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

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Chapter 5. Times of trouble. Taking a stand
General that would be held in The Hague on January 18 of the next year.
Even before this meeting had commenced the States of Holland had decided
not to pronounce a successor for the office of stadholder and captain-general.
They also effectively took over his military functions and the prerogatives that
had belonged to the stadholder. This meant that the towns now could elect
their own magistrates without outside interference, under the responsibility
of the States of Holland. The States of Holland also dictated the outcome of
the ‘Great Assembly’. Holland, Gelderland, Overijssel and Utrecht decided
that, for the time being, they would refrain from electing a new stadholder.
The command of the army was divided between the seven provinces. 167 Furthermore,
on Holland’s initiative the States General had also acknowledged
the Commonwealth of England as ‘a free Commonwealth’. 168
There was hardly any opposition. If there was an Orangist faction, it was
headless and powerless to act, despite the hopes the birth of a male heir,
William III (1650-1702), eight days after his father’s death, had installed in
their hearts. Worse, those who sympathised with the ‘Orangist cause’ now
saw themselves confronted with a growing opposition to what had not been
in question since the founding of the Republic, namely the institution of the
stadholderate itself. An institution whose reputation William II had stained
by his ill attempt to gain by force what he could not obtain by mediation.
Indeed, as Boxhorn found out, the actions of the late prince of Orange had
cast a shadow on the past. When Boxhorn decided to publish the funeral oration
that he had delivered on the death of the prince the curators of the University
of Leiden intervened. 169 Boxhorn could publish his oration, they held,
but only if he would make some alterations. These alterations concerned ‘the
disbandment and continuation of the militia of this state and the procedures
167 Frijhoff and Spies, Hard-Won Unity, pp. 75-80.
168 Groenveld, “The English Civil Wars as a Cause of the First Anglo-Dutch War, 1640-1652”, p. 555.
169 In 1650 the three curators of the University of Leiden were Gerard Schaep (1598-1666), Amelis
van Bouchorst (†1669), and Cornelis van Beveren (1591-1663). Schaep was a wealthy man, who had
been burgemeester of Amsterdam several times. In 1650, when the crisis between the States of Holland
and William II came to a head, the States send him as their own representative to London to watch over
the province’s interest. In 1651 they sent him to England to negotiate a treaty with the new republican
regime. Rowen, The Princes of Orange, p. 86, and Pincus, Protestantism and Patriotism, pp. 30-31. Van
Bouchorst, Lord of Wimmenum, was the eldest member of the Knighthood of Holland. As such, he was
chair of the so-called ‘gecommitteerde raden’ of the South Quarter of Holland, one of the two ‘standing
committees … which supervised the routine administration’ of the province of Holland. Extremely
wealthy, he was not committed to any party, but more of an opportunist, changing sides as he saw fit.
During the 1640s he held a seat in one of the secret commissions (‘secrete besognes’) and actively helped
Frederik Hendrik’s pro-French course. Groenveld, Verlopend getij, p. 87; Henk van Nierop, Van ridders tot
regenten: de Hollandse adel in de zestiende en de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw (De Bataafsche Leeuw;
Dieren, 1984), p. 231; Israel, The Dutch Republic, pp. 279-80, with quote on p. 279. Van Beveren was a
regent from Dordrecht who favoured Orange. Otterspeer, Het bolwerk van de vrijheid, p. 376.