the local elites who had withstood him could rest easy in their seats of power. For by what right did local magistrates exercise their authority? In a time of upheaval, this perennial question took on special urgency. Absent a prince ruling by the grace of God, to whom did rightful authority devolve? When the ambassadors of the States General had it written into the Treaty of Nonsuch that Elizabeth’s governor should maintain ‘public authority’ in the Netherlands, they meant of course people like themselves, that is, the States ⁶³ Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 125–30. Oosterhoff notes that the queen apparently thought the extraordinary subsidy of 400,000 (Holland) pounds (Chapter 10, n. 23) was equivalent to 400,000 pounds sterling, which would have been ten times as much. ⁶⁴ Chapter 11, nn. 20, 21. Cf. Osterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 130–2. ⁶⁵ Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 130–2; Oosterhoff also makes the interesting point that Leicester’s presence helped keep Utrecht in the Union with Holland and Zeeland. ⁶⁶ Ibid. 131–2, 141; RSG v. 676: 30–1 January 1587; Kernkamp, De Handel op den Vijand, 198–205.

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assemblies, and the privileged elites therein represented, like Holland’s urban oligarchies, or the aristocracies of Utrecht and Gelderland. But oligarchical rule was not everywhere taken for granted. In towns where the political rights of craft guilds had been abolished within living memory, during the reign of Charles V, guildsmen had a potent motive for adhering to the Revolt.⁶⁷ Where there had never been a tradition of guild participation in urban government, as in most Holland towns, it was nonetheless understood that magistrates were responsible to the ‘community’, especially as embodied in the civic militia companies.⁶⁸ This principle was conﬁrmed by events of the early Revolt, when ordinary burghers, acting with or without the aid of garrison soldiers, so often set the political and religious course for their towns.⁶⁹ When the States of Holland formally limited political decision-making in the towns to the duly constituted magistrates (1581), no one seems to have objected. But so long as Parma’s victories seemed to imperil provinces north as well as south of the rivers, there was nothing to prevent a further resort to independent action by ‘the community’, especially if popular suspicions of the ruling oligarchies were shared by garrison soldiers and dominees of the Reformed Church. This was why Diederik Sonoy’s deﬁance of the Lords States reverberated throughout Holland. Before Leicester arrived in the Netherlands, the States of Holland and Zeeland took the precaution of recognizing the 16-year-old Maurits of Nassau as stadtholder of both provinces, a step that was not appreciated by English observers.⁷⁰ Before leaving for England nearly a year later, Leicester acted in a similarly peremptory way: without consulting the States of Holland, he issued new commissions of his own to three men already serving as town military governors, including Josse Clerhagen in Gorinchem; in a new commission for Sonoy as governor of North Holland, he also included civil powers, such as Sonoy had exercised at the beginning of the Revolt, but not since the seven cities of the Noorderkwartier had asserted themselves as the States of North Holland. The Lords States included a protest against these actions in the remonstrance delivered before his departure. On this point the governor-general did not gratify his critics; instead, he signed a secret Act of Restriction, preventing civil authorities from dismissing anyone to whom he had given a military commission.⁷¹ ⁶⁷ On Ghent, Decavele, Het Eind van een Rebelse Droom; on Utrecht, above, n. 58. ⁶⁸ Grayson, ‘Civic Militia’. ⁶⁹ For example, Dordrecht went over to the Revolt when the civic militia companies refused the sheriff ’s order to ﬁre at Sea Beggar vessels drawn up in the harbour (Prologue to Part II, n. 18). In Delft in 1573 (Chapter 6, n. 14) and in Haarlem in 1578 (Spaans, Haarlem na de Reformatie, 57–8), riots by burghers and mercenary soldiers cancelled out guarantees of freedom of worship for Catholics. ⁷⁰ Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 50–1, 62. Walsingham to Gilpin, 19 November 1585, CSPFSRE xx. 173, ‘They have in a matter of very good weight (by placing the count Maurice governor of Holland and Zeeland) taken a more speedy resolution than in reason was ﬁt.’ ⁷¹ Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 123–5, 144–5. Cf. Bor, Oorsprong, xxii. 878–80: the States of Holland learned of the Act of Restriction when Stanley (at Deventer) and York (at the sconce opposite Nijmegen) refused to be relieved of their commands.

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In January 1587, while offering to discuss with Sonoy the terms of a new and more limited commission that would bring him once again under their authority, the Lords States cast a wary eye on Medemblik, his headquarters town.⁷² Medemblik occupied a strategic point on the Zuider Zee, close to the ‘sea gates’ leading to the North Sea, and it also boasted the Noorderkwartier’s only castle. When Sonoy replied that in these dangerous times a military commander could not afford to spend time negotiating in The Hague, the States bade him undertake an inspection tour in Gelderlandland and Overijssel, where several towns and forts along the Zuider Zee were held by companies of his regiment. With Sonoy gone, the States, in consultation with Maurits of Nassau, sent Arent van Duivenvoorde and his company to take control of Medemblik. But Sonoy’s lieutenant refused him admission to Duivenvoorde. When Sonoy returned, and learned what had been attempted, he rejected the new commission sent from The Hague; as he wrote to the Lords States (12 March 1587), he had sworn allegiance to the earl of Leicester. Maurits now set out for Medemblik for a personal interview, accompanied by Hohenlohe. Sonoy sent word that Maurits should not come; learning that the stadtholder was only half an hour’s journey away, he barred the town gates against him. During the awkward stand-off that followed, four Reformed ministers delivered themselves of a written opinion saying they had found no fault in the conduct of North Holland’s governor.⁷³ It was now a question of which side could get its troops into the two key towns of the Noorderkwartier. Sonoy sent word to Maarten van Wolfswinckel and ‘Captain Haestrecht’ (Jonker Dirk van Diemen), two of his captains in Overijssel, to come and assume responsibility for Enkhuizen and Hoorn. But Hohenlohe, with forty-ﬁve musketeers, got to Enkhuizen ﬁrst; Duivenvoorde’s company was also admitted here at some point,⁷⁴ after having been barred from nearby Medemblik, where Wolfswinckel and his men now took up station. In Hoorn, the vroedschap ﬁrst announced that no new troops would be let in, then wrote to Maurits, offering to admit a company of Haarlem burghers⁷⁵ that had just set sail. When this letter leaked out, Sonoy’s supporters ‘strongly insisted’ to the vroedschap that its second decision be reversed;⁷⁶ upon reports that the ships from Haarlem were nearing Hoorn, burghers took up arms and rushed to the harbour to prevent their landing. Meanwhile, even though Hohenlohe ⁷² Save as noted, the following paragraph is based on Bor, Oorsprong, xxii. 895–902. ⁷³ Cf. ‘Advice to Leicester’, April 1587, paragraph 22, Groen, IIe Series, Letter XXV, i. 55, Sonoy should be encouraged to ‘separate’ North Holland from the government of Holland. ⁷⁴ Bor, Oorsprong, xxiii. 67: a letter from Enkhuizen to Leicester (14 October 1587), urging that he not support Sonoy’s efforts to remove Duivenvoorde’s company, and replace it by one or two companies of his own regiment. For ‘Captain Haestrecht,’ Bor, xxiv. 195. ⁷⁵ Probably from the civic militia companies. For the use of low-paid waardegelders to replace civic militia companies that had been posted to other duties, Chapter 10, nn. 59, 60. ⁷⁶ According to Bor, Sonoy’s supporters ‘liepen seer sterck aen den raed om ’t selve [the previous decision] af te krijgen’.

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had got Clerhagen and his company out of Gorinchem, the city refused to admit a replacement military governor commissioned by Maurits and the Lords States.⁷⁷ These demonstrations of popular resistance to the States were grist for the mill of Leicester’s partisans.⁷⁸ As one supporter explained (April 1587), the States assemblies ‘are afraid to cause discontent among the people (le peuple)’, especially ‘if one makes the people understand what the States are doing’. His Excellency should thus understand that if he ‘cannot obtain from the States something reasonable’, then ‘let him merely threaten them that one will alert the people’.⁷⁹ As if to ‘alert’ the populace, ‘a letter written in French and cast abroad among the people’ attacked the States for their ingratitude to the governor-general; in The Hague, one of Leicester’s secretaries was suspected of being the author.⁸⁰ In June, Lord Buckhurst, sent by the Privy Council to report on the affairs of the Low Countries, was optimistic. The States greatly fear Leicester, he wrote, ‘for by the spreading of these letters they doubt the alienation and tumult of the people upon them’. In particular, Leicester and his followers, by ‘divers letters’, have ‘given out to the people’ that the only cause ‘why Her Majestie hath not better holpen them’ was that the States sent on to Elizabeth herself a copy of their latest remonstrance to Leicester (November 1586).⁸¹ Parma was now tightening his siege of Sluis, a major harbour that faced Zeeland’s Walcheren Island across the Maas estuary. Thus when Leicester returned to the Netherlands, landing in Vlissingen on 6 July, he had a tumultuous welcome. To replenish the companies of Englishmen, he brought with him 3,000 fresh troops on the queen’s payroll, and 1,500 for units on the payroll of the States General.⁸² Leicester wanted still more men; he gave Captain Cosmo de Pescarengis a letter patent authorizing him to raise a company of 300 men by ‘beating the drum’ in Leiden; the States of Holland (17 July) bade Leiden put ⁷⁷ Wilkes to Leicester, The Hague, 12 March 1587, Correspondentie van Robert Dudley, Graaf van Leicester, Letter CCLXVIII, lvii. 145–51. Wilkes mentions that Bacx (Prouninck’s cousin) had also been removed as military governor of Muiden. ⁷⁸ ‘The people so murmur at the doings of the States they put themselves in arms, as at Hoorn’: Ibid., Letter CCLXXIV, lvii. 159–65. ⁷⁹ Groen, IIe Series, Letter XXV, ‘Advice to Leicester’, April 1587, paragraph 5, i. 49. ⁸⁰ From Wilkes’s diary, entry for 12 March 1587, Correspondentie van Robert Dudley, Graaf van Leicester, lvii. 459. ⁸¹ Buckhurst to Walsingham, 18 June 1587, ibid., Letter CCCLXX, lvii. 355–6. On Buckhurst’s mission, Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 163–6. ⁸² On the depletion of English companies in the Netherlands, RSG v. 604–5, 610–11: 9, 24 February 1587, and Buckhurst to Walsingham, Utrecht, 28 April 1587, Correspondentie van Robert Dudley, Graaf van Leicester, Letter CCCIX, lvii. 227–8. Walsingham to Buckhurst, London, 15/25 June 1587, Correspondentie van Robert Dudley, Letter CCCLXVIII, lvii. 351–2: Her Majesty sends 6,000 men, 3,000 for summer service, 1,500 for the ‘repairing of the bands’ [on the queen’s payroll], and 1,500 for the ten companies on the payroll of the States General. Bor, Oorsprong, xxiv. 8: Leicester brings 3,000 for companies on the queen’s payroll, and 1,500 for the States, to be armed in the Netherlands.

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a stop to this, on grounds of a States General resolution that prohibited adding more troops to the war budget without express authorization.⁸³ But Maurits and the States of Holland now found it prudent to draw back from a possible confrontation with Sonoy. On 20 July, Oldenbarnevelt wrote to Sonoy that he had persuaded the Lords States to decommission an ofﬁcer who had instructions to take over garrison duty in Hoorn, and who had vowed to carry out his orders come what may.⁸⁴ The surrender of Sluis (5 August) was but another occasion for mutual recriminations between the governor-general and the States of Holland. But it also meant that Leicester, having no army to lead,⁸⁵ had leisure for politics. Before leaving England he had given his secretary, Junius, a letter with instructions on what to tell Sonoy and other ‘friends’ in the Netherlands. Junius was detained in The Hague and the contents of the letter were made known: with the help of those having charge over the people (he seems to have meant Reformed ministers and civic militia captains), Leicester would exercise a real sovereignty over the country, not subject to the States General.⁸⁶ In keeping with this objective, various threads of conspiracy were spun, between the time Leicester was welcomed in Holland by delegates from the States (Dordrecht, 22 August 1587) and the day he sailed from Medemblik, leaving Holland for good (29 October).⁸⁷ Through Bardesius and the Council of State, the governor-general asked leave to raise more men in Holland, but the Lords States demurred (4 September); instead, Leicester could have disposal over the companies that had formed the garrison at Sluis and were now coming to Holland or Zeeland.⁸⁸ On 7 September the governor-general summarized his grievances in a letter to the States General; within a week, printed copies were circulating in Leiden, Amsterdam, Alkmaar, Rotterdam, and other cities, addressed not just to the magistrates (burgomasters, aldermen, and vroedschap), but also to the captains and (in Amsterdam) colonels ⁸³ RSH 1587, 193: 17 July 1587. ⁸⁴ Bor, Oorsprong, xxiii. 10. ⁸⁵ The much-coveted German cavalry again failed to show up: Prologue to Part IV, n. 32; Chapter 10, n. 34. Schenck’s campaign in the Rhineland (Chapter 10, n. 76) was the most important United Provinces offensive during these months. ⁸⁶ Correspondentie van Robert Dudley, Graaf van Leicester, Letter CCCLIX, Leicester to Junius, Greenwich, 10 June 1587, lvii. 336–7; Letter CCCLXXIX, Leicester to Walsingham, Margate, 4 July 1587, lvii. 369; Letter CCCLXXXIII, Burghley to Elizabeth, The Hague, 28 June 1587, lvii. 374–379. Cf. Bor, Oorsprong, xxiii. 8. For Leicester to exercise ‘sovereignty’ in the Netherlands was not what Elizabeth had in mind; now desirous of peace negotiations with Spain, she hoped by appealing to the common people to undermine the authority of the States assemblies that she saw as an obstacle to peace: Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands, 175. Cf. Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, v. 143: through Joachim Ortel in London, the States of Holland had a copy of Leicester’s instructions from the queen. ⁸⁷ RSH 1587, 242: 22 August 1587, ﬁve men are named to welcome Leicester in Dordrecht; Bor, Oosprong, xxiii. 67: on 29 October Leicester sailed from Medemblik to Franeker (Friesland). The various threads of conspiracy have yet to be gathered together by a modern scholar. Oosterhoff largely follows Bor’s account, as do I. ⁸⁸ RSH 1587, 226–7: 4 September 1587. Men who had surrendered the town they were defending were not considered good combat material.

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of the civic militia companies.⁸⁹ After some days in Utrecht, Leicester turned back to Holland, pausing in Naarden (3 October), where he announced his intention to visit Enkhuizen; meanwhile, Sonoy was to get Duivenvoorde’s company (loyal to the States of Holland) out of Enkhuizen, leaving room for the men of Captain Jacques Cristal’s company, a part of Sonoy’s own regiment, who would come from Medemblik. Arriving in Amsterdam later that day, Leicester invited the colonels and captains who made up what was called the war council of the civic militia to his lodgings, where the wine ﬂowed freely; through a secretary, Daniel de Burchgrave, he told them that by contacting his sergeantmajor they could ‘have speech with’ His Excellency whenever they wished. Burgomaster Pieter Boom Corneliszoon, who happened to be in attendance as one of the colonels, objected that it was a prerogative of the vroedschap, not the war council, to palaver with such as His Excellency. Boom also took note of the presence of Captain Harmen van Roodenburgh—not currently on the war council, but ‘much suspected to be of the Leicester faction, as people called it’—and ordered him to leave. This was, in Bor’s view, the undoing of a plan for Amsterdam.⁹⁰ In Leiden, the arrest of Cosmo de Pescarengis (10 October), possibly in connection with unlicensed troop recruitment, unearthed plans for a coup the following day, involving a Fleming named Jacques Volmar and soldiers that had come from Sluis; Volmar and Pescarengis were beheaded, and other alleged plotters were banned for life, including the theology professor Adrianus de Saravia.⁹¹ Meanwhile, Leicester had sailed off to Hoorn, where he was welcomed with festivities on 16 October. He had planned to proceed to Enkhuizen, but the magistrates of that city sent a delegation who persuaded him not to come. Instead, escorted by men of Hoorn’s militia companies, he set off for a meeting with Sonoy in Medemblik.⁹² Finally, at a meeting of the States of Holland (17 October), Dordrecht’s deputies brought a letter of support addressed to Leicester, purportedly written by the burghers of their city. Enquiries had led to a man from ’s-Hertogenbosch (Brabant) now living in Dordrecht, who said that Gerard Prouninek had brought him the letter, and that he himself had a copy made by the company secretary of Captains Paulus and ⁸⁹ RSH 1587, 255, 273: 17 September, 5 October 1587, the States have agreed on the text of a reply to this letter. ⁹⁰ Bor, Oorsprong, xxiii. 63 (the quotes), 67. I admit to some puzzlement over the phrase ‘het woord halen.’ For Duivenvoorde’s company, above, n. 74. ⁹¹ Bor, Oorsprong, xxiii. 984–1003; RSH 1587, 269, 281, 283: 2 October 1587, a protest to the Council of State concerning illegal recruitment by Colonel Pescarengis, 17 October 1587, the colonel has confessed that Leicester promised to aid him ‘in the attack in Leiden’, and 17 October 1587, Maurits of Nassau is to be asked for help in arranging punishment for [Pescarengis and Volmar]. See also RSH 1587, 287, 316–17: 21 October, 19 November 1587. Nijenhuis, Adrianus Saravia, accepts Saravia’s statement that he was not involved. ⁹² Bor, Oorsprong, xxiii. 67; in Bor’s account, Leicester’s inability to gain entry to Enkhuizen meant that his plans had failed ‘at which his faction called the church [Amsterdam], and now at the chapel [Enkhuizen]’.

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Marcellus Bacx (Prouninck’s cousins), who happened then to be in Dordrecht.⁹³ Leicester, learning that his plans would have no better success in Friesland than in Holland, asked the queen to recall him, and sailed to Zeeland; he dated a farewell letter to the States General 6 December, and resigned his command on 17 December.⁹⁴ Since Sonoy’s commission from the erstwhile governor-general was now without value, he entered into negotiations with the States of Holland about a new commission.⁹⁵ In the end, the States’ commissioners were instead instructed to work out the terms of ‘an honourable separation’.⁹⁶ Meanwhile, some 450 men remained ensconced within Medemblik: Sonoy’s own company, and those of Maarten van Wolfswinckel and Jacques Cristal.⁹⁷ At the end of January 1588, they mutinied against their captains, clamouring for twenty-eight months of back wages; for their own greater safety, they had Medemblik’s burghers turn in their weapons at the castle. With Sonoy himself now bypassed, States commissioners were allowed to enter ‘the ring’ of the mutineers, but discussions were fruitless. Thus by early March seven States of Holland companies were digging in around Medemblik, including Harmen van Roodenburgh’s men from Amsterdam and two companies of Scots. Lord Peregrine Willoughby, whom Queen Elizabeth had commissioned to take charge of English troops remaining in the Netherlands, claimed authority to proceed to Medemblik to ‘relieve’ Sonoy of his command. After meeting with the States of Holland, he agreed to serve instead as a mediator. The breakthrough came in April 1588, when Holland offered ships for the defence of England against Philip II’s Armada, if Willoughby did his best to reduce to obedience the mutineers in Medemblik and other places (see below). By late May a settlement was in sight: orders were given to tear down the sconces built by Medemblik’s besiegers.⁹⁸ How much the mutineers got is not clear; it probably took most of the 200,000 pounds raised in two repartitie loans, earmarked for back wages of the soldiers.⁹⁹ ⁹³ Bor, Oorsprong, xxiii. 94; RSH 1587, 282 (17 October). Like Prouninck, the Bacx brothers were also from ’s-Hertogenbosch, and known as partisans of Leicester. ⁹⁴ RSH 1588, 97–8: 3 April 1588, mutineers in Geertruidenberg are to be shown a copy of Leicester’s acte of 17 December 1587. ⁹⁵ Bor, Oorsprong, xxiv. 184, a report of discussions between Oldenbarnevelt and Guillaume Mostart (Sonoy’s emissary) in January 1588. ⁹⁶ RSH 1588, 20, 103, 237: 27 January, 5 Apri, 3 July 1588 (the quote). ⁹⁷ Bor, Oorsprong, xxiii. 118–19: Cristal’s company left Enkhuizen on the orders of Prince Maurits (27 November 1587), but his men went to Medemblik, not Edam and Monnikendam, as ordered. Sonoy agreed to send 150 men from his company to Zeeland (2 December), but kept the other hundred. Since Wolfswinckel had 200 men, there were 450 in all. ⁹⁸ RSH 1588, 38–9, 70–1, 84, 89, 93–4, 199, 126, 167, 176, 188, 229: 14 February, 3, 13, 15, 30 March, 13, 16 April (the Armada), 17, 23, 31 May, 1 July 1588; Bor, Oorsprong, xxiii. 118–19; xxiv. 181, 187, 191–2, 195 (Captain Roodenburgh’s company marches past Hoorn), 199, 208. ⁹⁹ RSH 1588, 34, 73–4, 90, 105, 121: 4 February, 4, 16 March, 5, 14 April 1588; loans in the amount of 100,000 pounds were to be repaid from the 1588 verponding: Table 7, item Y.

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No doubt inﬂuenced by the example of Medemblik, garrisons in several frontier towns insistently demanded settlement of their claims.¹⁰⁰ The most dangerous situation developed at Geertruidenberg, the headquarters of Hohenlohe’s regiment, and the anchor of Holland’s post-1572 beachhead on the south bank of the Hollands Diep. The trouble may have started when a payment for the men in Geertruidenberg was diverted to satisfy mutineers in nearby Heusden. Geertruidenberg’s mutineers wanted to negotiate with Willoughby, not just Hohenlohe and Prince Maurits. Early in June, the Lords States refused to allow back pay at the same rate as for the men of Medemblik, because the Geeertruidenberg garrison had already received partial settlement of their claims, and had caused ‘much harm there’. But Willoughby and Prince Maurits judged that they had to accept the mutineers’ demand for 200,000 pounds, even if this sum exceeded their instructions; the Lords States swallowed their pride and decreed a further repartitie loan for 200,000. In all, it cost the province’s burgher-lenders well over 400,000 pounds to restore calm along the frontiers.¹⁰¹ For laying to rest the last demons of civic discord summoned forth by Leicester’s intervention in Holland, it was a small price to pay.

T H E S OV E R E I G N T Y D E B AT E Jean Bodin’s Six livres de la république (Paris, 1576) set a fashion for using the word sovereignty to describe the ultimate source of political authority.¹⁰² If Bodin defended the ‘absolute’ authority of France’s monarch, Huguenot writers, after the massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day (1572), marshalled arguments for legitimate resistance to a tyrannical king. One line of reasoning asserted that ultimate authority had always resided in a national council of the realm, now embodied in France’s Estates General; another contended that all ofﬁcers of ¹⁰⁰ RSH 1588, 28, 32, 44, 80: 2 February 1588, the garrison in Heusden has mutinied and holds the magistrates captive in the city hall; 3 February 1588, the garrison in Woudrichem has ‘more or less mutinied’; 20 February 1588, soldiers in Schoonhoven gather in the church ‘to plan something against the city’, but then the burghers gathered in arms to oppose them if need be; 10 March 1588, in Naarden, the companies of Captains Renchy and Soison have seized the muster commissioner, demanding a month’s pay for 300 men, though they number only 220; and 11 March 1588, mutiny in Hohensaxe’s regiment at Zwarte Sluys, near Kampen in Overijssel. ¹⁰¹ RSH 1588, 28, 97–8. 127, 192–3, 225–6, 241–2, 292, 300: 2 February, 3, 16 April, 3, 29 June, 5 July, 1 August 1588 (quotas for the cities in the 200,000-pound repartitie), and 10 August 1588 (payments totalling 215,521 pounds, including 91,101 for Hohenlohe’s cavalry, 40,666 for his infantry companies, 22,090 for La Salle’s men, 39,788 for those of Kinsken, and 21,606 for those of Zydenburgh); RSG vi. 140, 158–9: 14 May, 4 July 1588. ¹⁰² Julian Franklin, ‘Sovereignty and the Mixed Constitution: Bodin and his Critics’, in J. H. Burns and Mark Goldie, The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 298–328; cf. Donald Kelley, ‘Law’, 66–94, esp. 92, on the idea of sovereignty: ‘Based literally on ancient Roman ‘‘majesty’’ [majestas] (according to Bodin), this dominating conception drew also on the attributes of ‘‘empire’’ [imperium] and on a vast accumulation of modern regalian rights, privileges, and precedents.’

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the king and even the common people had both a right and a duty to resist royal tyranny.¹⁰³ In the Netherlands, the renunciation of Philip II’s authority (1581) necessarily entailed a similar debate. Several treatises attributed to the States General not just a duty to guard the liberties and privileges of the people against princely tyranny, but also ‘the power to decide on all matters concerning sovereignty’. This argument was most famously expounded in an Apology issued in the name of William of Orange, written by his court chaplain in consultation with two learned Huguenots.¹⁰⁴ Some writers, including Gerard Prouninck, then town pensionary of ’s- Hertogenbosch, went a step further, suggesting that ultimate authority lay with the people themselves, for it was ‘the people who make princes, and not they the people’.¹⁰⁵ By conferring Hooge Overigheid (‘high authority’) on William of Orange in the Union of Dordrecht (March 1576), subject to many restrictions, the States of Holland and Zeeland had already laid claim to sovereign rights, albeit without saying so. During the peace negotiations at Cologne (1579), when Holland and Zeeland feared that deputies of the States General might be lured into a deceptive agreement, the two provinces renewed Orange’s ‘high authority’.¹⁰⁶ In the autumn of 1582, Orange let it be known he would prefer to be acclaimed as count of Holland and Zeeland, a title that would be more compatible with the sovereignty now exercised, in theory, by the duke of Anjou. Both provinces at one time favoured naming Orange as count, under Anjou’s authority, but the idea lost its appeal after Anjou’s troops launched the ‘French Fury’ of January 1583. There was also a question as to whether such separate status for Holland and Zeeland might conﬂict with the sovereign rights exercised by the States General in bestowing supreme authority on Anjou. To get around the problem, the States of Zeeland had offered proprietary rights over the county to Orange and his heirs (September 1582). In Holland, a majority of the cities were won ¹⁰³ For capsule summaries of François Hotman’s Francogallia (published 1573) and the anonymous Vindiciae contra Tyrannos (published 1579), Robert M. Kingdon, ‘Calvinism and Resistance Theory, 1550–1580’, in Burns and Goldie, eds., The Cambridge History of Politcal Thought, 193–218, here 206–14, and Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), ii. chapter 9, ‘The Right to Resist’. ¹⁰⁴ Van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, 144–5, 151–3; the quote is from an anonymous Brief discours sur la negotiation de la paix (Leiden, 1579). As noted by Kingdon (n. 103 above), Hubert Languet and Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, consulted by Orange’s chaplain (Loyseleur de Villiers), are the two men most often mentioned as likely authors of the Vindiciae contra Tyrannos. ¹⁰⁵ Van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, 146–57; the quote is from Prouninck, Emanuel-Erneste, Dialogue de deux personages sur l’Estate des Pais Bas (Antwerp, 1580). More important in this respect was Aggeus van Alkbada, Acten van den Vredehandel te Colen (Antwerp, 1581): ‘Although other treatises moved in this direction, Albada was the ﬁrst author to give a full account of popular sovereignty’ (157). ¹⁰⁶ Chapter 4, n. 55, For renewal of this authority, by both provinces, RSH 1576–79, 13: 13 March 1576; see the interesting commentary on this resolution in RSH 1583, 134–41: 6 May 1583, which recounts the ‘renewal of this agreement’ between His Excellency and the two provinces, with knowledge and consent of the States General, in 1579.

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over to recognizing him as count, albeit under conditions still more restrictive than those under which he had been acknowledged as high authority. But when the document was presented to His Excellency ‘in his bedroom’ in The Hague (7 December 1583), deputies from two cities that had refused to afﬁx their seals—Amsterdam and Gouda—were absent. (Amsterdam feared that this unilateral action might allow Philip II to ban ships from Holland from Spain’s harbours, while welcoming those from Zeeland.). Orange asked that no date for his acclamation as count be set until the two recalcitrant cities had given their assent.¹⁰⁷ Leicester’s governor-generalship raised new questions about sovereignty. While his partisans had a common interest in curbing Holland’s pretensions, they espoused, broadly speaking, one of three opinions as to where sovereignty lay. Gerard Prouninck, now a burgomaster of Utrecht, defended the ‘absolute’ authority Leicester had been voted by the States General, but was prevented from exercising. Weakened by ‘the government of many’, the United Provinces needed ‘the best form of government’, that is, one in which supreme authority remained undivided: ‘Navigation teaches us that a ship, in a thunderstorm at sea, should be steered only by the command of the senior steersman.’ As for the privileges by which some would claim to limit the governor-general’s authority, many were ‘proﬁtable in times of peace’, but harmful in time of war: privileges existed ‘for the sake of the community, not the community for the privileges’.¹⁰⁸ Another line of argument, dating at least from 1583, represented sovereignty as residing in the States General, without reference to the provincial States assemblies that had always been seen as their ‘principals’: the General States assembly was so called ‘not because they represent the States of each province in particular, but because they represent the community of the general union’.¹⁰⁹ This view implied that sovereignty ultimately lay with the people at large, an idea that some expressed more directly. In the spring of 1587, as Leicester’s supporters spoke of appealing directly to the people of Holland, over the heads of the Lords States, an English member of the Council of State, Thomas Wilkes, published a remonstrance accusing the States of Holland of undermining the authority of the States General and the governor-general, ¹⁰⁷ RSH 1583, 134–41, 169, 179, 426, 430, 432, 450, 486: 6, 21 May, 4 June, 25, 27, 28 October 1583 (all the cities but Delft, Leiden, Amsterdam, Gouda, Rotterdam, Schiedam, and Brill have agreed; the letter of the States of Zeeland is shown, dated 20 September 1582), 14 November, and 7 December 1583 (the letter is presented to Orange, absent deputies from Amsterdam and Gouda). Swart, Willem van Oranje, 240, 243–7 (a tradition that, even without the assent of Amsterdam and Gouda, Orange’s acclamation was set for 12 July 1584—two days after his assassination). ¹⁰⁸ From Prouninck, Answer to divers evil accusations falsely imputed to him by some persons of the present government (March 1587), as quoted in Van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, 200–1. ¹⁰⁹ From the anonymous About the Present Condition of Government in the Netherlands (late 1583), Kossman and Mellink, eds., Texts Concerning the Revolt, no. 59, 257.

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without having any lawful basis for the ‘sovereignty’ they have on various occasions ‘alleged’: For in the absence of a legitimate prince, sovereignty belongs to the commonalty and not to you, gentlemen, who are only servants, ministers and deputies of the commonalty and have commissions which are limited and restricted not only in time but also in subject matter. These are conditions as widely different from sovereignty as is the power of the subject from that of the prince or of the servant from the master . . . for sovereignty is limited neither in power nor in time.¹¹⁰

Wilkes’s argument, challenging the right of Holland’s rulers to rule, could not go unanswered. To reply on their behalf, the Lords States commissioned Oldenbarnevelt’s protégé François Vranck (c.1555–1617), a lawyer who was town pensionary of Gouda; in light of his youth, one may infer that Vranck was expected to produce a consensus document, not a work of original scholarship.¹¹¹ His Exposition of the Rights Exercised by the Knights, Nobles and Towns of Holland and West Friesland (October 1587)¹¹² began with a historical sketch. ‘For 800 years’, Holland had been governed by counts or countesses ‘lawfully charged and commissioned with the rule and sovereignty of these countries by the nobles and towns, representing the States of the aforesaid country’. Thanks to this form of government ‘the state of the countries of Holland and Zeeland has never been conquered nor subjugated by the sword for a period of 800 years, neither by foreign nor by internal wars’. Because ‘princes are easily deluded by guileful and ambitious’ people, the inhabitants of the country ‘are divided into two estates, namely the nobles and the towns’, so as to ‘admonish’ the prince, or, should the prince be lured into tyranny, to offer opposition ‘with the means of the country’. (In other words, nobles and towns together represent the wealth that is both threatened by princely tyranny, and capable of resisting it.) The nobles are considered a ‘member’ of Holland, because of the dignity of their birth, and ‘because of the signories they possess in the said countries’. Most of the towns have the same form of government: a vroedschap ‘which consists of the most distinguished persons, from the midst of the entire community’. These colleges are ‘as old as the towns, for there is no memory of their origins’. They alone have power to resolve on all matters affecting the town, and ‘the citizens accept their decision ¹¹⁰ From Wilkes, Remonstrance to the States General and the States of Holland (March 1587), of which an excerpt is given in Kossman and Mellink, eds., Texts Concerning the Revolt, no. 65, 272–3; Van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, 201–3. ¹¹¹ Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand, 209, 265; Oldenbarnevelt’s proposal (1587) to name Vranck a second advocate of the States failed, not gaining unanimous approval. ¹¹² Save as noted, I quote from ‘A Short Exposition’, in Van Gelderen, ed. and trans., The Dutch Revolt, 227–8, not from ‘A Short Exposition’, in Kossman and Mellink, eds., Texts Concerning the Revolt, no. 66, 274–81. The English of Van Gelderen’s translation is less felicitous, but Kossman and Mellink leave out passages in places, without so indicating.

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as binding for they have never infringed or opposed these decisions’.¹¹³ Since princes have not interfered in the internal governance of the towns, save by the appointment of sheriffs to preside over the town courts, it is clear that the town councils, together with the college of the nobles, ‘undoubtedly represent the whole state and entire body of the inhabitants’ of Holland. While some contend that the authority of the States depends on the personal authority of the ‘thirty or forty persons who appear at its meetings’,¹¹⁴ Vranck maintains that the delegates of the town governments, with the nobles, ‘are not the States in person or on their own authority’’, for they are commissioned to represent their principals. ‘Sir Wilkes and everybody else should kindly understand’ that when Holland’s delegates declare ‘that sovereignty is with the States of the country, they do not mean to speak of themselves, but of their principals’, that is, the town corporations and the college of nobles. In sum, Vranck hopes to have ‘proven clearly and sufﬁciently’ that ‘the sovereignty of the country is with the States’. Vranck had produced a legal brief, suited to rebut Wilkes’s argument for the sovereignty of the people. Despite a passing reference to ‘the oldest records’, he was engaged not in historical scholarship but in a form of myth-making, to some degree modelled on the well-known public image of the Most Serene Republic of Venice.¹¹⁵ Precisely because it lacks originality, this brief essay brings us as close as we are likely to come to the collective self-understanding of Holland’s urban oligarchies: they occupied the seats of power because they represented the wealth (‘means’) of their towns, and because the right of such men to rule had been accepted since time out of mind. In the same way that (as this book has argued) Holland’s credit was really the credit of the town corporations, the regents believed that the sovereignty of the Lords States was a collective expression of the sovereignty of their town corporations. Proof that Vranck had captured the outlook of his constituents lies in the fact that his basic arguments would be ﬂeshed out by later apologists for the States of Holland, as in the Treatise of the ¹¹³ Here I cite the translation of Kossman and Mellink, Texts Concerning the Revolt, 277. Van Gelderen’s translation fails to catch in these words the important idea of implied consent: The Dutch Revolt, 234, ‘What is ordained by such a college has to be followed by the entire citizenry. There has never been any infringement or opposition from the citizens.’ ¹¹⁴ Vranck glides by the fact that there was an elite of about this size that regularly attended the sessions, and governed by consensus among themselves: see Koopmans, De Staten van Holland en de Opstand, Bijlage 1, 241–72. ¹¹⁵ ‘A Short Exposition’, Van Gelderen, The Dutch Revolt, 231, ‘We do not know whether at present the same [not being conquered for 800 years] can be said of any other empire (unless it be the republic of Venice).’ See Eco O. G. Haitsma Milier, The Myth of Venice and Dutch Republican Thought in the Seventeenth Century, trans. Gerard T. Moran (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1980). Vranck’s claims about Holland’s past do not hold up: (a) there is no reference to ‘Holland’ before the tenth century; (b) the States of Holland dated only from the ﬁfteenth century, as did the town council organized as a vroedschap with life membership; (c) Holland was torn apart by wars between the ‘Hook’ and ‘Codﬁsh’ factions in the fourteenth and ﬁfteenth centuries, and conquered by Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy in 1425; (d) until 1572, towns could not introduce new taxes or issue renten without the approval of the sovereign; and (e) if townsmen obeyed the decrees of their vroedschap, most towns would not have adhered to the Revolt.

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Antiquity of the Batavian now Hollandish Republic (1610) by Holland’s ofﬁcial histioriographer, Hugo Grotius.¹¹⁶ Vranck raised no issues that were extraneous to the task of refuting his adversary. Wisely, he said nothing about the States General; no one speaking for the States of Holland in this period publicly questioned the pre-eminence of the General States, but to speak of it directly might carry unwanted implications.¹¹⁷ Neither did he say (as partisans of the Revolt often did)¹¹⁸ that the Lords States had a duty to defend, against Spanish tyranny, the historic privileges of burghers and town corporations; since Wilkes had not questioned the legal standing of the privileges,¹¹⁹ Vranck saw no need for defending it. Moreover, in light of ongoing disagreements within Holland, privileges were a sensitive issue. For merchants looking to cut costs, so as to take advantage of new opportunities, the historic monopoly rights that Dordrecht and Gouda saw as safety nets were the worst kind of nuisance.¹²⁰ Vranck limited himself to a generic expression that could apply to property and rights of all kinds: what the Lords States represented, and what they defended against the tyranny of the king and his minions, was ‘the means of the country’. This was the key point. Had the Lords States not been perceived by Hollanders as defending ‘the means of the country’, they would not have enjoyed the ﬁnancial support that was essential for ﬁghting an enormously costly war against one of Europe’s greatest monarchies. People who backed the Revolt had of course many reasons for doing so. The duke of Alba’s regime would ﬁt most deﬁnitions of tyranny,¹²¹ and one must take at face value, especially for the difﬁcult early years of the war, the declarations of town corporations that they were ready to set at risk ‘life, property, and blood’, all for the sake of liberty.¹²² Similarly, the ¹¹⁶ Van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, 206–7; Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 1572–1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 154–69: like the Hollanders, the Batavians, known for their rebellion against Rome (AD. 69), were governed not by kings but by their leading men (primores). For the argument as to whether the insula Batavorum of Roman times was to be identiﬁed with modern Holland or (as seems more likely) modern Gelderland, Karin Tilmans, Historiography and Humanism in Holland in the Age of Erasmus: Aurelius and the Divisiekroniek of 1517 (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1992), chapter III. ¹¹⁷ In the history of the Dutch Republic (1579–1795), there were three occasions when a stadtholder of the House of Orange, backed by the States General, compelled Holland to submit: under Prince Maurits of Nassau (1618–19), Willem II (1650), and Willem III (1672—this was the later King William of England). See the relevant sections of J. C. H. Blom and E. Lambert, eds., History of the Low Countries, trans. James C. Kennedy (New York: Berghahn, 1999). ¹¹⁸ J. J. Woltjer, ‘Dutch Privileges Real and Imagined’, Britain and the Netherlands, 5 ( The Hague, 1975), 19–35. ¹¹⁹ Though Prouninck did: above, n. 108. ¹²⁰ See Chapter 3 and Chapter 9, and Woltjer, ‘Dutch Privileges’, 27 (three kinds of privileges). ¹²¹ A case best made from the Spanish perspective, as in Kamen, The Duke of Alba. ¹²² e.g. the States of North Holland to Orange, RANH 237, 7 Aug. 1574: ‘We reckon no cost too heavy, nor riches too great to be set at risk, so that, with the help of God (who is the giver of all good and victory), we may withstand servitude.’ Cf. RANH 238, 6 June 1578, ‘We remain

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Reformed Evangelical Religion inspired genuine devotion among a signiﬁcant and inﬂuential minority,¹²³ somewhat larger with each passing year, and no one holding any position of responsibility now questioned the religious settlement that had been in place in Holland for ﬁfteen years.¹²⁴ Yet this was a war that, more than others, required contributions from the citizens, not just as taxpayers, but even more as lenders. In repartitie loans and other credit-raising initiatives, people who participated surely did so in the hope of protecting what was theirs. Finally, the burghers’ sense of what was ‘theirs’ was bounded by provincial borders, not those of an all-Netherlands patria.¹²⁵ In Habsburg times, Holland’s townsmen watched their tax revenues go for ‘putting out ﬁres’ elsewhere in the Netherlands, even as the foe attacked close to home.¹²⁶ Now, absent a strong central government, they wanted the needs of their own province to come ﬁrst. This policy the Lords States pursued, giving priority to the protection of Holland’s Garden. The argument of this book has come full circle. Because the Lords States chose to ﬁght ‘on someone else’s ground’, Holland and Holland alone was shielded from the war. An island of peace and a beacon for refugees, Holland prospered as never before, assuming a central role in the economy of the region. Because Holland prospered, its citizens and inhabitants had more to give in taxes and loans, keeping pace with the outlays of the mighty Spanish monarchy. Finally, because Holland’s burghers got the peace and security for which they were willing to pay, the Lords States had needed political support to maintain their authority, even in the face of challenge by Leicester and his partisans. By 1588, Holland had a constitution tested by war, a proven capacity for carrying debt, and, with its buffer provinces in the Union of Utrecht, a defensive redoubt strong enough to support the Dutch offensives that would soon begin. prepared to put our lives, property, and blood at risk, with Your Excellency, for the Fatherland, for we know that if Your Excellency goes down we, with our wives and children, are doomed to everlasting slavery.’ ¹²³ Kooi, Liberty and Religion, 1–4, discusses the account (by the seventeenth-century historian Geeraerdt Brandt) of a debate in Leiden during the siege: after wooden coins were circulated bearing the inscription ‘Haec Libertatis Ergo’ (these things for the sake of liberty), others were circulated bearing the inscription ‘Haec Religionis Ergo’ (these things for the sake of religion). ¹²⁴ At least not for long. RSH 1588, 161: 14 May 1588: Ponciaen Harmenszoon, a deputy from the small town of Muiden (not a town with voting rights), reminds the deputies that the Lords States had sworn an oath ‘to let the people of Muiden remain with the Catholic religion’; having ascertained that nothing of the kind was contained in his written instructions, the States write to Muiden not to send Harmenszoon as a deputy again, nor to ‘use him for any ofﬁce there’. ¹²⁵ Koenigsberger, Monarchies, 186: ‘People did not speak of [the Netherlands] as a state, as a realm. For a long time the provinces had considered themselves bound together only by having the same prince. Only very gradually had they come to consider themselves as a political community and they were very suspicious of the word union.’ ¹²⁶ Tracy, A Financial Revolution, chapter 3, ‘The Guelders Wars’.

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Map. 6 The Union of Utrecht at the end of 1588

There is, however, a question that remains. After renouncing their allegiance to Philip II in 1581, the rebel provinces spent the next several years shopping for a prince; not ﬁnding one to their liking, they still did not renounce monarchy in principle. Can the Hollanders and their compatriots really be said to have founded a republic? This question will require some concluding reﬂections on the place of the United Provinces in Europe’s republican tradition.

Epilogue: The Dutch Republic in Europe’s Republican Tradition, c.1590–1650 What kind of state had the Dutch founded? Perhaps better, what kind of state did the Dutch think they had founded? Social scientists of our day—theorists of state-building¹ or state formation²—might have preferred thinkers of this era to probe the social underpinnings or the dominant ideology of the body politic. Instead, they posed a question that suggests a certain anxiety about the future of their kind of government, at a time when most of Europe was ruled by hereditary monarchs: among the small but respected band of republican states, those that had proven their capacity to survive, where did the United Provinces ﬁt? Respublica, a term of venerable antiquity, was at this time claimed by political thinkers of almost every persuasion. To understand the choices confronting Dutch writers, it makes sense to start from the previous history of republican thought. But one must ﬁrst take into account that English-language historians of political thought have in recent decades tended to deﬁne republicanism as a form of government that allowed no place for a hereditary prince. Discussion of republicanism strictly construed (as we may call it) has focused on Renaissance Florence and on England in the middle decades of the seventeenth century, with little attention to the rest of Europe,³ including the Low Countries. Yet the ¹ Julia Adams, The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), has interesting material on the family connections of Amsterdam’s merchant-statesmen of the mid-seventeenth century, but a poor grasp of events during the early decades of the Revolt. For example, she describes (42–3) the naming of Anjou as sovereign and the creation of a bureaucratic Council of State as two distinct ‘phases’ of state-building. But Orange’s efforts to bring in Anjou and to create a strong Council of State were simultaneous, and neither of the (two) Councils of State could compel the States assemblies to respond to its requests for funds. ² Philip S. Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), does not engage the arguments of the scholarly literature he cites, and his grasp of detail seems tenuous: e.g. 74–5, he is unaware that discussion about Lipsius’ inﬂuence on Dutch military reforms concerns the Politica of 1589, not the De Militia Romana of 1595. ³ Cf. Jonathan Scott, ‘Classical Republicanism in Seventeenth-Century England and the Netherlands’, in Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner, eds., Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage (2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), i. 52–76, here 62, in reference to J. G. A. Pocock (below, n. 18): ‘Pocock’s argument had, as it were, taken the form of an express international rail and boat service. Notwithstanding the imposing bulk of the locomotive, there had

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history of republican thought can also be construed more broadly. All across Europe, even in states ruled by princes, townsfolk took pride in governing their affairs. This common experience ﬁtted the amorphous but widely diffused idea of a respublica mixta, a state that combined the principles of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.⁴ Without exception, the important and enduring republican states of this era presented themselves as respublicae mixtae. Thus Dutch writers too labelled their polity a respublica mixta, assimilating it to the kind of balanced constitution that was thought to have the best chance for survival. But terminology did not settle constitutional arguments. Under the banner of a respublica mixta, patriots of the new order in the Netherlands continued arguing among themselves, as they had since 1572, about the relative authority of the provinces (Holland especially), the Generality, and the stadtholder. In keeping with this book’s emphasis on Holland, the focus will be on the case for the sovereignty of Holland, as made by Hugo Grotius.

R E P U B L I C A N I S M S T R I C T LY C O N S T RU E D In classical Latin, res publica was the public business, as distinct from private business (res privata). When Augustus Caesar (ruled 31 – 14) took the novel title of princeps (leading man), he carefully avoided giving the impression of a break with the past; thus legislative authority continued to be vested in the aristocratic Senate, as it always had been. Velleius Paterculus’ History of Rome, written during the reign of Tiberius ( 14–37), accepted the premiss of continuity, praising the ﬁrst two emperors for bringing peace and tranquillity to the res publica. Writing nearly a century later, Cornelius Tacitus saw things through a lens of irony; for example, he notes that a military guard was needed to keep order at the emperor’s funeral ( 14), even though Augustus had ‘provided his heirs with the means for suppressing the Republic (provisis etiam heredis in rem publicam opibus)’.⁵ This ambiguity Roman literature bequeathed to posterity: respublica could mean a free commonwealth under a princeps, or a free commonwealth with no ‘leading man’, as in Rome before the Caesars. During the third and fourth centuries the Roman princeps became a dominus (lord); emperors were seen as divine in their own right, or, under Constantine I been, between departure from Florence, refuelling in England, and arrival in America, relatively few stops.’ ⁴ Polybius praised the Roman state for embodying a salutary ‘mixture’ of the three forms of government described by Plato and Aristotle. See Fergus Millar, ‘Polybius and the Roman Constitution’, in his The Roman Republic in Political Thought (Hanover, NH: New England University Press, 2002), 23–37, a reference I owe to my colleague at the University of Minnesota, Andrew Gallia. ⁵ Alain Gowing, Empire and Memory: The Representation of the Roman Republic in Imperial Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 35, 29.

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(314–37) and his Christian successors, as the anointed of the Lord. As heirs to Christian Rome, medieval scholars assumed that monarchy was the best and most natural form of government. But from as early as  1000 many town-dwellers lived under a different regime, with locally chosen magistrates who made laws and imposed local taxes. While urban self-rule ﬂourished in many parts of Europe,⁶ its development was most striking in northern and central Italy, a region of populous cities where few princely dynasties had put down roots. Most towns of the 1100s boasted of corporate self-government, under the name of commune, or universitas, or respublica.⁷ By the 1300s professors of Roman law at the University of Bologna coined a maxim to justify this development: ‘the city sufﬁces by itself, and is unto itself a prince, recognizing no superior.’ Ironically, it was just now that Italian communes, beset by a vicious spiral of factional feuding among elite families, turned more and more to rule by a single lord (signore).⁸ During the early 1400s, Florence, one of few cities to preserve a communal regime, took stock of its heritage. The ruling elite began to think of themselves not just as spokesmen for their respective guilds, but also as the natural bearers of a civic ethos inherited from republican Rome. Leonardo Bruni, a leading humanist, traced Florence’s love for freedom to the Etruscans of ancient Tuscany.⁹ Yet within a few decades Florence too had a leading man. Cosimo de’ Medici (ruled 1434–64) and his grandson Lorenzo the Magniﬁcent (1470–92) made the transition easier by respecting the desire of elite families to enjoy public honours. When the arbitrary methods of next Medici ruler provoked a revolt (1494), Florentines opted for a government by the popolo, that is, men of middling sort, who were declared eligible to attend meetings of a Grand Council that chose the magistrates. For historians, this was the Second Florentine Republic (1494–1512).¹⁰ Meanwhile, Italy was being overrun by huge armies from beyond the Alps.¹¹ Florence’s statesmen-thinkers thus had to work out how a republic could keep internal tensions in check and at the same time defend its borders. For some, like Francesco Guicciardini (1484–1540), the key was to have an aristocratic ⁶ For overviews, the early chapters of Peter Blickle, Communal Reformation: The Quest for Salvation in Sixteenth-Century Germany, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1992); Bernard Chevalier, Les Bonnes Villes de France du XIVe au XVIe siècles (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1982); Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Nader, Liberty in Absolutist Spain. ⁷ Fergus Millar, ‘The Republic in Medieval Thought,’ in his The Roman Republic in Political Thought, 54–64. ⁸ P. J. Jones, The Italian City State: From Commune to Signoria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 333–5, 354–5 (the quote, from Bartolus of Sassoferrato), 459–66, 643–6. ⁹ Brucker, The Civic World of Renaissance Florence, 180–6, 282–98. For the latest discussion of Bruni’s Laudatio Florentinae Urbis, Ronald G. Witt, In the Footsteps of the the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Boston: Brill, 2003), 210–13, 408–13, 427–8. ¹⁰ Lauro Martines, Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for Florence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). ¹¹ For the wars of Italy (1494–1559), Chapter 1.

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senate, that is, a venue for those few Florentines who had experience of war and diplomacy.¹² For others, like Niccolò Machiavelli (1474–1527), it was the gentlemen-aristocrats, with their insatiable thirst for power, who posed the gravest danger to Florentine liberty.¹³ When a Spanish army overwhelmed Florentine forces and restored Medici rule (1512), proponents of both views adapted to new circumstances. Guicciardini envisioned a ‘civil’ prince, ruling in collaboration with Florence’s elite. Machiavelli’s Prince called for a ruler whose manly strength (virtú) could mould the people of Florence into an effective citizen militia. If Machiavelli did not live to see the Third Florentine Republic (1527–30), others of his persuasion, having served this short-lived regime, survived to publish in exile, passing on the ideal of a free and broad-based republic, defended by its citizens. Guicciardini lived on to see a Medici prince—Cosimo I, grand duke of Tuscany (1537–73)—who had no need for collaboration with the elite.¹⁴ In England, roughly a century later, the turbulence of the 1650s gave the writings of these Florentine authors new relevance. Although the trial and execution of King Charles I (1649) had ended the civil war between the House of Commons¹⁵ and the crown, there was no agreement on how the country should henceforth be governed. The next eleven years witnessed conﬂict between successive Parliaments and the New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell; a Protectorate established in 1654 by Cromwell (d. 1658); and the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II (1660–83).¹⁶ As in early sixteenth-century Florence, turmoil was the incubator for a rich political debate. Because the idea of a respublica mixta implied a monarchical element, some English writers, like James Harrington, rejected it—monarchy being deemed incompatible with the moral dignity of free men. Harrington’s Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) laid out ¹² Guicciardini (1483–1540) is best known for his multi-volume Storia d’Italia, dealing with the years 1490–1532. Vittorio di Caprariis, Francesco Guicciardini: dalla politica alla storia (Bari: Laterza, 1950); Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965); Mark Phillips, Francesco Guicciardini: The Historian’s Craft ( Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977). ¹³ Gennaro Sasso, Niccolo Machiavelli: storia del suo pensiero politico (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1958); Isaiah Berlin, ‘The Originality of Machiavelli’, in Henry Hardy, ed., Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas (New York: Viking, 1980), 25–79; Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought i: The Renaissance; Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli, eds., Machiavelli and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). ¹⁴ Rudolf von Albertini, Das ﬂorentinische Staatsbewusstsein im Übergang von der Republik zum Prinzipat (Bern: A. Franke, 1955); Donato Gianotti, Repubblica ﬁorentina, ed. with introd. Giovanni Silvano, Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance, CCXXXVII (Geneva: Droz, 1990). The Third Republic began when imperial troops sacked the Rome of Pope Clement VII (1527), Florence’s Medici overlord, and ended when another imperial army restored Medici rule (1530), as part of a settlement between Charles V and the pope. ¹⁵ The House of Lords was abolished soon after the execution of the king. ¹⁶ Jonathan Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

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a plan for free citizens to construct a ‘perfect commonwealth’.¹⁷ Scholars have described the kind of republicanism represented by Harrington and some of his contemporaries as ‘classical’,¹⁸ or ‘modern’,¹⁹ or ‘radical’,²⁰ or ‘neo-Roman’.²¹ English republicanism of this type is seen as forming one segment of a high road to political modernity, leading from Machiavelli’s Florence to the American Revolution.²² The Dutch Republic too experienced a political crisis in the 1650s. In the wake of the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the States of Holland, acting on their own, disbanded certain army units they deemed no longer needed (1650). In response, the prince of Orange, Stadtholder Willem II (ruled 1647–50) placed leading town regents under arrest. But Willem II soon died of smallpox, leaving an infant son to be born posthumously. Two years later, the States of Holland chose as their grand pensionsary (advocate) Johan De Witt of Dordrecht, a man known for his conviction that ‘each province alone is a sovereign republic’. In 1654, the States secretly voted to exclude Willem II’s young son from any future ofﬁce. When news of this provision leaked out, partisans of the House of Orange demanded an explanation.²³ In response, De Witt issued a Deduction, or Declaration of the States of Holland and West Friesland, laying out the ‘ﬁrm fundament’ on which ‘true freedom’ rested, namely, the principle that ‘full absolute sovereignty is vested in the States of the respective provinces’, together with ‘the indisputable right and unlimited power’ to resolve all matters not explicitly reserved to the States General by the 1579 Union of Utrecht.²⁴ Subsequent Dutch writers of the following two decades, not content with the rejection of monarchy, attacked what De Witt and his supporters took for granted, that is, the exclusive political privileges of Holland’s regent oligarchy. These ‘democratic-republican’ or ‘radical-republican’ authors might ¹⁷ Scott, ‘Classical Republicanism’. ¹⁸ J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). ¹⁹ Paul A. Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern (2 vols., Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994). ²⁰ Scott, England’s Troubles. ²¹ Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). ²² See the just-cited works of Pocock, Rahe, and Skinner. Others argue that republicanism in England after 1649 involved adapting long-held convictions to new circumstances: Sean Kelsey, Inventing a Republic: The Political Culture of the English Commonwealth, 1649–1653 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997). ²³ Israel, The Dutch Republic, 595–609; Maarten Prak, The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century: The Golden Age, trans. Diane Webb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 173–4 (the quote from De Witt), 193. ²⁴ I. Leonard Leeb, The Ideological Origins of the Batavian Revolution: History and Politics in the Dutch Republic, 1747–1800 ( The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973), 29–40 (33, the quotes from De Witt’s Deduction); G. O. van Klashorst, ‘De ‘ware vrijheid’ ’, in E. O. G. Haitsma Mulier and W. R. E. Velema, eds., Vrijheid: Een geschiedenis van de vijftiende tot de twintigste eeuw (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1985), 157–86.

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be seen as marking out, like their English contemporaries, a path to political modernity.²⁵ I have no complaint about the interpretations of individual authors put forward by the distinguished scholars whose works have just been summarized. But the way that conceptions of modernity may shape our understanding of the past is an issue for all historians. Path-to-the-present arguments, whatever form they take, reduce the past to a kind of dark background from which one or two brightly lit highways arise. Surely we do better to envision recorded history as an enormous tapestry, teeming with distinct, dimly visible patterns, any of which may be seized on in the present as models for what to do, or what not to do. Such a view of things is consistent with the premisses associated with a historicist understanding²⁶ of history as a discipline. First, one must not overrate the importance of ideas: historical actors are likely to have been responding more to recent events than to received ways of thinking. For example, in the perilous automn of 1572, the massacre by Spanish troops of Naarden’s entire population²⁷ probably did more to put steel in the spines of Orange’s partisans in Holland than the Reformed faith that many of them shared, or the theories of lawful resistance with which some of them were familiar. Second, the ideas by which contemporaries sought to understand their own world must as far as possible be evaluated by the criteria of that age. For example, to a modern sensibility, it would seem a waste of time for Dutch thinkers of the early seventeenth century to have worried about the mores of their putative ancestors, the ancient Batavians. Yet, as will be seen, this was a vital question for patriotic Hollanders. Finally, thinkers tend to be eclectic, not consistent, in choosing where to borrow ideas. For example, the characterization of Harrington’s Oceana as ‘a Machiavellian meditation on feudalism’ forms a supporting truss for the idea of a high road to modern liberty, running from Florence through England to the eighteenth-century American colonies.²⁸ Yet it has been argued more recently that Harrington’s sober view of human nature comes not from Machiavelli but from the Leviathan (1651) of Thomas Hobbes, a work that made a forceful case for absolute monarchy.²⁹ Hobbes in turn may have taken his argument about the ²⁵ For the brothers Johan and Pieter de la Court, Wyger R. E. Velema, ‘ ‘That a Republic is Better than a Monarchy’: Anti-Monarchism in Early Modern Dutch Political Thought’, in Van Gelderen and Skinner, eds., Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, i. 9–25, here 12–20; for Franciscus van der Enden, and Baruch Spinoza, Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 175–84, 258–74. ²⁶ As argued, in different ways, by, e.g., Herbert Butterﬁeld, The Whig Interpretation of History (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1950); Caprariis, Francesco Guicciardini; Federico Chabod, Machiavelli and the Renaissance, trans David Moore (London: Bowes & Bowes, 1958); and Clark, Our Shadowed Present. ²⁷ Chapter 4, n. 33. ²⁸ Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, 383–400 (the quote, 385). ²⁹ Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern, Book II, chapter 5, 399–444.

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foundational importance of the principle of self-preservation from a well-known Dutch exponent of aristocratic republicanism, Hugo Grotius.³⁰ In sum, one can gain a better understanding of self-governing institutions—in the present as in the past—by starting from a broader conception of Europe’s republican tradition.

R E P U B L I C A N I S M B ROA D LY C O N S T RU E D By about 1400 if not before, the term respublica had a European currency far beyond Italy. In the western Alps, ﬁfteenth-century Wallis/Valais, an allied member of the Swiss Confederation, called itself a ‘free state’, or ‘republic’. The territorial ruler, the prince-bishop of Sitten, issued no mandate without the consent of a ‘general council’ representing ‘the communes, both Romance- and Germanic-speaking’.³¹ In Dalmatia, Dubrovnik (Ragusa), which in the sixteenth century had perhaps the largest trading ﬂeet in the Mediterranean, had been a republic ever since throwing off Venetian rule in the 1330s.³² In Flanders, a midsixteenth-century panegyrist acclaimed Bruges as a respublica opiﬁcium, a republic of artisans who supported themselves by their own industry. In Brabant, Antwerp adopted the style of the Roman Republic for its new city hall (1565): on the façade, just above Philip II’s coat of arms, was emblazoned a proud SPQA, standing for ‘Senatus Populusque Antwerpiensis’. From exile, Cardinal Granvelle thought it would be good ‘to make them shave off their SPQA’, and with it the notion that ‘the prince can command nothing of them without their consent’.³³ In sixteenth-century north Germany, burghers aggressively defended existing constitutional arrangements against the claims of territorial princes; in towns ruled by patrician oligarchies, burghers sometimes demanded a written declaration ‘on the status of this respublica, whether it be aristocratic or democratic’.³⁴ In Catalonia, one of three realms making up Spain’s crown of ³⁰ Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 304–5; see also, 169–79, his discussion of the originality of Grotius’ views of self-preservation, as expounded in his De Jure Belli ac Pacis. For a fuller discussion, Martine Julia van Ittersum, Proﬁt and Principle: Hugo Grotius, Natural Rights Theories, and the Rise of Dutch Power in the East Indies, 1595–1615 (Leiden: Brill, 2006). ³¹ Peter Blickle, ‘Kommunalismus und Republikanismus in Oberdeutschland’, in Helmut G. Koenigsberger, ed., Republiken und Republikanismus im Europa der frühen Neuzeit (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1988), 57–75. ³² Zdenko Zlatar, Our Kingdom Come: The Counter-Reformation, the Republic of Dubrovnik, and the Liberation of the Balkan Slavs (Boulder, Colo.: Eastern European Monographs, 1992). ³³ Karin Tilmans, ‘Republican Citizenship and Civic Humanism in the Burgundian-Habsburg Netherlands’, in Van Gelderen and Skinner, Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, I. 107–25; Guy Wells, ‘Emergence and Evanescence: Republicanism and Res Publica at Antwerp before the Revolt of the Netherlands’, in Koenigsberger, ed., Republiken und Republikanismus, 155–68. ³⁴ Heinz Schilling, ‘Gab es im Spätmittelalter und zu Beginn der Neuzeit in Deutschland einen städtischen ‘Republikanismus’? Zur politischen Kultur des alteuropäischen Stadtbürgertums,’ in Koenigsberger, ed., Republiken und Republikanismus, 101–43.

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Aragón, a Perpignan lawyer drew up in 1628 a catalogue of republics ancient and modern; the most illustrious, in his opinion, was that formed by the Catalan Cortes and its standing committee, the Generalitat.³⁵ Not only did the term respublica not exclude a prince, it did not even exclude what some theorists were now calling ‘absolute’ or unlimited monarchy. Machiavelli in his Prince sought to delimit the connotations of respublica by using another word for a commonwealth in the generic sense: thus a ‘state’ (stato) was either a republic, or it was ruled by a prince. But Jean Bodin pointed the arrow of meaning in the other direction in his inﬂuential Six livres de la republique (1576): arguing that sovereignty could not be divided, he described France as a republique in which supreme authority was vested exclusively in the king.³⁶ North Netherlands writers were not interested in a republique of this kind. To present their new commonwealth as free, orderly, and of a type familiar in human experience, they adopted an idea explicitly rejected by Bodin, that of the respublica mixta.³⁷ Of the states that then played an important role on Europe’s political stage, there were three that presented themselves as respublicae mixtae, two of which ﬁgured prominently in political discussion in the Netherlands. (The third was the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, a polity whose constitutional arrangements seem not to have been very familiar to Dutch writers.³⁸) The Swiss Confederation began in 1291 as a sworn association (Eidgenossenschaft in German, confoederatio in Latin) among three rural communes high in the Alps,³⁹ directed against perceived intrusions on their liberties by Habsburg ofﬁcials. During the next two centuries the Confederation expanded, by conquest as well as by the voluntary adhesion of new cantons; in the course of internal ﬁghting the Swiss became famous as a people who had killed off their aristocracy. Each canton sent two delegates to a federal Diet, but from 1481 the cantons were recognized as ³⁵ Xavier Gil, ‘Republican Politics in Early Modern Spain: The Castilian and CatalanoAragonese Traditions’, in Van Gelderen and Skinner, eds., Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, i. 263–88, here 280. See also J. H. Elliott, The Revolt of the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of Spain (1598–1640) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963). ³⁶ Julian H Franklin, ‘Sovereignty and the Mixed Constitution: Bodin and his Critics,’’ in Burns, Cambridge History of Political Thought, 298–328. ³⁷ ‘Introduction’, in Van Gelderen and Skinner, Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, i. 4: one of the constitutional problems that preoccupied republican theorists was ‘how best to frame a mixed constitution, a respublica mixta, in such a way as to deploy power to balance power’. ³⁸ In 1569, the last Jagellonian king of Poland-Lithuania, old and childless, endorsed the Union of Lublin, with which the two kingdoms were dissolved and re-formed as a single commonwealth (rzeczpospolita) or republic. From the 1590s, Polish writers presented the Commonwealth as a respublica mixta, with an elected king, an aristocratic senate, and a Diet (Sjem) open to all the nobles. Anna Grzeokowiak-Krawicz, ‘Anti-Monarchism in Polish Republicanism in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in Van Gelderen and Skinner, eds., Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, I. 43–59; Davies, God’s Playground, i. 152–5. ³⁹ Uri, Unterwalden, and Schweiz, from which comes the name Switzerland (in German, Schweiz).

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sovereign within their borders, and competent to conduct independent foreign relations. In 1531 Switzerland was the theatre for the Reformation era’s ﬁrst religious war, as Catholic cantons in the mountains fought off an attempt by lowland Protestant cantons to make them see the light. Thereafter, political consensus re-formed around the idea of a weak federal state, with each canton setting its own religious policy. Proud of their free institutions, Swiss writers traced a line of descent back to the Confederation of the Helvetians (ﬁrst century )—the people against whom Julius Caesar had launched his invasion of Gaul. Beyond Switzerland’s borders the best known of such accounts was the work of a Reformed minister in Zurich, Josias Simler (1530–76): Res Publica Helvetiorum. Even though the Confederation had no prince, and no aristocracy in the common sense of the term, Simler nonetheless made it a respublica mixta, with the federal Diet forming the aristocratic element in the constitution, and the cantonal governments the democratic element.⁴⁰ Like Florence, Venice claimed a republican pedigree dating to Roman times. In the middle of the eleventh century, a Venetian chronicler recounted how, seven centuries earlier, burghers from Padua and elsewhere, citizens of Rome and good Christians, ﬂed the perils of barbarian raids to establish a new civitas in the lagoon. Most of the governing institutions characteristic of Venice—the Grand Council, the Senate, the Council of Ten—emerged in the centuries subsequent to this account. But Venetian writers liked to dwell on continuity, going back to that glorious day when the ﬁrst Doge was elected by citizens of the lagoon republic. Continuity is strongly emphasized in the best-known description of Venetian government, Gasparo Contarini’s De Magistratibus et Republica Venetorum, written in the 1520s but not published until 1543, some years after Venice’s ambitions for regional power had been curtailed by the armies of Charles V. Contarini characterized his native city as a respublica mixta, but what he particularly stressed was the enduring stability of La Serenissima Repubblica, made possible, he believed, by harmony among ruling patricians. Donato Gianotti, a Florentine exile, had already published his Della repubblica degli Viniziani (1540), without having seen Contarini’s manuscript. As an ofﬁcial of the short-lived Third Florentine Republic, he was keen to work out how Venice kept in check the factional struggles by which (in his view) Florence had been undone; one point he made was that Venice had, in the Quarantia, a judicial magistracy that was insulated from political pressures. Johannes Cotovicius, a lawyer from Utrecht who stopped in Venice ⁴⁰ Handbuch der Schweizer Geschichte (2 vols., Zurich: Berichthaus, 1972–7), i. 415, 658, 664–5; Vittorio Conti, Consociatio Civitatum: le repubbliche nei testi elzevieriani (1625–1649) (Florence: Centro Editoriale Toscano, 1997), 66–8; Nicolette Mout, ‘Ideales Muster oder erfundene Eigenart: Republikanische Theorien während des niederländischen Aufstandes’, in Koenigsberger, ed., Republiken und Republikanismus, 169–94, here 178–9; and for the appeal of Swiss democracy beyond the Confederation’s borders, Thomas A. Brady, Turning Swiss: Cities and Empire, 1450–1550 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

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en route to the Holy Land in the 1590s, may have been the ﬁrst to specify the three parts of Venice’s mixed constitution: the Doge represented the monarchical principle, the Senate the aristocratic, and the Grand Council⁴¹ the democratic.⁴² In the United Provinces, formal renunciation of allegiance to Phillip II by the States General (1581) sparked a lively debate among pamphleteers about the form of government the new state should have. Proponents of an aristocratic republic looked to Venice, and/or ancient Sparta; those who envisioned a more popular form of rule looked to the Swiss Confederation, and/or ancient Athens.⁴³ In 1581, during negotiations with the duke of Anjou, delegates from the States General spoke of their commonwealth as a respublica mixta, like ancient Sparta. An anonymous Discours of 1583 proposed an imperium mixtum, that is, ‘the rule of the best nobles and the most reasonable burghers’, as in the Swiss Confederation. Meanwhile, Marnix van Sint-Aldegonde ﬂoated the idea that the Netherlands might be made into cantons on the Swiss model—possibly as a way of accommodating religious differences. In his Exposition of 1587⁴⁴ François Vranck suggested that Holland and Venice were the only two states never to have been conquered. A Dutch visitor to Venice in the late 1580s, Arnoldus Buchelius, admired its constitution, as an aristocracy tempered by the monarchy of the Doge. The Vita Politica (1590) of Simon Stevin, engineer and polymath, made the United Provinces a democratic republic, like Athens and Rome, and modern Switzerland.⁴⁵ Paulus Busius, a professor at the University of Franeker (Friesland), accepted Bodin’s idea of undivided sovereignty, yet modiﬁed it to ﬁt a respublica mixta, as at Venice, where the aristocratic element predominated (De Republica Libri Tres, 1613). The same year saw a Dutch translation of Simler’s De Republica Helvetiorum, followed in 1615 by a Dutch-language treatise published ⁴¹ For when and how the Grand Council came to be closed to all but patrician males, 25 or older, Gerhard Rösch, ‘The Serrata of the Grand Council and Venetian Society, 1286–1323’, in John Martin and Dennis Romano, eds., Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 67–88. ⁴² Elizabeth Crouzet-Pavan, ‘Toward an Ecological Understanding of the Myth of Venice’, and Elisabeth Gleason, ‘Confronting New Realities: Venice and the Peace of Bologna, 1530’, in Martin and Romano, eds., Venice Reconsidered, 39–66, 168–84; Conti, Consociatio Civitatum, 47–8. Cotovicius’ Relatio de Serenissima Republica Venetorum was published as an appendix to his Itinerarium Hierosolymitanum (Pilgrimage to Jerusalem), describing a journey made in 1598. There are no modern editions of any of the three texts. ⁴³ M. E. H. N. Mout, ‘Van arm vaderland tot eendrachtige republiek: De rol van politieke theoriën in de Nederlandse Opstand’, Bijdragen en mededelingen tot de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 101 (1986), 345–65, here 357–9. For Sparta and Athens in a later period of European republican thought, Luciano Guerci, Liberta degli antichi e liberta degli moderni: Sparta, Atene, e i ‘philosophes’ della Francia del settecento (Naples: Guida, 1979). ⁴⁴ Chapter 12. ⁴⁵ Martin van Gelderen, ‘Aristotelians, Monarchomachs and Republicans: Sovereignty and Respublica Mixta in Dutch and German Political Thought’, in Van Gelderen and Skinner, eds., Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, i. 195–217, here 197; Mout, ‘Ideales Muster oder erfundene Eigenart’, 178 (the quote), 174–5, 180; on Buchelius, Haitsma Mulier, The Myth of Venice, 57.

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in Arnhem, Jean-François Petit’s The Netherlandish Republic Confronted and Compared with That of the Swiss Cantons. In 1620, François van Aerssen, sent as ambassador to the Venetian Republic, had instructions to ‘pay careful attention to the form of its government and to what proﬁt could be drawn from it for the beneﬁt of these countries’.⁴⁶ One can see how the idea of a respublica mixta ﬁtted different shades of political opinion from two works written in 1607, at a time of growing conﬂict between Prince Maurits and Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, as advocate (still) of the States of Holland (Oldenbarnevelt pushed for, and Maurits opposed, negotiations that led to the Twelve Years Truce of 1609–21). In his Considerations sur le traicté de la paix avec les sérénissimes archiducz d’Autriche, Pieter Corneliszoon Brederode, a diplomat opposed to peace talks, laid out his view of the constitution. The States General, the democratic element, was the only one currently in place. The Netherlands would not be a true respublica mixta until there was a proper aristocratic element—that is, a Council of State that could act independently of the States assemblies—over which Prince Maurits would preside, as ‘head and perpetual dictator’. In his De Statu Reipublicae Bataviae Diatriba, Paulus Merula, a Leiden professor, found a prototype for seventeenth-century Holland in the ‘Republic’ of the ancient Batavians, which he believed had been ‘tempered in a healthy way from the three praiseworthy types of rule, the kingly, the aristocratic, and the popular’. Merula made the States assemblies the aristocratic element of Holland’s current constitution, and the oligarchic town councils the popular element. There was a kingly element too, but, as E. O. G. Haitsma Mulier has noted, it was reduced ‘to the utmost’: a prince (the stadtholder) should have no more than military command, which the States could also entrust to someone else.⁴⁷ The author who most forcefully developed Merula’s side of the debate—we may speak of it as Hollandocentric—was Hugo Grotius.

G ROT I U S A N D D U TC H R E P U B L I C A N T H O U G H T In 1601, Oldenbarnevelt got a brilliant young protégé⁴⁸ appointed as historiographer to the States of Holland. Hugo Grotius (1583–1647) was the scion of a regent family in Delft. As Holland’s ofﬁcial historian, he began his work with ⁴⁶ Haitsma Mulier, The Myth of Venice, 72–4, 75–6 (the quote); Conti, Consociatio Civitatum, 65–6. Both Mout (‘Ideales Muster oder erfundene Eigenart’) and Haitsma Mulier believe that the comparison with Venice was in the long run more important to Dutch thinkers. ⁴⁷ Haitsma Mulier, The Myth of Venice, 68–72; Mout, ‘Van arm vaderland tot eendrachtige republiek’, 363. ⁴⁸ Grotius was admitted to the University of Leiden at the age of 11; in 1598, Oldenbarnevelt added Grotius (then 15) to his retinue for a diplomatic mission to the court of France’s King Henry IV: Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 154–6.

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an ambitious Parallelon Rerumpublicarum (Parallel [Histories of ] Republics); only the third of three parts survived in manuscript, to be edited in the nineteenth century. By 1604, Grotius had worked out plans for a projected grand history of Holland: he would focus on the period beginning in 1588, for it was only from that year, after Leicester’s return to England, that the United Provinces formed an independent federal state.⁴⁹ In 1612 he presented a manuscript to the States, but it was not accepted for publication (one scholar wonders if Grotius had written something untoward on Church–State issues then under debate), and this version has been lost. Years later, living in exile, he took up work again. The Annales et Historiae, published posthumously in 1657, gives Prince Maurits more space than Oldenbarnevelt; the older Grotius had learned respect for the principle of limited monarchy.⁵⁰ In 1610, he published in Latin and Dutch his Book on the Antiquity of the Batavian, now Hollandish Republic, possibly a reworking of part of the lost second book of the Parallelon.⁵¹ François Vranck had not mentioned the Batavians in his defence of the antiquity of Holland’s liberties, the 1587 Exposition. But Paulus Merula and other scholars had now collected a plethora of references to the Batavians by Roman historians. Grotius did something new with this material: instead of praising the putative ancestors of modern Hollanders for their love of liberty, he praised them for their free institutions.⁵² Batavia’s polity had a native prince, an assembly to which the prince was responsible, and the seven tribes that sent deputies to the assembly. For Grotius there was no doubt that the aristocratic element of the constitution had been the most important; only the best men (die treffelijcksten, or primores) were eligible for selection to the all-important assembly. In subsequent centuries, medieval counts adapted themselves to Batavian ways, recognizing the assembly—that is, the States—as ‘the highest authority’ in Holland. Hence these laudable customs persisted from antiquity right through to modern times, when Philip II of Spain attempted to impose an unheard-of royal tyranny.⁵³ Grotius’ idealization⁵⁴ of the ancient past drew some criticism from contemporaries.⁵⁵ Modern Dutch scholars often seem bemused—how could one of the ⁴⁹ A. E. M. Janssen, ‘Grotius als Geschichtsschreiber’, in The World of Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) (Amsterdam: Holland University Press, 1984), 161–78, here 172. ⁵⁰ Ibid. 172–6. ⁵¹ Ibid. 167–71. ⁵² The Batavia of Hadrianus Junius (1588), and two works by Petrus Scriverius, Oudt Batavien (1606), and Batavia Illustrata (1609): Mout, ‘Ideales Muster oder erfundene Eigenart’, 187–90; Ivo Schöffer, ‘The Batavian Myth during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Britain and the Netherlands, 5 (1975), 78–101, here 93 (the originality of Grotius). ⁵³ Grotius, De Oudheid van de Bataafse Republiek, ed. with introd. G. C. Molewijk (Weesp: Heureks, 1988), 43–4, 52, 74 , 86. ⁵⁴ Grotius (and others) spoke of the United Provinces as ‘wholly of one accord’, even at times of bitter partisan strife: Mout, ‘Van arm vaderland tot eendrachtige republiek’, 345–6. ⁵⁵ Both the South Netherlands historian Franciscus Haraeus (1555–1631) and Jacob van Gripskerk (1614–56) in Zeeland argued, correctly, that the States assemblies had not been in existence for more than two centuries: introduction by G. C. Molewijk, in Grotius, De Oudheid,

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great minds of the age have given the ‘Batavian myth’ its boldest formulation, proposing an unbroken institutional continuity stretching over 1,700 years?⁵⁶ Yet in his lifetime Grotius’ historical writings were widely admired. For example, Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio may have used The Antiquity of the Batavian now Hollandish Republic when preparing his Relatione of 1611 on the affairs of the Netherlands, a work which, when printed some years later, helped create in Catholic Italy a favourable view of Protestant Dutch liberty. More generally, this was an era when the presumed antiquity of a country’s institutions made deﬁance of the prince less of an innovation, and thus more legitimate. Thus it was not just the freedom-loving Batavians who now enjoyed their moment of glory, but also (for Swiss) the freedom-loving Helvetians and (for Poles) the freedom-loving Sarmatians.⁵⁷ One must also mention the freedom-loving Franco-Gauls of François Hotman’s Franco-Gallia, a chef-d’œuvre of Huguenot resistance theory;⁵⁸ the freedom-loving Frisians of the multi-volume Rerum Frisicarum Historia of Ubbo Emmius (1547–1625);⁵⁹ and, 200 years before Grotius, the freedom-loving Etruscans of Leonardo Bruni.⁶⁰ Grotius provides a clue to this way of thinking in the preface to his The Antiquity: ‘long duration (gheduerigheydt) is a sure sign that a polity is well formed.’⁶¹ Grotius soon became involved directly in politics. On Oldenbarnevelt’s recommendation, he was appointed in 1613 pensionary of Rotterdam, in which capacity he attended meetings of the States of Holland. Just now, Oldenbarnevelt and the States majority were again locked in conﬂict with Prince Maurits, backed by the States General and by some Holland towns. A party of Reformed dominees, known as the Remonstrants, had refused to accept the Calvinist 22. In a letter of 1643, Grotius admitted that in this early work he might have been borne along by zeal for the fatherland: Janssen, ‘Grotius als Geschichtschreiber’, 172. ⁵⁶ E. H. Kossman thinks it ‘rather unlikely that [Grotius] was altogether serious’ about the antiquity of Holland’s institutions: ‘In Praise of the Dutch Republic: Some Seventeenth-Century Attitudes’, in his Politieke Theorie en Geschiedenis (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1987), 161–75, here 171; Mout, ‘Ideales Muster oder erfundene Eigenart’, distinguishes sharply between serious political thinking in the early decades of the Eighty Years War, based on resistance theory (‘Ideales Muster oder erfundene Eigenart’, 175–86), and the ‘invented uniqueness’ of Batavian traditions (187–94); but see also her ‘Van arm vaderland tot eendrachtige republiek’, 364; Ivo Schöffer,’The Batavian Myth’, 93, believes Grotius was ‘in deadly earnest’. ⁵⁷ Maria Bogucka, The Lost World of the ‘Sarmatians’: Custom as the Regulator of Social Life in Early Modern Times (Warsaw: Warsaw University Press, 1996). ⁵⁸ Kingdon, ‘Calvinism and Resistance Theory,’ believes (208) that the Franco-Gallia might have been written just prior to the August 1572 massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day. ⁵⁹ Z. R. W. M. von Martels, ‘Between Orosius and Ubbo Emmius: On the Tradition of Geographical Descriptions in Historical Writings’, in F. Akkerman, A. J. Vanderjagt, and A. H. van der Laan, eds., Northern Humanism in European Context, 1469–1625: From the Adwert Academy to Ubbo Emmius (Boston: Brill, 1999). For Calvinist Emden’s resistance to its Lutheran prince, Schilling, ‘Gab es . . . einen städtischen ‘Republikanismus’ ’, 134–6. ⁶⁰ Above, n. 9. ⁶¹ Janssen, ‘Grotius als Geschichtsschreiber’, 162–6; for the suggestion that Bentivoglio got some of his information from Grotius’ tract, Conti, Consociatio Civitatum, 23; Grotius, De Oudheid, 40.

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doctrine of predestination in its strictest form; this prevented their getting church appointments, save where town magistrates intervened. The main body of the Church stood for Calvinist orthodoxy, and for a church polity free from state control. While Maurits and the States General supported the Calvinist or Counter-Remonstrant party, Oldenbarnevelt and the States of Holland majority, long-time upholders of the rights of civil magistrates in church affairs, threw their weight behind the Remonstrants. In constitutional terms, it came down to whether sovereignty was vested in the individual provinces (as Grotius maintained), or in the Generality. In May 1618, the States General voted to convene, at Dordrecht, the national Synod (1618–1619) at which Calvinist doctrine would triumph. In August 1618, Maurits had Oldenbarnevelt arrested on charges of treason, for having sent two Holland deputies (one of whom was Grotius) with instructions to certain units of troops, to the effect that they should take orders only from the States of Holland. In May 1619 Oldenbarnevelt was executed, and Grotius was sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment. In 1622, hiding in a clothes hamper, he escaped from Loevesteyn Castle, to spend most of his remaining years in exile.⁶² Prison and exile did not make Grotius rethink his convictions. His Apology for the Lawful Government of Holland and West-Friesland . . . as it was before the Alterations of 1618 (Paris, 1622) insisted that each province was sovereign within its borders. ‘From time immemorial’, he argued, ‘the power of the prince has been limited by both the privileges and the power of the States.’ Authorities in the Dutch Republic prohibited republication of this ‘scandalous pamphlet’ from the hand of an escaped prisoner. Yet because of its forceful restatement of François Vranck’s principle—that Holland’s town regents, whose collective authority was vested in the States, were the natural and rightful rulers of the land—Grotius’ Apology became a ‘political bible’ for leaders of the regent party (like Johan De Witt) in the political conﬂicts of subsequent generations.⁶³ Grotius also inﬂuenced political discussion in an indirect way, through the impetus he gave to the comparative study of republican governments. In 1625, the Leiden printing ﬁrm of Bonaventura and Abraham Elzevier announced a series on Petites Republiques, in which accounts of states past and present were to be presented in a pocket-sized format (24o ). An early stimulus for the project may have come from a Venetian patrician scholar, Domenico Molino, ⁶² The fullest account of the religious struggle between Remonstrants and Counter-Remonstrants is Van Deursen, Bavianen en Slijkgeuzen; for a good account of the political side of the conﬂict, Israel, The Dutch Republic, 421–74. ⁶³ Grotius, Verantwoordingh Vande Wettelijcke Regieringh van Hollandt Ende West-Vrieslant, Mitsgaders Eenigher nabuyrighe Provincien, sulc die was voor de veranderingh, gevallen inden Jare 1618 (Paris, 1622), as discussed in Israel, The Dutch Republic, 495; Van Gelderen, ‘Aristotelians, Monarchomachs and Republicans’, 200 (the citations from Grotius); and Janssen, ‘Grotius als Geschichtsschreiber’, 174 (the remaining quotes).

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who in his native city was linked to the ruling faction that had attempted (albeit in vain) to resist the papacy’s efforts to establish the Roman Inquisition in Venetian territory by force of arms.⁶⁴ Once the Elzevier series got started, Molino, who was also in touch with Grotius, intervened with the ﬁrm for new printings of the treatises by Contarini and Gianotti, both of which appeared in 1626.⁶⁵ Over the next two decades the Elzeviers issued dozens of works of this kind, sometimes dealing with monarchies, but mostly dealing with republics. The series included reprints or translations of the works mentioned above, on the Swiss Confederation as well as on Venice, and also a Latin translation of François Vranck’s 1587 Exposition. There were also new studies of the Dutch Republic, such as Jan de Laet’s Belgii Confoederati Respublica (1630). Domenico Molino provided materials for an important new work on his native city, the 1634 Libertas Veneta of Dirk Granswinckel; the book was meant to refute what Venetian authorities considered a damaging attack on the Serenissima’s vaunted liberties, by an anonymous but well-informed Italian imperialist. Graswinckel had served as Grotius’ secretary in Paris in the early 1620s and thereafter kept in close contact with the famous scholar, a fellow Delftenaar.⁶⁶ The last of the Petites Républiques appeared in 1649. This was not a time of promise for Europe’s republican tradition; both Venice⁶⁷ and the Swiss Confederation⁶⁸ were of diminishing importance in the power calculations of statesmen. Yet those who hoped to see republican regimes in their own lands could take some consolation from the outcome of Europe’s long cycle of wars, as codiﬁed in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. By reafﬁrming the historic federal structure of the Holy Roman Empire, Westphalia sealed the defeat of efforts by Habsburg emperors to convert the empire into a strong monarchy. Westphalia also gave full recognition to the status of the Dutch Republic as a free and independent nation, boasting, thanks to the victories of Prince Maurits (d. 1625) and Prince Frederik Hendrik (r. 1625–47), a territory roughly twice as large as it had been in 1588.⁶⁹ This new republic was also an economic power. The ⁶⁴ William Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968). ⁶⁵ The anonymous Squittinio della libertà veneta, nel quale si adducono anche le raggioni dell’ Impero Romano sopra la Città e Signoria di Venetia (Mirandola: Giovanni Benincasa, 1612). ⁶⁶ For this paragraph, save as noted, Conti, Consociatio Civitatum (the quote, 38); for Graswinckel and his Libertas Veneta, Haitsma Mulier, The Myth of Venice, chapter III, 77–119. ⁶⁷ See Gleason, ‘Confronting New Realities: Venice and the Peace of Bologna’. Venice remained a naval power even as its merchant shipping declined: Ruggiero Romano, ‘Aspetti economic; degli armamenti navali Veneziani nel secolo XVI’, Rivista storica italiana, 66 (1954), 39–67. ⁶⁸ Once the Swiss cantons acknowledged the permanence of their religious division (from 1531), Catholic or Protestant governments recruited troops from the cantons dominated by their co-religionists. ⁶⁹ Israel, The Dutch Republic, 241–62, 506–16.

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Dutch East India Company (founded 1603) and its English counterpart, based in the Indian Ocean, dominated the trafﬁc in spices and other precious goods that had formerly come to Europe by way of the Mediterranean.⁷⁰ Venice’s erstwhile trading hegomony in the eastern Mediterranean was thus no more than a fading memory.⁷¹ Fittingly, then, the Dutch Republic had also become the major centre for the propagation of republican thought, including Graswinckel’s defence of Venetian liberties. Even if it has not drawn much attention from modern scholars,⁷² this was a distinct phase in Europe’s republican tradition. In this generation, republicans in Europe looked for inspiration to the federal constitution of the Holy Roman Empire, or to the United Provinces.⁷³ In its political and ﬁnancial institutions, the Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century bore the imprint of its founding decades. As in the days when François Vranck could take it for granted that power and authority rested with those who represented the ‘means’ of Holland,⁷⁴ this key province was still governed by its town regents, including many families that held ofﬁce for generations.⁷⁵ As in the 1580s, Holland used its excise revenues to pay more of the war budgets than all the other provinces combined, and also carried the lion’s share of the Republic’s debt.⁷⁶ In the States General Holland’s political inﬂuence was if anything even greater than its ﬁnancial weight, thus conﬁrming, as the men of Gelderland had feared, that the Union of Utrecht would turn out to be a ‘Hollandish union’.⁷⁷ To be sure, as the seventeenth century gave way to the ⁷⁰ Jonathan Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585–1740 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); Niels Steensgaard, ‘The Growth and Composition of the Long-Distance Trade of England and the Dutch Republic before 1750’, in James Tracy, ed., The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 102–52. ⁷¹ James Tracy, ‘Agli ordini del sultano: il commercio italiano in territorio ottomano, 1450–1600,’ in Richard Goldthwaite, Reinhold Mueller, Sergio Tognetti, eds., Commercio e cultura mercantile nel Rinascimento italiano, to be published by Angelo Colla Editore. ⁷² Van Gelderen, ‘Aristotelians, Monarchomachs, and Republicans’, 195: ‘Seventeenth-century admiration for the Dutch and German republics is not reﬂected in modern historiography.’ ⁷³ Thomas A. Brady, Jr., ‘Settlements: The Holy Roman Empire’, in Brady Oberman, and Tracy, eds., Handbook of European History, ii. 349–84. For publications in the Dutch Republic on the imperial constitution, and on the constitution of the Hanseatic League, Conti, Consociatio Civitatum, chapter IV. ⁷⁴ Chapter 12, n. 116; cf. Israel, The Dutch Republic, 959–78: after the death of the strong-willed Willem III (who had also been King William III in England), the return to a ‘republic of the regents’ was smooth and trouble free in Holland, if not in the other provinces. ⁷⁵ Adams, The Familial State, 86: ‘A family’s capacity to perpetuate its patriline by installing or maintaining its lineal representatives in the sanctum of high ofﬁce rested on its alliances with other family lineages as well as its manipulations of descent.’ ⁷⁶ Fritschy and Liesker, Gewestelijke ﬁnanciën, Holland, 6, table I.2, between 1616 and 1792 Holland was assessed for 58% of the tax burden (Friesland, at 11%, had the next-highest quota); table I.1, the respective debts of the Generality and the provinces were 11,000,000 and 100,000,000 pounds in 1640, 17,000,000 and 692,000,000 pounds in 1790. Holland’s share in this provincial debt will have been greater than its share of the tax burden. ⁷⁷ Introduction, n. 16.

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eighteenth, Holland’s regents found it harder to justify their stolid resistance to fundamental change. Even so, there was no decisive turning point until the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–2), when losses by the Dutch ﬂeet showed up the weakness of a decentralized state. In the ferment of the ensuing Patriot Movement, it looked as if regents and stadtholder alike might give way to a more broadly based government—until a Prussian army crossed the frontier to free the wife of Stadtholder Willem V, detained by Gouda’s town militia (1787). Under the Batavian Republic, established following the French invasion of 1795, elements of a new national order were put in place, including a unitary constutition (1798), and a general tax to replace the traditional excises, now seen as oppressive (1806).⁷⁸ As noted in the Introduction, the principle of administrative centralization, once established, persisted in the kingdom of the Netherlands, under William I (1815–40) and William II (1840–49), who accepted the limitations imposed by the constitution of 1848. Political modernity meant a centralized state in which citizens were equal under the law. By contrast, the political order of the old Republic, with quasi-sovereign provinces ruled by privileged elites, was written off by Dutch historians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as ‘medieval chaos’, or ‘a constitutional monstrosity.’⁷⁹ Recent students of the seventeenth-century Republic have been more inclined to view its decentralized structure as a reasonably successful adaptation to the circumstances of its time and place. J. L. Price ﬁnds a rationale for provincial particularism: ‘Only a high degree of provincial independence could have satisﬁed Holland’s need to be given proper weight in the politics of the Republic, and at the same time given a sufﬁcient degree of protection to the interests of the weaker provinces.’⁸⁰ Maarten Prak discerns a connection between the unusual autonomy enjoyed by Dutch cities and the ﬁscal solidity of the Republic: it was the people’s ‘faith in local and provincial governments that enabled those governments to borrow money at extremely low rates of interest’.⁸¹ For Prak this observation is part of a larger argument. The political framework of the Dutch Republic is ‘the only thing that still refuses to ﬁt’ a pattern of ‘modernity’ that scholars now ascribe to other features of life in the seventeenth-century Golden Age, including a market economy and a culture of public debate that were arguably without parallel in contemporary Europe.⁸² Economic and cultural development may both be seen as functions of urbanization; in fact, the whole ⁷⁸ Israel, The Dutch Republic, 1098–112. ⁷⁹ Prak, The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century, 3, citing Robert Fruin and Johan Huizinga. ⁸⁰ J. L. Price, Holland and the Dutch Republic of the Seventeenth Century: The Politics of Particularism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 291. ⁸¹ Prak, The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century, 273. ⁸² Ibid. 3, referring to De Vries and Van der Woude, The First Modern Economy, and to Willem Frijhoff and Marijke Spies, 1650: Bevochten eendracht ( The Hague: Sdu Uitgevers, 1999).

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region stretching diagonally across Europe from northern Italy to the Low Countries was characterized by a comparatively high degree of urbanization, a pattern in which the Dutch Republic formed in the seventeenth century the leading edge. As Prak notes, throughout this zone of precocious urbanization, where taxpayers would part with their money only if ‘they could exert some inﬂuence on how it was spent’, the centralized bureaucratic state did not make its appearance until relatively late, in the nineteenth century.⁸³ In sum, it seems that the decentralization that looks like political backwardness, far from being the disruptive element in an otherwise ‘modern’ picture, was a precondition for the extraordinary achievements of the Golden Age. This book too makes the history of the Dutch Republic a refutation of the assumption that a ‘modern’ or effective state must necessarily be a centralized state. In its perilous early decades, this ﬂedgling state was able to withstand the ordeal of war with Spain precisely because the narrow urban elite that monopolized power was provincial in outlook, and thus capable of inducing fellow-burghers to put their wealth behind the achievement of limited military objectives. For proponents of stronger central authority, before and after 1572, ‘liberties’ or privileges—provincial, urban, or ecclesiastical—had always seemed like obstacles to progress. The Dutch Revolt, taking aim at Habsburg centralization, reconﬁgured traditional privileges instead of eliminating them.⁸⁴ In their new guise, liberties from the past served as the foundation for a public order in which liberty in a modern sense had space to grow.⁸⁵ ⁸³ Prak, The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century, 268–9: ‘The Swiss state is remarkably unintegrated even today.’ Prak does not give references for the urbanized zone (from northern Italy to the Low Countries) where local liberties were deeply entrenched, but see Thomas A. Brady, ‘The Rise of Merchant Empires, 1400–1700: A European Counterpoint’, in James D. Tracy, ed., The Political Economy of Merchant Empires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 117–60. ⁸⁴ For example, the Dutch Reformed Church had a monopoly on the public expression of religious belief—not the same kind of monopoly that the Catholic Church had enjoyed under Habsburg rule, but a monopoly nonetheless. ⁸⁵ Cf. R. C. van Caenegem, An Historical Introduction to Western Constitutional Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 79: ‘Late medieval constitutionalism was an important European creation, whose impact on public law is most notable in our own day: there is a direct continuity between the fundamental laws of the later Middle Ages and the Constitutions and Bills of Rights of our own world, especially as far as human rights and citizens’ freedoms are concerned.’

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Index Aeswijn, Reynier van, lord of Brakel 277 ´ Alba: see Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, duke of Albert, duke of Saxony 64 Alblasserwaard 122 Alenc¸on, duke of, see Franc¸ois Hercules, duke of Anjou Alkmaar 83, 89–90, 93, 111, 126 Almonde, Abraham van 126 Alphen 93, 99 Alteratie, see Amsterdam Amstel 91 Amstelland 174, 187 Amsterdam and Alteratie of May 1578 153, 174, 194, 197–8, 265 and Baltic trade 60–2, 196–201, 205, 270 and beer excise 174, 265 and Dordrecht 57 and Holland’s economic boom 61, 267–268 and iconoclasm 71–2 immigrants to 269–70 and Lastage 22 loyal to Spain 1572–1578 83, 86, 91, 106, 195 magistrates of 71, 152, 201 and Holland’s maritime trade 7, 59, 152–3 population of 56 and responsibility for Holland’s debts 191–2, 246 and Satisfaction of 1578 153, 171, 178, 192, 201 and States of Holland 17, 201–202 and Treasurers Extraordinary 260, 263, 266–7 verponding quotas 253, 259, 266 vroedeschap 117, 198, 254, 266 and Zuider Zee channel fees 125 Anabaptists Melchiorite Anabaptists 20–1, 67 see also Mennonites Anjou, duke of, see Franc¸ois Hercules, duke of Anjou Anthoniszoon, Adriaan 149–50 Antwerp Calvinist community 72, 95 as capital market 14, 62 and closing of the Scheldt 269–70 as entrepˆot 7, 61 guilds 16, 219

and maritime trade 195 population of 16 siege and conquest of 219–21 and ‘Spanish Fury’ 136 Antwerp Exchange, 33, 39, 41, 47, 218 Arnemuiden 63 Arnhem 143, 240 Arras 140 Artois 79 Assendelft, Gerrit van 49 Axel 222 Aytta, Vigilius van 38, 42, 47, 49 Bacx, Paulus 287–8 Bacx, Marcellus 287–8 Baerdes, Willem Dirkszoon 19, 22 Balfour, Henry 156 Baltic trade 19, 58, 273 in Amsterdam 21–2, 60–3, 78, 194, 270 grain trade 17–18, 54, 196–200, 221, 270 statistics 34, 200 bankers 48–9 on Antwerp exchange 39 and collection of government loans 48, 49 Fuggers of Augsburg 14, 50 Genoese ﬁrms 113, 180 Grimaldi of Genoa 14 Bardesius, Willem 78, 196–8, 232, 277–8, 280, 286 and the Alteratie 153 Basse, Hans 108 bastion trace, see trace italienne Batavian myth 309 Batavian Republic 1, 302, 307–9, 313 Battle of Zuider Zee (1573) 36, 194–6 Beemster 90 Bentivoglio, Guido 309 Bergen (North Holland) 55 Bergen-op-Zoom 219–20, 222 Berlaymont, Gilles de, lord of Hierges 99–100, 151, 158 Beveren, Cornelis van 208 Beverwijk 91 Beza, Theodore 194, 207 binnenlandvaart (inland waterway) 58–60 Blijenberg, Adriaan van 208 Bodin, Jean 289, 305–6 Bois-le-Duc, see ’s-Hertogenbosch Boisot, Louis 89, 97, 128 Bol, Jacob 102, 187

334

Index

Bommel 150, 164 Bonnivet 216 Bouchain 144 Bogerhout 142 Bouges 141 Boussu, count of, see Hennin-Li´etard, Charles, count of Boussu Brabant 11, 15, 52, 68, 79, 180, 200 Breda 224 Brederode, Hendrik van 70, 72 Brederode, Pieter Corneliszoon 307 Brill 80–2, 118, 187, 228 and renten 262, 264 fortiﬁcations 149 and provincial beer and wine excises 103 and quotas in repartiti¨en 114 Broek, Jan Ten 108 Bruges 58, 68, 139, 218 as one of Four Members of Flanders 16 capital markets of 62 Bruni, Leonardo 299, 309 Brussels 141, 157 Duke of Alba in 77–8 guilds 16 Holland-trained ofﬁcials in 65 Reformed Church in 68 and William of Orange 138–9 See also Tympel, Olivier van Buiskens, Pieter 82 Bullinger, Heinrich 117, 194, 207 Burchgrave, Daniel de 277, 287 Buren 99 Busius, Paulus 306 Buys, Bartholomeus Grifﬁus 276–7 Buys, Paulus 107 as advocate of the States of Holland 128–30, 191, 227 arrest of 281 on Council of State of the Duke of Leicester 275, 277–8 Buzere, Jacob de 71 Calvin, John 117, 194 Calvinism in the Netherlands 21, 121 in Antwerp 95 and guildsmen 139–40 and iconoclasm 71–2 and hedge preachers 70 and the earl of Leicester 269, 274, 276 in Leiden 212 in ’s-Herogenbosch 163 and suppression of Catholic worship 118–119, 145 in Utrecht 280 among William of Orange’s advisors 128 see also Reformed Church

Cant, Reynier 78, 82, 198 Capelle aan den IJssel 130 capitale impositie (wealth tax) 250, 253–4 Capizucchi, Camillo 220 Carafa, Cardinal Gianpetro, see Paul IV, pope Catholics in the Netherlands 117–9 and ecclesiastical property 110–11, 119, 136, 181, 185–6, 279–80 in the Noorderkwartier 206 and the Paciﬁcation of Ghent 137 among peasants 121 and repression of Catholicism 274 and violence against Catholics 89, 117, 209 Caulier, Michel 145, 167 Centralised or decentralized government 4, 235, 312–314 See also ﬁscal devolution Charles V 11, 26, 28, 37, 46, 57, 62, 64, 65 and defense of Catholicism 19 and rebellion in Ghent 16 and plan for an Inquisition in the Low Countries 67 and repression of heresy 66 Charles IX, king of France 33, 79–80 Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy 45, 64 Charles of Egmont, duke of Gelderland 64–5 Charles the Rash, duke of Burgundy, see Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy Chester, Edward 95, 108, 110 Chimay, Charles de 218 civic militia companies 89, 92, 120–1, 153, 236, 286–7 refusal to intervene in iconoclasm 71 and support for William of Orange 124–5 Clerc, Franc¸ois le 34 Clerhagen, Josse 283, 285 Coebel, Aert 45, 49–50, 112 n. 65 Colterman, Hans 108 Coligny, Gaspard de 30, 80 common means, see gemene middelen Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania 73, 118, 304 companies d’ordonnance 26–7 Contarini, Gasparo 305, 311 convoy fees (convooien) 152, 192, 195, 199–200, 243, 270, 272 Coolhaes, Caspar Janszoon 211 Corneliszoon, Pieter Boom 198, 210–1, 287 Corput, Hendrik van der 208 Cosimo I de Medici, grand duke of Tuscany 83 and the seizure of Siena 29 Coster, Maarten Janszoon 198 Cotovicius, Johannes 305–6 Council of Finance (after 1572) 131, 177, 277 Council of Finance (Habsburg era) 40, 50 Council of Flanders 68, 218

Index Council of Holland 21 and heresy trials 67 Council of State Habsburg era 68–9, 71–2, 130,135 under Leicester 275, 277–9, 286, 291 under William of Orange 145, 150, 245 Council of Troubles 77, 110 Cristal, Jacques 287–8 Cromhout, Adriaan Reyerszoon 196 Croy, Adrian de 29 Croy, Philipe de, duke of Aerschot 135, 138, 140 Culemborg 236, 238 Cuyck, Johan van 82 Danckemann, Gerrit 108 Dathenus, Petrus 118 D´avila, Sancho 95 Davison, William 227, 247 d´echarges 49, 235, 259 De Kaag 93 De Witt, Johan 301, 310 Delft brewing 125 and exports 62 and foreign soldiers 88–9 issuing renten 264 magistrates of 250 Reformed community in 209–10, 255 and States of Holland 17 under William of Orange 106, 217 and verponding quotas 253 and vroedschap 209 Dendermonde 218 Deventer 69, 142, 158–61, 169, 225, 240 Diemen, Jonker Dirk van (Captain Haestrecht) 284 Diest 141 Dillenburg 78, 111 Dirkszoon, Hendrik 21 Doesburg 230 Dokkum 164 Don Juan, see Juan of Austria Dordrecht classis of 208 magistrates of 84 population of 204 Reformed Church in 207–8 shipping 57 and staple privilege 57, 125, 270–1, 294 and States of Holland 17 under William of Orange 83 and verponding quotas 253 Dorp, Arent van 84, 111 Dorp, Willem van 97 n. 52, 109 Douai 140

335

Drenckwaert, Jan Boudewijnszoon 207–8 Dudley, Robert, earl of Leicester and Council of State 275 as governor-general of the Low Countries 225, 269, 274–88, 291 military campaigns 220–3, 228–34, and payment of soldiers 228–34 signing Act of Restriction 283 and sovereignty 291, 295 and taxes 244, 246–7 Duivenvoorde, Arent van 284, 287 Duivenvoorde, Jacob van, lord of Warmond 78, 159 Dunkirk 216–7, 226, 235 Dutch East India Company 312 Duyst, Hendrik 107 Eberstein, Maximilian von 84, 92 Eboli, prince of, see Silva, Ruy Gomez de, prince of Eboli Edam 83, 126 Egmond, Joris van, bishop of Utrecht 20 Egmond, Otto van 126 Egmont, Lamoral d’, count of Buren 14, 31, 69, 77–8, 88 Eindhoven 216 Elburg 240 Elizabeth I, queen of England and establishment of a Chamber of Finance 277 and earl of Leicester 281 as governor of the Low Countries 225, 288 as protector of the Low Countries 128, 220 and the Sea Beggars 81 supporting the Revolt 141, 231 Emden 207 Emmanuel-Philibert, duke of Savoy 14, 18, 29, 31, 47 Ems 78–9 Enkhuizen 82, 86, 108, 124–6, 131, 196, 284 and Zuider Zee channel fees 125 Entens, Barthold 88, 165, 167–8 Escovedo, Juan de 150 Estrella, Juan Cristoforo Calvete de 13 excises on beer and wine (provincial) Habsburg era 17 n. 32, 40, 43, 56, after 1572 102, 103174–5, 243–4, 265 see also gemene middelen excises on beer and wine (urban) 103 Farnese, Alexander, prince of Parma as governor-general 7, 201, 232 military campaigns 141–2, 144–7, 157–8, 163, 165–6, 201–3, 215–30, 235, 240–2, 270 Ferdinand II, archduke of Austria 11, 13 n. 4

336

Index

Fiennes, Henri de, baron de Chevreux 90, 95, 122 Fiscal devolution Habsburg era 44–45, 48–50 after 1572 113–115, 177–9, 261–4 Flanders 11, 52, 68, 71–2, 180, 200 Four Members of 16, 40, 136, 138, 144, 168, 273 Hapsburg revenue from 15 guilds 16 Florence 299–300, 305 Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–2) 313 Franc of Bruges 16 Francis I, king of France (1514–47) 24, 28 Francis II, king of France (1559–60) 33 Franc¸ois Hercules, duke of Anjou 225–7 as governor-general 146, 180 and income of the Low Countries 244, 271 and military campaigns 274 invitations to 4, 141, 215, 306 soldiers of 202–3 and sovereignty 290 Franeker 164 freedom of conscience 120, 140, 205–6 freedom of worship 120, 140 Friesland 63, 65, 164, 165 Frundsberg, Georg von 83 garrison companies paid by Holland 26, 88–9, 91–103, 232–6 costs of 171–3, 244, 275 mutiny of 288–9 Protestant soldiers 143–4 timely payment of 114–5, 128, 131 and the Union of Utrecht 241 Gastel 122 Gda´nsk 61, 195 Geertuidenberg 153, 216, 236, 289 Geervliet 186 Gelderland Wars 63–6 Gembloux 157, 160 gemene middelen 106, 162, 242–50, 265–8, 282 accounting procedures 114–115, 173, 178–9, 245–247 collection of 114, 130, 177, 183, 255–6, 279 liabilities charged against 183–3, 189, 191, 229–31 rates 103, 176 receivers of 182–3, 255–6 revenue of 175–7 supporting troops 109, 113, 125, 131, 171 yield of 104–5, 112, 248–249 Generality, the 45, 60, 196, 243–6, 310 See also States General

German heavy cavalry 27, 218, 231–2 cost of 32, 180, 226, 229, 234, 256, 262, 275 in Mons Campaign of 1572 109, 259 Ghent 136, 138–9, 203, 262–3 rebellion of 1540 16, 139 siege and conquest of 216–7 Giambelli, Federico 220 Gianotti, Donato 305, 311 Gibbon, Hugo 108 Glimes, Jacques de 135 Gorinchem 57, 83, 115, 126, 150, 187, 259, 264, 277 Gouda and brewing 55–6, 204 and collection of funds 187 and economic woes 194 and foreign soldiers 88 joining the Revolt 83 magistrates of 239 monopoly rights of 294 population of 56 Reformed Church in 210 and States of Holland 17 supporting the war effort 205 toll stations at 59 trafﬁc at Gouda lock 59 vroedschap 116–7, 210 Goudt, Willem 48 Gouwe 59 Gouwenberg, Gijsbrecht van 158 Grammaye, Jacob 48–9 Grand Council of Mechelen 57 Granvelle, Antoine Perrenot de, bishop of Arras 13, 47, 68–9 Granvelle, Fr´ed´eric de, lord of Champagney 140 Graswinckel, Dirk 311 Grave 221–2, 225, 229, 236, 275 Gravelines 132, 216 ‘s Gravesande, Arent Corneliszoon van 208–9 Gregory XIII, pope 222 Grevelingen 140 Groningen 65, 78–9, 145, 164, 167–8, 237–8 city and rural districts (Ommelanden) of 64, 163–5 Spanish Groningen 231, 237 Grootebroek 123 Grotius, Hugo 294, 298, 303, 307–11 Guicciardini, Francesco 299–300 guilds 16, 116, 139–40, 219, 283 Haarlem 90–5 as episcopal see 69 and inland waterways 59–60

Index and linen industry 56, 194, 203 magistrates of 83 and militia companies 124 population 56, 204 reintegration into Holland 175, 186 Spanish siege and conquest 103, 105 and States of Holland 17 verponding quota 253 Haarlemermeer 59–60, 88–9, 91, 93, 106 Haest, Nicolaes van 108 The Hague 17, 125, 243, 264–5, 291 Hanseatic League 81 Habsburg dynasty (House of Austria) 24 Hapsburg Netherlands 7, 21 economic center of 52 episcopal sees 20 Hapsburg-Valois War (1552–1559) 24–5, 28–9, 30–1, 47, 51 and campaigns in the Low Countries 30 and France’s Wars of Religion 32 debts from 14 expenses of 32, 47, 51 logistics and tactics 36 Philip II’s debts from 113 and the Revolt of the Netherlands 33 Hardenberg 168 Harderwijk 240 Harlingen 164–7, 236 Harrington, James 300–2 Hegeman, Wouter 155, 159 Heidelberg Catechism 208, 210 Heiligerlee 78 Helling, Herman van der 152–3 Hembyze, Jan van 136, 138 Hennin-Li´etard, Charles, count of Boussu 80–1, 89, 141–2, 152, 157, 172 and defeat at the Battle of the Zuider Zee 194 disarming civic militias 124 Henry II, king of France (1547–59) 24, 29–33, 69 Henry III, king of France (1574–89) 146, 227–8, 239 Henry IV, king of France 80 Henry II of Bavaria, prince-bishop of Utrecht 65 Herbertszoon, Hermannus 208, 210 heresy laws 20–2, 60, 66–71, 136, 143–4, 207 placards 21–2, 67, 69–71 Het Kalf 90, 122 Heusden 150–1, 163, 169, 221, 236 Heuvel, Adriaan Dirkszoon van der 126 Hierges, lord of, see Berlaymont, Gilles de, lord of Hierges Hobbes, Thomas 302 Hoffman, Melchior 67

337

Hohenlohe, Count Philip von 220–3, 285 and ﬁnances 245 debts of 108–9, 182 military campaigns 145, 158, 164, 167–8, 169 n. 111, 216–7, 226, 231, 236 support for Leicester 277 Holland (after 1572) Chamber of Accounts 114, 189, 264–5 and cost of garrisons 172 Court of Holland (Hof van Holland) 119, 264–5 and Golden Age 61 and Matthias, archduke of Austria 139 and military strategy: see Holland’s Garden and the Perpetual Edict 137 and relations with William of Orange 104, 128–131, 244 and verponding quotas 257–8 and war costs 155, 159–61, 173–4 see also States of Holland Holland (Habsburg era) 63 annual interest burden 43 and collection of subsidies 55, 65 Court of Holland ( Hof van Holland) 44 and dependence on Low Countries economic system 61 guilds of 17 Hapsburg revenue from 15 and inland waterways 59–60 and land reclamation 53–5 merchant ﬂeet 33 as political centre of a sub-regional economy 66 population of 17, 52–3 and resistance of government policies 60 and riots against heresy executions 68 and rural industry 54 and rural property values 54 and urban industry 55–6 and war with the Wendish cities 61 Holland’s Garden 5, 7, 179, 225, 238–9, 241, 295 Holland IJssel 57, 59–60, 64, 96, 100 Hollandse Diep 91, 150 Hondschoote 202–3 Hoorn 83, 88, 114, 198, 284, 286–7 Hout, Jan van 211 Hudde, Arent 253 Huddleston, Christopher 266 Huguenots 78–80, 83–4, 207, 289–90, 309 iconoclasm 66, 71–3, 118, 136, 140 Ieper 16, 71, 139, 217 Ilpendam 90, 122 IJ (the) 57–9, 86, 88–9, 126, 231 IJsselstein, Christoffel van 153, 160–1, 236

338

Index

Isabella I, queen of Castile and Aragon 11, 20 Janszoon, Dirk 126 Jemmingen 79–80 Jodoigne 141 Johann Casimir, Count Palatine 159, 180–2, 222, 226, 229 and recruiting troops 141 payment of his Holland obligation 188, 192 Juan of Austria 136–42, 149, 152–3, 158–160, 168, 180, 195 Kampen 158–60, 167 Kethulle, Franc¸ois van de, lord of Ryhove 136, 138 Kies, Pieter Janszoon 107 Killegrew, Henry 277 Kirchbergen, Eitel Heinrich von 226 Kortrijk 139 Krimpen 99–100, 110 Laet, Jan de 311 Lalaing, Emmanuel-Philibert de, lord of Montigny 140 Lalaing, Georges de, count of Rennenberg 142, 145, 155, 159, 164–5, 167–9, 183, 188 Lalaing, Philippe de 140 Lambertschaag 206 La Marck, Lumey de 80–1, 88–9, 91, 108, 118 La Motte: see Pardieu La Noue, Franc¸ois de 83 Leeuwarden 164–5 Leicester, earl of, see Dudley, Robert, earl of Leicester Leiden and capitale impositie 254 and cloth trade 194, 202–3 and forced loans 116 n. 4 and hundredth penny tax 187 and inland waterways 59, 91, 177 and Leideschendam 60 and payment of debts 192 population of 56, 204 and conﬂict within the Reformed Church 210–12 siege and relief of 78, 93, 95–8, 111, 121–2, 124, 130, 202, 253 and States of Holland 17 and woolen manufacturing 55–6 and verponding quotas 253 vroedeschap of 117 Leiderdorp 93 Leidschendam 93 Lek 57, 99–100

Leoninus, Elbertus 151 Leuven 16, 141 licence fees, see licenten licenten 105, 108, 112, 195–7, 201–2, 205, 271, 282 Liefkenshoek 220 Lier 160 Lille 71 Lillo 219–20 Lingen 231 Lochem 169 logijsgeld (lodging money) 234, 236 Loosen, Sebastiaan van 277 Louis XII, king of France (1498–1515) 24 Louvain, see Leuven Luther, Martin 20 Lutherans 6, 20, 67, 117, 120, 206 n. 47, 211 Lyon Exchange 33 Maas 57, 96, 271 Maaslandsluis 88, 93, 96, 99 Maastricht 95, 137, 145, 157, 161–2 siege and capture of 142, 173, 180–1, 183, 188, 201 Machiavelli, Niccol`o 300 Malcontents, the 140–1, 165, 201 Manderslohe, Ernst von 84, 181, 192 Mansfelt, Charles de 216, 221 Margaret of Austria 11, 46, 53, 64 Margaret of Parma 33, 48, 50, 69–72, 77, 130 Marienbourg 25 Mary of Burgundy: Great Privilege of 1477 45 Mary of Hungary 40–2, 46, 52 and cost of war 37 and fundraising 49 and government in Brussels 21 and Hapsburg-Valois War 31 as regent 11 strategy of 18–19 and wine tax for war ﬂeet 35 Matenesse, Johan van 185 Matte, Sebastiaan 71 Matthias, archduke of Austria 138–9, 157, 164, 180 Maximillian I, holy roman emperor (1508–19) 46, 64 Maximillian of Burgundy, admiral of the Low Countries 35 Mechelen 68, 86, 157–8, 160 Medemblik 64, 83, 89, 126, 196, 284, 286–9 Meetkerke, Adolph van 218 Menen 140 Mennonites 6, 120, 205–6, 209, 211 see also Anabaptists Meppen 231–2 mercenary soldiers 90–1, 93, 97, 107–9

Index contracts with 26–7 and debts owed to commanders 112 mutinies by of 27, 100 and unit types 27 and wages 107–8, 115 Merchant Adventurers 107–8, 180, 182, 192, 258–9, 266 ‘merchants of Ipswich’ 107–8, 179, 182, 189, 191–2, 258 Merula, Paulus 307–8 Meurs, Adolf von, count of Neuenahr 222, 226, 230–2, 238–40, 277, 281 Middelburg 83–4, 95, 207, 217, 235 middelen 44, 51, 245 see also gemene middelen Mierop, Cornelis van 178, 189–91, 257, 259–60, 264 Mijle, Arend Cornelisz. van der 130–1 military strategy and tactics 24, 26, 28, 86, 99 ﬂooding of ﬁelds 81, 90, 96–7, 99, 120, 122–3, 130, 222 and fortiﬁcation 88, 149 and trace italienne 25, 30, 149–50 and vallatio and contravallatio 28 Molino, Domenico 310–1 Mondrag´on, Cristobal de 91, 99, 135, 158 Montmorency, Philippe de, count of Hornes 14 Monnickendam 126 Mons 80, 84–6, 106, 109, 259 siege of 85 Montmorency, Anne de 28, 31 Mook 95 morgental (acreage tax) 40, 43 Moritz, elector of Saxony 29 Mostart, Guillaume 280 Muiden 149–50, 152 Muller, Lazarus 82–3, 88, 108 Muys van Holy, Jacob 105 n. 20, 131, 143, 178–9, 188, 207–8 Naarden 92, 149, 240, 287, 302 Namur 138, 152, 158 Nassau: see Orange-Nassau, house of National Council (Landraad) 145–6, 169, 189 Neck, Reynier Simonszoon van 168 Nieuwpoort 152, 156, 217 Nijmegen 164, 225, 232, 238–40 Nivelles 86 Noorderkwartier (North Holland) 168, 172, 176, 187–8. 258, 279–80 and Amsterdam 152 ﬂooding of 65 and gemene middelen 248–9 population of 17

339

and verpondingen 252 and villages 123 and war funding 172, 177, 233 see also States of Holland Noordwijk 88, 92 Norris, Edward 144–5, 158 Norris, John 168–9, 173, 189, 228 North Sea herring trade 17, 34, 243 Noyelles, Pontus de 157 Nyvelt, Willem van Zuylen van 78, 279 obligati¨en (promissory notes) 48–51, 84–6, 105–9, 114, 156, 180–2 issued as payments for troops 161, 163, 169, 178 see also States of Holland Oertel, Matthaeus 50 Oldenbernevelt, Johan van 5 n. 16, 161, 278, 286, 307–10 Orange-Nassau, house of Henry, count of Nassau 13 Jan van Nassau 103, 142–3, 159, 161, 163, 165, 181–2 Justin van Nassau, admiral of Zeeland 219 Louis, count of Nassau 70, 78–80, 82–3, 86, 90, 95, 109 Maurits van Nassau 8, 223, 232–4, 245, 270, 283–5, 289, 307–10 Ren´e de Chˆalons, prince of Orange 14, 28 Reynier van Nassau, son of Henry, count of Nassau, 14 Willem van Nassau, see William of Orange Willem Lodewijk 167–8, 182 ordonnanti¨en (payment orders) 114, 177 Ortel, Joachim 109 n. 46, 227 Ostende 218, 223 Oterdum 238 Ottoman siege of Malta 69–70 Oudenaarde 139 Oude Rijn 59–60 Oudewater 83, 96, 99, 150 Overijssel 145 Overijssel-Drenthe (the Oversticht) 65 Paciﬁcation of Ghent 136–7, 139, 142–3, 150–2, 154, 159, 185, 195 Paep, Jan de 48 Pallandt, Floris van 126, 128 Pardieu, Valentin de, lord of La Motte 140 parliamentary assemblies 12 Parma, prince of, see Farnese, Alexander, prince of Parma particularism 2–4, 130–1, 145 Paul IV, pope 30, 68 Pauli, Jacob 126

340

Index

Qui´evrain 84

Reformed Church 68, 117–21, 136–40, 205–9, 295 in Delft 220, 255 governance of 6, 125–6 in Haarlem 151 and Paciﬁcation of Ghent 185 and Philip II 97 n. 49 and the Remonstrants 309–10 and salaries of preachers 178 and support for Leicester 279 Reingout, Jacques 277–9 Religious Peace 118, 143–4, 157, 164 Rennenberg, count of, see Lalaing, Georges de, count of Rennenberg renten see States of Holland renten (issued by towns) 266 rentebrieven 262–3, 267 repartiti¨en 111–15, 182–5, 250–6, 261–5 for military needs 125, 144, 171, 189, 226, 230–1, 242, 246, 275, 288–9 see also States of Holland republicanism 297–307 and respublica mixta 298, 304–7 Requesens, Luis de 90, 93–5, 97–9, 135–6 Reval 61 Rijmenam 141, 168 Rijnland 96–7, 177 Ripperda, Wigbolt 92 Robles, Caspar de 166 Roermond 69, 158, 160 Romero, Julian 84 Roodenburgh, Harmen van 287–8 Rotterdam and continuation of gemene middelen 177–8 garrisons of 115 and hundredth penny tax 187 inclusion in the States assembly 126 and inland waterways 59–60 and licenten 197 and maritime trade 53, 196 population of 204 and renten 262–3 as shipping centre 57 Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor (1576–1612) 222, 226 Ruychaver, Nicolaas 92

Raedt, Jan Aelbrechtszoon 257 Reael, Jan Pieterszoon 266 Receivers and receivers’ loans: see gemene middelen Receivers-General (Holland) 102 see also Aert Coebel, Willem Goudt, Jacob Grammaye, Jacob Muys van Holy, and Cornelis van Mierop

Samplon, Captain 167 Saravia, Adiranus 276, 287 Sassenheim 89, 93 Sas van Ghent 135, 217 Savoy, duke of, see Emmanuel-Philibert, duke of Savoy Scepper, Cornelis de 35 Scheldt 7, 63, 270 Schenk, Maarten 167–8, 240–1, 266

Pauli, Jan 181–2 Peace of Augsburg (1555) 117 Peace of Cateau-Cambr´esis (1559) 31, 50 Peace of Saint-Germain (1570) 80 Peace of Westphalia (1648) 7–8, 301, 311 Peret, Stephen 279 Perpetual Edict 137–8 Pescarengis, Cosmo de 285, 287 Petit, Jean-Franc¸ois 307 Philip II 31, 38, 47–8, 72, 77, 196, 223, 308 and Armada 288 and early companions 14 and grand tour 13 and meeting with provincial States 15 and control of the Netherlands 18 and marriage to Mary Tudor 30 and military matters 215 and raising the beer and wine excise 102 and rejecting proposals to ﬂood ﬁelds 123 and religious policy 20, 69, 143–4 and reorganization of Church in Low Countries 68 Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy 116 Pieterszoon, Job 126 piracy 34–5, 152, 217 political theory and body politic 52, 117 and sovereignty 11, 289–94, 310 see also republican theory Polweiler, Nicholas von 158–9 Pouwelszoon, Willem 254 privileges 62, 123, 125, 294, 314 and amour propre 18 and heresy laws 66 and Blijde Inkomst of Brabant 16 and exemptions from taxation 11–12 and inland waterways 56–60 procuradores (Cortes of Castile) 18 Protestant refugees 70, 78, 96 Prounink, Gerard van 218, 276, 281, 287, 290–1 Purmerend 90, 123, 126 Putten 55, 103

Index Schetz, Erasmus 15 Schetz, Gaspar 50, 151, 181 Schiedam 62, 93, 126 Schieland 96 schiltal 42 n. 22, 44, 54–5, 191 Schmalkaldic League 24, 29 Schoonhoven 83, 99, 120, 126, 149, 152 Schot, Jacob 250 Schouwen 99 Schwartzburg, Gunther von 161, 180–2, 185 sconces 91, 105, 236–41 at Alphen 99 at Arnhem 240 in the countryside 122, 148 at Grave 221 at Groningen 168 at Haarlem 93 on IJ dyke 88 at Leiden 96–7 at Lochem 169 at Maaslandsluis 99 at Medemblik 288 at Nijmegen 240 at Oudewater 99 taxes for 149 near Waterland 90 and William of Orange 142 at Woerden 99 Sea Beggars 70, 78–82, 118, 124, 207 Senlis 84 Seraerts, Jeronimus’t 82 ’s-Gravenwaard 240–1 ’s-Hertogenbosch 16, 68, 163, 216, 223–4, 287 shipbuilding 35–6 Sidney, Philip 222 Silva, Ruy Gomez de, prince of Eboli 72 Simler, Josias 305–6 Simons, Menno 67 Sint-Aldegonde, John Marnix van 70 Sint-Aldegonde, Philip Marnix van 70, 83, 92, 128, 196, 219–20, 306 Sint Geertuidenberg 91, 95, 150–1 Sluis 218, 220, 285–7 Sluys 218 soldiers and ﬁeld army 225, 231, 258 and landsknechte (German pikemen) 27, 96, 218, 230, 232 mutiny of 100, 135, 226, 288–9 and payment of 246 and standing army 26 and strike forces 88, 91–2, 96 and Swiss pikemen 27 and tercios (Spanish infantry) 27, 72, 80–1, 147, 226 and wages of 233–4, 275

341

see also garrison troops; German heavy cavalry; mercenaries Sonnius, Franciscus 68 Sonoy, Diederik 286–8 and Enkhuizen 82–3 as governor of North Holland 78, 82, 130–1, 197, 240 and States of Holland 283–4 and military campaigns 88–90, 153, 158, 167–8, 240 as military governor of Zutphen 165, 280 and States assembly 126 Spaarndam 58–9, 150–1 Spanish Netherlands 1, 212, 224 States General 45–8, 97, 227–35, 269–76, 312 approval of war taxes 79 army of 148, 156, 203, 258, 285–6 and ban of grain exports 197 and centralization 128 Chamber of Finance 277–8 and Cologne 240 and Committee of Eighteen 138–9 and convoy fees 195, 200 and Don Juan 136–7 and extraordinary revenues 249 and Ghent 139 and Holland and Zeeland 130 and Holland’s revenue 243–4 and Heusden 151 and Johann Casimir 188 of loyalist provinces 79, 97, 136, 146 and payment of troops 132 under Philip II 39, 306 raising of funds by 160, 172–3, 179–81, 218, 223 and Religious Peace 144, 157 and Remonstrants 310 representing community of the realm 48 and sovereignty 45, 290–1, 301 and trade 282 of the Union of Arras 146–7 States of Artois 140 States of Brabant 135, 138, 162 clerical estate 16 great cities 16 States of Friesland 164–5 States of Gelderland 65, 158, 182, 238 States of Hainaut 135, 140 States of Holland and Amsterdam 153 and borders of Holland 151 and civic militia companies 96, 124 college of nobles 6, 123, 128, 264 and control of the budget 97, 114–5, 127, 173, 178–9, 245–7 dagvaarten and deputies 17, 126–7

342

Index

States of Holland (cont.) and debt management 109–113, 179–82, 191, 246 and ecclesiastical property 119 and extraordinary levies 220 and gemene middelen 101–3, 242–8 and Haarlem 152 and John Norris 168 loans raised by 107, 109, 250, 253, 255; see also obligation, renten, repartiti¨en and Leicester 280–283 and mercenary companies 48–9, 154–159 and military budgets 45, 79, 85, 103, 155, 171–174, 234, 239, 246–8 and military strategy 97, 148, 219, 225, 239 obligati¨en 49–51, 108, 169, 179–82 and Reformed Church 125–126, 205, 212 renten issued before 1572 15, 39–45, 109–112, 179, 186, 192, 201–2, 261–4 and renten issued by towns in Holland’s name 262–264 repartiti¨en 105–109, 182–186, 226, 250 and small cities 55 and Sonoy 284–8 south of the IJ 152, 187 and sovereignty 290, 293–4, 307–310 and States General 159–60 States of North Holland 103, 108, 111–4, 123, 126–7, 130, 197, 280, 283 and town corporations 125–127, 260–267 and trade 272, 282 and verpondigen 188 States of Overijssel 164, 167 States of Utrecht 153, 272, 281 States of Zeeland 149, 283, 290 Stavoren 164–7 Steenwijk 145, 168–9 Stevin, Simon 150, 306 Stralen, Antoon van 77–8 Strozzi, Pietro 80 Stuart, William 158, 162 Suleyman the Lawgiver, Ottoman sultan (1520–66) 24 Swieten, Adriaan Corneliszoon van 83, 126 Swiss Confederation 303–6, 311 Synod of Dordrecht (1574) 212 Synod of Dordrecht (1578) 211–2 Synod of Dordrecht (1648–1619) 310 Synod of the Hague 279 Tafﬁn, Jean 107, 128 Tassis, Jean-Baptiste de 169, 215, 236 taxes collection of 15 and exchange of taxes for debt 108

and excise taxes 39, 102, 104, 123, 174, 175 on exports 17 and extraordinary levies 219, 227, 231, 249, 250 and extraordinary subsidies 40, 44, 229 and farming of tax rights 43 and ﬁftieth penny tax 188–9, 191 and grain excise 44 and hundredth penny tax 61–3, 79, 186–9, 191, 200 and land and excise tax 45 and land taxes 122 and ordinary and extraordinary revenues 15 and ordinary subsidies 39 and provincial excise 101, 103, 113 and provincial land tax 101, 113 and tenth penny tax 79–80, 189 and twentieth penny tax 79–80 see also excises on beer and wine, gemene middelen, verpondingen Teelinck, Josse 277 Terschelling 238 Texel 155, 206 Thin, Floris 143, 281 Thionville 77 Tholen 99 Tiel 164, 236, 239 Tienen 135 Titelmans, Pieter 68 Toledo, Hernando de 100 Toledo, Fadrique de 84, 90, 92–5, 175 ´ Toledo, Fernando Alvarez de, duke of Alba 118, 294 as imperial advisor 13, 72 and military campaigns 77, 80–4, 86, 93 and subsidies 44, 51, 55 and taxes 79, 186 Tournai 72, 144 Treaty of Arras (17 May 1579) 142 Treaty of Cambrai (1529) 28 Treaty of Cateau-Cambr´esis 20, 33 Treaty of Gorinchem (October 1528) 65 Treaty of Nonsuch 220–1, 225, 228, 278, 281–2 Treaty of Plessis-les-Tours (August 1580) 146 Treaty of Westphalia (1648) 1 Treslong, Willem Blois van 78, 80–2 Truce of Vaucelles 30 Truchess von Waldburg, Gerhard, archbishop of Cologne, 222, 240 Turk, Lubbert 221–2 Tympel, Olivier van den 135–6, 156–8, 160, 162–3, 182, 188 Union of Arras (January 1579) 142, 144, 146, 215

Index Union of Dordrecht (March 1576) 125, 127, 130, 290 Union of Utrecht (January 1579) 143–5, 161–9, 301, 306, 312 called the ‘Closer Union’ 161 and Holland 4–5, 173, 235, 241, 249, 275, 295 original signatories to 1, 139 and Religious Peace 143 soldiers of 188 and Utrecht 238 and war funding 148, 155, 173–4, 242 United Provinces 239, 271, 296, 308, 312 army of 232 and the ‘ﬁve species’ 243, 245 and gemene middelen 242 raising of funds by 235 recognition of 1 and sovereignty 291 Utrecht 20, 65, 91, 235, 238, 272–3, 280–10 Valcke, Jacob 245 Valdez, Francisco de 93, 96–7, 122, 124 Valenciennes 72 Valkenburg Castle 95 Valkensteyn, Franchoys van 102–3 Valois, Marguerite de 80, 138 Vecht 91 Venice 293, 303, 305–7, 310–12 Venlo 84, 173, 221, 229, 275 Verdugo, Francisco de 145, 168–9, 215, 238 Vere 35 Verliengh, Andries 55 verpondingen 189–93, 242, 250, 253, 256–63, 266 see also States of Holland Veurne 71 Vianen 72 Vilvoorde 157, 162, 167 Vitelli, Chiappino 84 Vlaardingen 96 Vliet 60 Vliet, Jan van 107 Vlissingen 82, 228, 285 Volmar, Jacques 287 Voorne 55, 81, 103 Voorschoten 211 Vos, Paulus 126 Vosmeer, Sasbout 209 Vranck, Franc¸ois 292–4, 306, 308, 310–2 vroedschappen 116–7, 126–7, 292 waardegelders 236 Wageningen 238 Walsingham, Francis 273, 276 Walcheren Island 83, 98, 285

343

Waldburg, Gerhard Truchsess von, Prince-Archbishop of Cologne 222, 226 Waterland 89–90, 95, 112 Weert 86 Weesp 152 Wesel 226 Wilkes, Thomas 247–8, 281, 291–4 Willekens, Julius 253 William of Hornes, lord of H`eze 77–8, 135 William of Orange 78–82, 135, 138–42, 152–6 assassination of 227, 235, 239, 245 and Duke of Anjou 215, 225 His Excellency’s Council 128, 131 and Gelderland 142–3 and gemene middelen 245 and Leiden 195 and licenten 195 and military campaigns 79–80, 86, 91–9, 135, 144, 217, 225–7 and Mons 84, 86 and ordinance governing the process of mustering out 156 and requests for ﬁnancial support 103 and residence in Delft 88–9 and religious matters 69, 118, 211 and Revolt 79–82 and service under Emmanuel-Philibert 29 and siege of Leiden 60 and sovereignty 244, 290 and States of North Holland 123–4 vision of national unity 3–5 and war funds 84–5, 100–146, 180, 232 youth with Philip II 14 Williams, Roger 228, 245 Willoughby, Peregrine 288–9 Wilson, Thomas 274 Wittelsbach, Ernst von 222 Woerden 83, 99–100, 150 Wolfswinckel, Maarten van 284, 288 Wormer 90 Wou, Hendrick van 176, 257 Woudrichem 91 Zapata, Rodrigo de 86, 121 Zeeland 63, 86, 127, 154–5, 272, 278 and Matthias, archduke of Austria 139 and Perpetual Edict 137 and war budget 159–61 Ziekerzee 86, 99, 100, 110, 135, 172, 174 Zoeterwoude 97 Zuider Zee 57–8, 65–6, 82, 195–6, 217, 270 Battle of: see Battle of Zuider Zee (1573) Zutphen 165, 169, 217, 236 Zwaartsluis 167 Zwingli, Ulrich 194