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

Chapter 7. The mistress of life
One charter Boxhorn mentions reflects the growing importance of wealth
within Holland’s urban communities. At Delft, Philip the Good of Burgundy
(1396-1467) had issued a charter that stipulated that only the wealthiest and
most honourable citizens (Rijcxste, Eerbaerste, Notabelste, ende Vredelickste) can
sit on the town council (vroedschap ende Rijkdom) and that from among those
only the wealthiest and most honourable can serve as alderman (schepen) or
burgomaster (burgermeester). 68
Town charters also redefined the relationship between the count and his
subjects. They gave the towns of Holland certain rights which the count had
to observe. 69 This changed political relationship is reflected in the oath of
fidelity taken by both parties during the inauguration of Charles the Bold
(1433-1477) as heir to his father Philip the Good as count of Holland on June
21, 1468. Charles swore to protect the Holy Church and to ‘honour the rights
and privileges once given by our ancestors’, the nobles, knights, and towns
of Holland and West-Friesland promised to recognise Charles as their lawful
count and to assist him every time he needed help, which they were obliged
to do ‘according to law and reason’. 70
An important side effect of these charters was that they created the possibility
of lawful resistance. If a count, or one of his representatives, deliberately
violated the privileges and town charters that the count had sworn to uphold,
the towns could defend themselves. 71 This is precisely what happened when
Philip II, in his attempt to enforce his religious policies on the Netherlands,
oppressed his subjects, violated their rights, and deliberately hampered trade.
He had violated Holland’s ‘public freedom’ and was therefore deposed as
count of Holland and Zeeland. 72
van Engen (eds.), Stadswording in de Nederlanden: op zoek naar een overzicht (Uitgeverij Verloren; Hilversum,
2005), pp. 47-62, and Hildo van Engen, “Geen schraal terrein: stadsrechten en het onderzoek naar
stadswording”, in ibidem, pp. 67-69.
68 Boxhorn, Toneel ofte beschryvinge, p. 151. For the early development of the Dutch town councils,
see Fruin, Geschiedenis der staatsinstellingen, pp. 68-74. According to Jonathan Israel, ‘The Burgundian
dukes, from the mid-fifteenth century onwards, had deliberately encouraged the development of closed
regent oligarchies, reducing access to civic government and confining it to the hands of the richest segment
of urban society’. Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 125.
69 Boxhorn’s view on the changing relationship between the counts of Holland and their subjects shows
a close resemblance with the theory of ‘constitutional monarchy created by kings’ that the English king
James I had presented in a speech that he had made to Parliament on March 21, 1610. In this speech James I
had explained that ‘Kings in their first originall’ had unlimited powers, but that in time they had given their
subjects rights and had binded themselves ‘by a double oath to the observation of the fundamentall lawes’.
The result was that the powers of the ‘setled Kings and Monarches, that doe at this time governe in civill
Kingdomes’ were limited. Quoted from Christianson, Discourse on History, Law and Governance, pp. 15-16.
70 These two oaths do not appear in the 1632 Latin edition of the Theatrum, but in the 1634 Dutch
edition. Boxhorn, Toneel ofte beschryvinge, pp. 57-58.
71 An early example is Boxhorn’s discussion of the revolt of Dordrecht against baljuw Alundus (Aloud
van Yerseke) and count John I (1284-1299) at the end of the thirteenth century. Boxhorn, Theatrum, pp. 100-1.
72 Ibidem, p. 86. ‘Philippus III ob tyrannidem, & oppressam libertatem publicam, anno 1572, ab
211