historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

Chapter 5. Times of trouble. Taking a stand
power, not so much as prince, but as subject of those laws he had sworn under
oath and which he had violated in many terrible and previously unheard of
ways. They did so, not as subjects, but as Estates, who, in the previous centuries,
shared in power, nay more, whose power exceeded that of the prince.’ 60
This last remark may give us a clue why Boxhorn did not consider it necessary
to disprove I.B.’s reproach that according to the right of primogeniture
Philip II should have been succeeded by his heirs. The remark shows close
resemblance to the Dutch resistance thesis that claimed that in the Low Countries
the provincial States held sovereignty. They were the representatives of
the people and guardians of the local privileges. As such, they were not only
allowed, but also obligated to defend these privileges when these were transgressed.
61 This thesis found its completion in Grotius’s De antiquitate, in which
it was further expressed that the provincial States of the United Provinces
were accustomed to elect their princes. 62 By following this line of argumentation
Boxhorn did not need to refute I.B.’s reproach; the right of primogeniture
simply did not apply to the Low Countries. 63
At this point we can draw some provisional conclusions. The execution of
king Charles I and the proclamation of the Commonwealth had direct consequences
for the Dutch Republic. England, the Republic’s most important commercial
rival but also one of its most important trading partners, was now de
facto governed by a regime that was officially at war with the blood relatives
of the Republic’s most esteemed noble family, the family of Orange. During
the civil wars the Dutch Republic had always insisted on neutrality. After the
execution, however, pressure mounted to review this standpoint. What to do?
Boxhorn’s answer in the De successione et iure primogenitorum is quite
straightforward and constructed to proof that England would still have been a
monarchy if the law of the realm, that is, the right of primogeniture, had been
followed up. Yet it was not. Instead, the monarchy had been abolished and the
60 Boxhorn, De majestate, p. 100. ‘qui [Foederati Belgae-JN] … non tam Principem, quam subjectum
iis in quas juraverat, quasque multis & inauditi terroris modis violaverat, legibus, nec subjecti, sed
Ordines, ab omnibus retro saeculis consortes imperii, imo vi imperii majores, imperio exuêre [Principem
suum Philippum-JN].’
61 Nicolette Mout, “Ideales Muster oder erfundene Eigenart: Republikanische Theorien während
des niederländischen Aufstands”, in Helmut G. Koenigsberger (ed.), Republiken und Republikanismus im
Europa der Frühen Neuzeit (Oldenbourg; München, 1988), pp. 169-94, and Martin van Gelderen, The Political
Thought of the Dutch Revolt 1555-1590 (Cambridge University Press; Cambridge, 1 st ed. 1992, 2002), pp.
262-65.
62 Grotius, The Antiquity of the Batavian Republic, especially chapters two and five. This construction
of the Dutch past, which was used to legitimise the Dutch Revolt and thus the existence of the
Dutch Republic, is also known as the ‘Batavian myth’. See E.O.G. Haitsma Mulier, “De Bataafse mythe
opnieuw bekeken”, in Bijdragen en mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden, Vol. 111 (1996),
pp. 344-67.
63 As we shall see in Boxhorn’s Commentariolus.
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