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Chapter 10. Conclusion
in-law got appointed as burgomaster of Middelburg, but only once. Boxhorn
himself received 500 guilders from Frederik Hendrik for his history on the siege
of Breda, but he failed to become appointed as the prince’s historiographer. 7
However, even if, like we have said in chapter 3, Boxhorn can more easily
be rated among the Orangists than among the supporters of the States Party,
we should not forget that he also believed that the authority of a stadholder
was checked and that the prerogatives of the captain-general, the other office
the princes of Orange usually occupied, were restricted. Boxhorn never questioned
the fact that supreme power in the Dutch Republic rested with the
provincial States and the States General. Furthermore, in the Commentariolus
he also implicitly opposed to Frederik Hendrik’s attempt to acquire all the
provincial stadholderates in the Dutch Republic. In the Dutch case the concentration
of power, be it in the hands of the States General or in those of the
princes of Orange, could not count on Boxhorn’s approval. Boxhorn accepted
the fragmented political infrastructure of the Dutch Republic and the existence
of the different players involved in Dutch politics: the provincial States,
the stadholders, the States General, and the captain-general.
In general we can say that Boxhorn was not a political revolutionary. It is
true that at times Boxhorn was critical of princes and that he, even in his most
‘absolutist’ work, the De majestate, defended the right of subjects to resist a
tyrant. But Boxhorn never incited to the overthrow of legitimate governments.
Neither did men like Lipsius or Grotius, nor for that matter so-called ‘radicals’
like Johan de la Court or Spinoza. We can savely say that with regard to the
subject of political revolution Boxhorn was as conservative as all the other
seventeenth-century Dutch political thinkers. 8
However, although Boxhorn did not preach revolution, before 1648 he
did allow, indeed was in favour of, changing the form of government after
a tyrant was deposed or when circumstances had changed. This positive
view on regime change distinguishes Boxhorn from someone like Spinoza,
who in the Tractatus Theologico-Politico (Theological-Political Treatise, 1670)
7 For the money Boxhorn received from Frederik Hendrik for his history of Breda, see Constantijn
Huygens’s letter to Boxhorn, dated July 31, 1640. Constantijn Huygens, De briefwisseling van
Constantijn Huygens (1608-1687), Vol. 3: 1640-1644. Uitgegeven door J.A. Worp (Martinus Nijhoff; The
Hague, 1914), p. 76, letter 2467. ‘Ik heb er voor gezorgd, dat u f 500 uit de kas van den Prins zullen
worden uitbetaald. Het mandaat er voor vindt gij in den Haag bij den heer Buysero, schoonzoon
van den thesaurier. Het is weinig geld voor zooveel arbeid, maar gij moet den roem ook meetellen.’
To compare, for the same work Boxhorn received a ‘mere’ 100 guilders from the curators of Leiden
University. Molhuysen, Bronnen tot de geschiedenis der Leidsche Universiteit, Vol. 2, p. 248. Taking this
into account, the prince of Orange served as a lucrative extra source of income for professors like
Boxhorn.
8 For Johan de la Court’s conservatism concerning political revolution, see V.H., Consideratien en
Exempelen van Staat, IX.10 [IX.12], pp. 368-69. For Spinoza’s, see below.