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

Chapter 5. Times of trouble. Taking a stand
William’s prudence led him to accept his role as stadholder and captaingeneral;
he did not seek sovereign power over the provinces nor did he try to
unite them under one central government. Not only did regional governance
by the States suit the ‘humours’ of the Dutch better, these ‘humours’ also differed
from one another. Thus, although the seven provinces were united in
a ‘body’, ‘as if they were one province’, a ‘commonwealth’, this unity of the
Dutch Republic was severely restricted by the demands of its constituent parts.
The reason, for example, that it was unnecessary for the seven provinces to
have one and the same person as stadholder (much like the Dutch Republic
had one captain-general) was because ‘the regulation of each province serves
not so much the good of the common Union, but [the good] of each particular
province’. 140 Indeed, as Boxhorn makes clear in the Institutiones politicae, alliances
like those between the seven Dutch provinces have to take into account
two common goods: the common good of its constituent parts, which are sovereign
entities, since only princes or peoples who are independent and who
possess summa potestas can make alliances, and the common good of the alliance.
141 This, of course, can easily lead to friction, since these two common
goods, or the interpretations of what these two common goods exactly amount
to, do not always agree. In the Dutch Republic the situation was even worse.
Not only was the same man, the prince of Orange, the chief office-holder in
several provinces, he was at the same time one of the most important servants
of the Generality. Leaving the prince of Orange’s own personal interests aside,
this could constitute a conflict of interests, since he was required to uphold
both the common good of the province and the common good of the union. 142
However, in his analysis of why the Dutch Republic should last Boxhorn
focuses on rather different problems. Boxhorn accredits the Republic’s ‘persis-
prudenter repudiavit, cognito haud dubiè Foederatorum populorum ingenio, quos ad obsequia & gravia
tributorum praestanda onera promptiores sub Supremo Ordinum, quam unius Comitis Imperio, in
quo minus plerumque est libertatis, futuros non ignorabat.’ This explanation nicely fits the self-image
of the Dutch as a ‘freedom-loving’ people. See, for example, Marieke Meijer Drees, Andere landen, andere
mensen: de beeldvorming van Holland versus Spanje en Engeland omstreeks 1650 (Sdu Uitgevers; The Hague,
1997), pp. 26-29.
140 Ibidem, IV.14, p. 63. ‘Quemadmodum enim omnes Foederati Ordines agnoscere coguntur unum
& eundem Militiae Imperatorem, ita & in agnoscendo domi eodem Gubernatore necessarium non est,
cum uniuscujusque ditionis disciplina non tam ad bonum communis foederis, quam uniuscujusque
singularis ditionis sit comparata.’ This was exactly the reason why the States of Friesland, much to the
dismay of Frederik Hendrik, elected William Frederick (1613-1664) to succeed his brother Hendrick
Casimir I (1612-1640) as stadholder. The States of Friesland feared a further increase of Frederik Hendrik’s
power and preferred to elect someone from the House of Nassau-Dietz, a branch of the House of
Nassau that had been fulfilling the office of stadholder of Friesland since 1620. Luuc Kooijmans, Liefde in
opdracht: het hofleven van Willem Frederik van Nassau (Uitgeverij Bert Bakker; Amsterdam, 2000), pp. 24-30.
141 Boxhorn, Institutiones politicae, I.11, pp. 165, 175.
142 Some, however, reasoned the other way around: the prince of Orange’s several functions would
bind him and the provinces closer to the Union.
149