7
Holland under Philip II, 1556–1566

Philip II was to be the last Count of Holland. During his reign Holland's history was more closely tied to events at the center of the realm than ever before. Despite his reputation as the protagonist of absolute monarchy,^[1] Philip's initial instinct was to govern his lands in the Low Countries through the advice and consent of his subjects. For a brief period, the active collaboration of noble and burgher elites in the tasks of government brought the various provinces closer than ever to functioning as a nation with a common sense of purpose and identity. Having come to the Netherlands to take possession of his father's lands, Philip remained for four years because of the ongoing war with France. Duke Emmanuel-Philibert of Savoy, driven out of his own lands by France, served both as commander of the King's armies and Governor-General of the Netherlands. In hopes of overcoming resistance by the provincial states^[2] to higher taxes, Philip accepted Savoy's proposal to have deputies from the various provinces "communicate together" in the States General, instead of merely stating the opinions of their principals, as they usually did at such meetings. In this way, it was hoped, the deputies might come up with their own means for fighting a war while combating the crown's enormous debt, now estimated at 9,000,000 pounds. After four months of interprovincial negotiation, in which deputies from Brabant took the lead, the States General presented a proposal that Philip II accepted in January 1558: 2,400,000 pounds would be raised through sales of renten by the provincial states, and the States General would borrow an additional 2,400,000 on the Antwerp exchange; to pay off this loan, and to provide for garrisons along the frontiers,

800,000 pounds would be raised each year for nine years. All monies were to be collected and disbursed by receivers responsible to the provincial states—like Holland's Receiver for the Common Land—and they in turn reported to a Receiver General appointed by the States General.^[3]

When the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis (April 1559) finally concluded the last Habsburg-Valois war, Savoy returned to his ancestral lands, and Philip II transferred the government of the Netherlands to a new regent, Margaret of Parma, Charles V's illegitimate daughter. Like Mary of Hungary, she was to be advised by a Council of State that included the greatest nobles of the realm, such as William of Orange and Lamoraal van Egmont. In light of later events, there were rumors, not now credited by historians, that Philip secretly instructed her to rely on the advice of only three members of the Council: Antoine Perrenot, Bishop of Arras and lord of Granvelle, the man most trusted by the King; Viglius van Aytta, President of the Council of State; and the Count of Berlaymont, President of the Council of Finance.^[4] Philip did instruct Margaret to deal with the States General "in the old manner rather than the new," that is, not to allow the deputies of the separate provinces to communicate together. (The nine-years' bede had not worked well, and new arrangements were negotiated with the states of individual provinces in 1560.)^[5]

Philip also gave Margaret special instructions for the maintainance of the Catholic religion. Like his father, he insisted that the courts enforce the placards without mitigation. As he prepared to sail from Zeeland for Spain, Philip ordered Margaret to deal with heretics under arrest in Middelburg "in such wise that the world may understand that I do not intend any equivocation in this matter."^[6] Yet Calvinism was now flourishing in the southern provinces, especially in Flanders and in French-speaking areas adjacent to the frontier.^[7] The northern provinces, if not yet infected by this new heresy, were also farther from Brussels and notoriously hard to control. Willem Lindanus, a doctor of theology from Leuven and a native of Dordrecht, had received a commission in 1557 to investigate heresy in Friesland where his efforts provoked spirited resistance from both the States of Friesland and the Council of Friesland. As

delicately as she could, Margaret kept Philip informed of the stages of Lindanus's retreat, until he received permission to retire to his position as dean of the chapter church of St. James in The Hague.^[8] More effective repression of heresy was certainly one reason why Philip embraced the idea of creating new bishoprics in the Netherlands. Plans drafted by a secret committee appointed by the King were approved in Rome in May 1559, and the finished text of a papal bull erecting the new dioceses was ready for issue in May 1560. Because the papal chancery wanted a fee of 10,000 pounds, which the impoverished government in Brussels could not pay, the publication of Super Universas was delayed until March 1561.^[9]

Once the secret was out, it sparked furious controversy. Orange and Egmont's letter of protest to the King (July 1561) marked the beginning of the celebrated rift in the Council of State between Granvelle and a few loyalists on one side and most of the great lords on the other.^[10] Popular opposition focussed on plans to strengthen the Church's campaign against heresy: Super Universas provided that two of the nine canons foreseen for each new diocese would have papal commissions as inquisitors. The upper clergy objected to the fact that the new dioceses would be funded from the revenues of existing monasteries; their voice was strongest in the States of Brabant where twelve important abbots made up the first estate. In the same body, William of Orange was spokesman for the nobility represented in the second estate, which feared an erosion of the ecclesiastical benefices that traditionally supported the younger sons of noble families. Finally, among the great cities that made up the third estate in Brabant, powerful Antwerp insisted that a stronger inquisition would ruin its trade with foreigners. The King's decision (April 1563) to suspend efforts to install a bishop in Antwerp signalled a prudent retreat. Bishops were accepted pro forma in some cities, including Haarlem in Holland, but even here they would not have power to reform the clergy until the iron-fisted Duke of Alba made credible threats to use force to break the resistance of privileged ecclesiastical corporations. The more immediate effect of these appointments was to strengthen the influence, in Brussels and Madrid, of' those obsequious clerics who had faithfully supported the

King in his determination to "extirpate" heresy and who were now rewarded with bishoprics. Lindanus, for example, was eventually named Bishop of Roermond in Guelders.^[11]

Within the Council of State, opposition focused on Granvelle who had been named Archbishop of Mechelen and primate of the Netherlands in the King's ecclesiastical reorganization. After several months of contention over various other issues, the great lords in the Council wanted the States General to be convened to discuss the affairs of the realm. But since Margaret was prevented from doing so by Philip's express orders, she summoned instead a chapter of the Knights of the Golden Fleece (May 1562). Orange took the occasion of their presence in Brussels to convene an informal meeting at his palace, on the site of the present Royal Library, from which Granvelle and Viglius were pointedly excluded. These discussions led to formation of a "league" against Granvelle, embracing most of the great nobles. Finally, Orange, Egmont, and Hornes announced in a letter to the King (March 1563) that they could not continue sitting in the Council of State so long as Granvelle was there. To emphasize the point, all three quit Brussels, and Orange and Egmont traveled together to Holland.^[12]

After delaying for the better part of a year, Philip II at last instructed Granvelle to retire from the Netherlands (February 1564), for a temporary absence that proved permanent. After his departure, it was no longer possible to avoid full-scale discussion of the placards in the Council of State. None of the great nobles had embraced Protestantism at this time, not even Orange, but it is not too much to say they spoke for a national revulsion at the continuing ferocity of the persecution. In Antwerp, for example, the executioner barely escaped an angry mob after he had hastily dispatched his latest victim, a Calvinist minister who had formerly been a Carmelite friar in England. In December 1564 Egmont was dispatched to Spain with a formal request for the King to mitigate the placards, especially in regard to the death penalty. Egmont came back with the impression that he had gained his point, but in fact Philip would allow only the appointment of a "committee of theologians" to discuss the matter. This group proposed some mitigation of the placards for youthful offenders. During the summer, while Brussels awaited

Philip's reply, many of the lesser nobles, including some who were now Calvinists, held meetings in the principality of Liège to discuss what to do if the King refused even this concession. Philip's decision, expressed in the famous letters from Segovia Wood (October 1565), was that the placards must be enforced according to the letter, with no shadow of mitigation. What Geoffrey Parker has called the "First Revolt" of the Netherlands, which began when several hundred lesser nobles formed a union or "Compromise" among themselves to oppose the placards (December 1565), and continued with a wave of iconoclastic fury that swept across the Netherlands in August 1566.^[13]

This chapter will examine the continuing strength and the growing autonomy of Holland's provincial institutions in the years when the authority of the central government virtually collapsed under the troubled regency of Margaret of Parma. The contrast is most evident in the fiscal sphere: at a time when the government could not even pay the salaries of its officials in The Hague, there was a steady stream of cash passing through the hands of the Receiver for the Common Land, permitting the States to provide "gratuities" for helpful officials in Brussels or The Hague, in transactions that were sometimes not recorded in the accounts to which government auditors were given access. At the same time, new leaders in the Council of Holland and in the pivotal city of Amsterdam seemed to lack the effectiveness of their predecessors. But after 1563, once he took a real interest in the affairs of Holland, Stadtholder William of Orange brought the States into an effective alliance with the great lords. Finally, active persecution of heretics had practically come to a standstill in Holland by the time of Philip's departure for Spain. Efforts to bring the Council of Holland as well as local magistrates to account for their laxity proved only that Margaret's weakened government altogether lacked the power to enforce laws that her subjects believed to be cruel and contrary to their privileges.

Credit-Worthy Province, Impecunious Government

After 1560, the government's annual bede revenue from Holland consisted of 37,500 pounds for garrison wages and a net yield of

48,000 from the ordinaris bede, almost all of which was pledged to recurring expenses.^[14] Domain finances in Holland were in such a woeful state that the Councillors Ordinary of the Council of Holland went for nearly three years without receiving a stuiver of their annual salary.^[15] In effect, then, the government had no disposable income from this important province. Yet the States consistently refused Margaret of Parma's requests for extraordinaris beden .^[16] Holland's economy in these years was adversely affected by complications overseas, including the succession of the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I in England (1558), and the Seven Years' War of the North, a struggle for supremacy in the Baltic between Denmark and Sweden (1563–1570).^[17] But these troubles did not prevent the States from levying two tenth-pennies (1561, 1564) to help retire provincial debt; these payments were in addition to the approximately 100,000 pounds per year from the impost and land tax that was used to pay interest on the debt.^[18] One may say that the States called on Holland's taxpaying capacity for servicing provincial debt, but not for addressing the needs of the central government.

Owing to the expanding activities of the provincial bureaucracy, the States built an "office of the Common Land" (1558–1560) next to the Dominican cloister in The Hague.^[19] Just as towns had strongboxes with multiple keys to guard copies of their cherished privileges, the States now had in their new office a strongbox for provincial accounts and for privileges of the Common Land, with keys held by the Advocate, by a member of the King's Chamber of Accounts, and by two deputies, one for the towns and one for the nobles.^[20] During the same period meetings of the States were beginning to be called by their own officials, rather than by the Council of Holland. As ad hoc committees (gecommiteerden ) were created to oversee various aspects of the new fiscal system, Aert Coebel, Receiver for the Common Land, summoned the deputies on his own authority, apparently in 1554. When Jacob van den Eynde, the former pensionary of Delft, became Advocate of the States in 1560, he did the same.^[21] More and more, the States were becoming a self-conscious and self-regulating "body," like a municipality on a grander scale.

This growing institutional autonomy of the States did not

pass without challenge. As they administered provincial taxes and provincial renten, deputies expected their decisions on disputed questions to be enforced by the judicial apparatus of the Court of Holland with its messengers and process-servers (deurwaarders ). Some members of the Council were apparently disturbed by the fact that these lesser officials, representing the prince's authority in Holland, would now be expected to take orders from an assembly of his subjects. In February 1555, Willem Snouckaert, one of the Councillors Ordinary, presented the government with a sixty-seven-point indictment of alleged fiscal mismanagement by the States. The key issue was whether the Council had judicial review over fiscal decisions by the States. The Council (not just Snouckaert) claimed authority to intervene in this process, for example, by insisting on revision before promulgating tax decrees of the States as having the force of law, or by releasing the magistrates of a given locality from house arrest if' it seemed they had been wrongfully detained. For their part, the deputies viewed the Court of Holland (and hence the Council) as having no role other than that of an enforcement agency in the States' levy of taxes. They even attempted, albeit without success, to prevent Hollanders who felt themselves aggrieved by the States from appealing to the Grand Council of Mechelen. When Holland assented to its share of the nine-years' bede (1558), the States made it one of their conditions that the Council in The Hague comply with and carry out the fiscal decisions of the States. The States evidently had some success in exerting pressure on the Council through the central government because in March 1562, the Council formally promised to carry out orders issued by the States in regard to revenues of the Common Land.^[22]

Snouckaert's bill of particulars also charged that the Council and the Chamber of Accounts were not kept informed about the revenue-gathering activity of the States because Coebel was slow in rendering account and because the States did not furnish the Council with copies of their Resolutiën . More importantly, according to "common report" Coebel and his clerks were guilty of serious improprieties: Coebel had used 2,000 pounds from the proceeds of renten sales to cover his arrears as Receiver for the Prince of Orange's lands in south Holland; his

clerk, Mangelman, who had since fled, lent 4,000 of the Common Land's money to a certain individual, and thirty or thirty-five others in The Hague received sums totalling 12,000 or 13,000 pounds. The flight of Coebel's clerk suggests that there was some truth in these charges, and it seems too that Coebel was not so careful about accounting for the sums he received as some other fiscal officials were. For example, between 1521 and 1530 Willem Goudt as Receiver for the beden collected beden with a nominal value of 2,013,201 pounds, whereas between 1552 and 1560 Coebel as Receiver for the Common Land collected beden with a nominal value of 2,489,000. But Goudt's accounts for the 1520s never show a deficit greater than 4,500, whereas Coebel accumulated arrears of 82,673. But no one in authority credited the insinuation that the new fiscal system was fundamentally corrupt. Even before the States had a copy of Snouckaert's charges, they were forewarned by someone (Mellink suggests Assendelft, who was no friend of Snouckaert: see below), so as to eliminate some of the irregularities at issue.^[23]

The strength of the States lay in their credit rating. In the last years of Charles V's reign, the States were already endorsing promissory notes or obligatiën to the bankers, to be made good by future bede revenues (see chap. 5). The government's fiscal impotence became embarrassingly clear in the early months of Philip II's reign, when Holland consented to a 200,000-bede, half to be levied by the schiltal and half by a sale of renten . Perhaps because of Snouckaert's charges against Coebel, the government wanted the schiltal portion of this extraordinaris bede collected by its own fiscal bureaucracy, contrary to the practice of the last few years. As a result, the States agreed to sign an obligatie only for the portion to be raised through renten, a sum for which Coebel was still responsible; as for the rest, if it was to be collected by the King's official, he should interpose his own credit. But within a few weeks, Viglius reported that the King's Receiver-General was unable to obtain credit in Antwerp; the States were thus asked to obligate Holland for the full 200,000 pounds, with the understanding that Coebel would be the collector.^[24] In 1557, when Philip II was forced to declare a partial repudiation of his debts, the "faith and credit" (krediet en geloove ) of the States must have seemed all the more solid by contrast.

Savoy asked the Marquis of Vere at this time to arrange a 200,000-pound forced loan from private persons in Holland, but the Stadtholder replied, on the advice of Assendelft and Councillor Cornelis Suys, that it would be much better to rely on "the credit of the States," by asking them to agree to a sale of renten for 200,000 and to give their obligatie for this amount.^[25] Hollanders were still nervous about dealing with the "great purses" of Antwerp,^[26] especially Gaspar Schetz, Philip II's loan broker, who was the second-generation head of one of the great banking houses.^[27] But Schetz was helpful to the States in presenting Savoy with a 10,000-pound gratuity—he accepted their obligatie so the money could be transmitted to the Governor-General immediately—and in 1561 Schetz himself received a gratuity of' 1,100 pounds for helping the States to arrange a favorable exchange rate in settling provincial debts.^[28] Deputies remained wary of such transactions, but men with money to lend and institutions with a strong credit rating will find ways of accommodating each other.

From Coebel's accounts one cannot tell what the state of the Common Land's treasury may have been at a given moment, since he routinely entered as income all payments that were due, regardless of whether the money had been received.^[29] There must have been cash on hand because the States periodically gave Coebel instructions on how to use it,^[30] and there is reason to believe that the sums available grew larger as time went on. At the beginning of Philip's reign, the approximately 100,000 pounds in revenue from the impost and land tax was barely enough to pay annual interest on provincial renten . Coebel had instructions to pay "outlanders" (non-Hollanders) first, to avoid trouble, but there were still occasional reports of Hollanders having their property seized in Zeeland or elsewhere for non-payment of interest on Holland renten .^[31] But Coebel was able to reduce the province's indebtedness as interest rates receded from peak levels of the early 1550s; thus he sold heritable annuities (losrenten ) at the rate of 1:12 to redeem life annuities (lijfrenten ) sold at 1:6. Before long he was able to find buyers for losrenten at 1:16, to redeem those sold at 1:12. In addition, two tenth-pennies levied by the States (1561, 1564) brought in enough to redeem almost half the outstanding capi-

tal. Thus annual renten interest charged to the impost and land tax accounts declined from a high of 134,000 in 1555/1556 to 59,685 in 1566/1567.^[32] But since rates for the impost and land tax were maintained at the same level, the State gradually built up a positive cash balance. In the years just before the Revolt, the surplus was used mainly for further redemptions of renten, including full repayment to a single rentenier who had subscribed 64,000 pounds for a new issue of 100,000 to which the States consented in 1565.^[33]

Gratuities were of course another way in which the States could employ their ready cash. According to Snouckaert's list of complaints (1555), when Coebel was asked to make payments on the order of the Court of Holland, he would say that he was not answerable to the Court or that "what money he had in his office had to go to Brussels for gratuities (propeynen ) at the court, and that gratuities took precedence."^[34] Certain kinds of gratuities were quite traditional. In the early years of Charles V's reign it was customary for the States to reward prominent individuals at court, sometimes upon recommendation of the Stadtholder, by writing these expenses into the small levies or omslagen that the Receiver for the Common Land collected for the needs of the States. There were also special levies for prominent figures like the Regent or the Stadholder.^[35] Now that there was a steady flow of cash into Coebel's office, the States could make such payments without any special levies. For example, the deputies decided in February 1559 to raise 10,000 pounds for Savoy by having Coebel sell that amount in renten "under the mass of what his Majesty has asked for" in the nine-years' bede . Gaspar Schetz advanced the money, as noted above, and just to make things legal, the States voted to add a clause about Savoy's gratuity, retroactively, to their consent to the pertinent portion of the nine-years' bede .^[36]

Most interesting is the possibility that the States could now make payments of this kind under the table without any of the King's auditors knowing about them. Omslagen were audited by committees that included auditors from the Chamber of Accounts in The Hague, and the committees that audited Coebel's receipts for the impost and land tax always included one member from this body and one from the Council of Holland, as

well as deputies from the States. But when the States decided (1557) to spend 1,200 pounds on a gift for Viglius, President of the Council of State, Coebel was instructed to account for this and a few smaller payments to court figures "apart," and not in the presence of commissioners from the Council or the Chamber of Accounts. About a year later, when Coebel reported that he was behind on his installment payments to Viglius and the others, he was told to make a budget summary for the Advocate and the six great cities, and not to let it come into anyone else's hands. It seems the payments in question were later slipped into one of the accounts for the impost and land tax in 1564/1565, but by this time whatever Viglius had done for the States in 1557 had been long forgotten.^[37]

There are not many references to such behind-the-scenes payments, but this is not a matter on which one would expect the official records of the States to be very informative. The truth probably lies somewhere between Coebel's boasting (as reported by Snouckaert) about all the gratuities he paid, and the relative silence of the Resolutiën van de Staten van Holland (RSH). Cornelis Suys, President of the Council of Holland, was presented with a stained-glass window by the States in 1560, and one can only speculate about the extent to which Suys and his colleagues, who went nearly three years without receiving any salary from the government, were amenable to being influenced by further largesse from the States. If an official who took money from someone other than his master was not unequivocally condemned in sixteenth-century Europe, those who made such payments clearly believed they were buying influence and preferred to keep the relationship confidential. Thus Charles V's government no doubt had good reason for assigning a handsome payment in 1540 to Aert van der Goes, Advocate and chief spokesman of the States, in one of the accounts of the Receiver for the beden to which deputies of the States were not privy.^[38] One must likewise assume that the States of Holland had good reason for their payment to Viglius in 1557. By noting the difference between paymaster and recipient in these two cases, one can perhaps form a just estimate of how the fiscal ground had shifted in the Low Countries. Obviously the King's debts did not call into question his sovereignty of the Nether-

lands, but there is much truth in the old adage that he who pays the piper calls the tune.

The Leadership of William of Orange

In any discussion of political development, one must keep in mind the distinction between bureaucratic processes and individual leadership. The former can be incremental and is to some degree predictable in its effects, but the latter is more like the spirit which blows where it will. For an understanding of Holland's fiscal strength under Philip II, it is of some importance to know that the committees appointed by the States to audit Coebel's accounts frequently included major buyers of provincial renten, like Haarlem's Meester Gerrit Hendrikszoon van Ravensberg.^[39] But the solid credit rating of the States did not in itself guarantee that any of the deputies would have a clear vision of Holland's interests within the Habsburg state or the capacity to persuade others to work for common goals. Indeed, just as there was a crisis of authority at the center of government under Margaret of Parma, at the provincial level the strong figures that marked earlier decades of Holland's history were not to be found in the early years of Philip II's reign.

The Marquis of Vere (d. 1558), hereditary Admiral of the Netherlands, had been named Stadtholder of Holland in the hope that by combining both offices he could put to rest the Hollanders' long resistance to the authority of the admiralty. But he kept mainly to his own territory in Zeeland and was understandably preoccupied, as Admiral, by the continuing depradations of French and Scottish privateers. He was regularly consulted by the government about Holland's affairs, but he seems to have relied heavily on the advice of Assendelft. One never sees him, like Hoogstraten, visting individual towns or remonstrating with their deputies at meetings of the States.^[40]

Among its many Stadholders Holland had never had such a potentate as William of Orange, Vere's successor. Hendrik van Nassau and his son Reynier, both of whom served briefly as Stadholders in Holland, had been Princes of Orange before him, and Hendrik had built the magnificent palace in Brussels where William entertained distinguished visitors with éclat . But

William was the first to combine in one person both the Netherlands and the German lands and titles of the Nassau family.^[41] The freedom of action that this German background provided him is evident both in his marriage (1561) to a Lutheran princess, Anna of Saxony, against the will of the Netherlands government, and in his decision to attend in his own right an assembly of the princes of the Empire at Naumburg after Margaret had refused to appoint him as the representative for the Netherlands.^[42] In Holland he was referred to as "his grace," and Amsterdam's vroedschap instructed the city's deputies on one occasion to vote with the majority of the States, "in order to win the good will of the Prince of Orange."^[43] But precisely because of his many commitments in Germany and in Brussels, William of Orange was too preoccupied to give much time to his northern stadtholderates—Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht. There is also no indication that deputies in the States spontaneously looked to him for guidance. They were still mindful of the unexpected defeat that the States had suffered when Philip II granted a blanket tax-exemption to the "three personages," Orange, Egmont, and Hornes. Periodically, the deputies reviewed documents pertaining to their efforts to sue for reversal of the King's decision, and Coebel was instructed to be sure to collect for the tenth penny on properties held by Orange that may not have been included in the 1556 decree.^[44]

Lamoraal van Egmont was an important man in the province, but he was also involved in a serious quarrel with the States over navigation rights in the Maas delta. The delta was divided lengthwise by the adjacent islands of Voorne and Putten, both of' which were part of Holland. One of the requirements for Holland's middleman role in the Baltic trade was an easy transit from its inland waterways to Antwerp and its outports in Zeeland. Vessels crossing the Maas delta from, say, Rotterdam to Antwerp had to pass between the islands or sail around them by going upstream as far as Dordrecht. But the channel that ran past Dordrecht was becoming impassable.^[45] The Bernis channel between Voorne and Putten was also becoming so shallow that the Geervliet toll station at its lower end took in hardly any revenue. Thus only a new channel known as the Spoeye, where a new toll station had been built, was now used by vessels.

In his capacity as Prince of Gavre, Egmont had title to a stretch of bottom land adjoining Putten, including the Spoeye, and by 1555 he announced his intention to have this land diked in to make a polder, in keeping with privileges granted in 1479 to the previous owners. His lawyers denied the Hollanders'contention that the Spoeye was a public waterway, alleging that the water level was at times only a foot deep. The States sent delegations to Antwerp in hopes of gaining that important city's support ("Jacob the land-measurer" was paid thirty pounds for a map brought to Antwerp). They also tried to interest Egmont in a "friendly" solution, out of court, but to no avail. Egmont was ordered not to dike in his land pending a decision, but in 1562 the case was still being argued before the Secret Council.^[46] One can hardly imagine a sharper conflict between the rights of a single great landholder and the common interests of a seafaring province. All in all, the early years of Margaret of Parma's regency did not seem a propitious moment for rapprochement between the States and the great lords.

Next to the Stadholder, the head of the Council of Holland was the leading figure in the province. Unlike his predecessor (Everaerts) and successor (Suys), Assendelft was called First Councillor, not President, perhaps because, being a nobleman, he had not remained at the law faculty of Orleans long enough to take a degree.^[47] But during Mary of Hungary's long regency, Assendelft had been indispensable to the government as a constant source of information and especially as a man having sufficient authority to mediate disputes among the towns represented in the States. He often spoke for the nobles in the States, and the fact that he served in two capacities at once—representing both the prince and the nobles of Holland—seems to have been a source of strength rather than an occasion for comment.^[48] The measure of his status in Holland is that it was not affected by the scandal that touched his family. As a student in Orleans, Assendelft had made his innkeeper's daughter pregnant, and then married her—something that few noblemen would have done. But Catherine Le Chasseur was never at home among the elite families of The Hague's binnenhof, and in 1541 she and two accomplices were convicted in the capital crime of counterfeiting. At the Council of Holland's request,

the Secret Council permitted her execution to be carried out in private, "for the honor of the house of Assendelft."^[49]

In April 1555, while attacking Coebel and the management of funds by the States, Snouckaert also presented the Secret Council with a list of over 500 charges of impropriety by Assendelft and his protégé, Cornelis Suys.^[50] The bill of particulars is apparently no longer extant, but to judge from their replies, Suys was accused of unlawful dealings with his kinsmen among Holland's town magistrates, and Assendelft was charged with numerous counts of profiteering and tax evasion. Suys acknowledged his kinship by marriage with Aert Coebel and with Adriaan Sandelijn, Amsterdam's pensionary, but he rejected the notion that officers of the prince must be indifferent to personal considerations: "everyone is obliged to help his friends find good positions for which they are suited." He also denied any improper favoritism. For example, his silver service was bought with his own money, not given him by Amsterdam, as Snouckaert charged, in return for information on discussions within the Council about Amsterdam's magistrates.^[51] Assendelft in his reply poured scorn on the social pretensions of Snouckaert, this "knight by decree" (ridder bullatus ), "what they call a carriage knight," who claimed the title by letter patent without having been "dubbed by Emperor or King." Within the Council the factionalism undoubtedly lying behind this whole episode is evident in Snouckaert's contention that Assendelft slighted him in the distribution of commissions—that is, the investigations that were a main part of the Council's business and for which Councillors were paid "for their troubles" by the contending parties. Assendelft claimed that another of the charges proved that Snouckaert had been his secret enemy for many years. There may have been bad blood going back to the period between 1535 and 1545 when Snouckaert, along with Guilleyn Zeghers, was evidently trusted by the government more than other Councillors were in the sensitive matter of defending orthodoxy. Whatever the origins of this dispute, neither Suys nor Assendelft suffered any ill consequences, and Snouckaert, who continued his charges against the two, was forced to resign.^[52]

Assendelft's death marks in many ways the end of an era for

the Council. In his study of Holland's noble families in this period, Van Nierop calls attention to those who were important enough to be summoned to the ridderschap, the college of nobles with a vote in the States. These men typically received their knightly titles by being dubbed and thus were entitled to be called "lord," whereas lesser men, including some who might be described as professional bureaucrats cultivating an aristocratic style of life, had only letters patent. Assendelft belongs in the former category, whereas Suys, Snouckaert, and Zeghers belong in the latter. After about 1550, ridderschap nobles were no longer interested in official posts, whether as members of the Council or as bailiffs exercising police powers in rural districts.^[53]

At the same time, the Council was becoming more exclusively identified with its judicial function, as distinct from the political and administrative functions especially visible in Assendelft's correspondence. De Schepper's work on the Grand Council of Mechelen shows an enormous increase in the volume of litigation in the Low Countries during the Habsburg era.^[54] After Assendelft's death the Council of Holland continued its political correspondence with the authorities in Brussels, but letters were exchanged with great frequency only during a terrible grain crisis in the early months of 1557. In more personal terms, Suys's few extant letters to Viglius bear no comparison with Assendelft's steady stream of reports to Hoogstraten and Mary of Hungary on all manner of topics, including the appointment of magistrates and officials. By contrast, there is preserved in The Hague a folio of correspondence for this period between the Council of Holland and the Secret Council. This correspondence records cases before the Secret Council referred to the provincial body for its opinion.^[55] In effect, the Council of Holland was undergoing an evolution that had long since taken place in the more southerly provinces closer to the centers of wealth, power, and litigation. Already by the beginning of Charles V's reign, the Council of Flanders occupied itself wholly with judicial matters and, unlike the Council of Holland, was supposed to be excluded from the eminently political task of choosing magistrates from among nominations submitted by the towns.^[56] By the end of Charles's reign, the Council of Holland was less aristocratic, more closely allied with

burgher elites (see chapter 5), and more strictly judicial in its functions. These developments point to a loss of independent political influence; thus, it is easier to understand how the States could successfully resist most of the Council's claims to the right of overseeing their fiscal decisions. Philip II's government needed an authoritative voice in Holland no less than Charles V's government did, but Suys and the Council were no longer able to provide it.^[57]

For some issues, the government seemed to rely less on the Council than on Sheriff Willem Dirkszoon Baerdes of Amsterdam. When Baerdes was first appointed (1544), the office was still held in pawn by the city government, but he continued in office after Mary of Hungary redeemed the government's right of appointment in 1550. Through his contacts with the merchant community, Baerdes was a constant source of reliable information on the vital grain trade. As need required, he could describe trading practices on the Torun grain exchange in Poland or explain how current prices in Lisbon were affecting grain markets in the Netherlands.^[58] He was not able or perhaps not willing to enforce the government's commands for Amsterdam to "communicate" its precious grain to other cities during the terrible shortage of 1557,^[59] but in more normal times he used the powers of his office to regulate the flow of grain out of the city according to a price-trigger mechanism first put into place by Mary of Hungary. If this meant restricting the activities of his merchant contacts, he also did them an important service by helping persuade the government to take action against the "monopolists" of the southern Netherlands who bought up fields of rye in Poland before the crop was even sown.^[60] Baerdes was the man to whom the government sometimes turned first for general information about the province. For example, in 1558 Savoy wanted a troublesome mercenary army moved from Amersfoort to England by a route that would cause least inconvenience to the King's lands. Contacted by the Governor-General, Baerdes provided four alternatives, commenting on the advantages and disadvantages of each; without naming his source, Savoy passed these alternatives on to the Council, asking them to name an "expert person" to advise the English ambassador.^[61] To be sure, as Woltjer points out, Baerdes had

not had anyone executed for the crime of heresy since 1553. Yet when informed about a fugitive preacher making his way through Holland, he took measures that would inspire confidence in any ruler, including having "two of my secret informants spend two nights outside the Haarlem gate, with a description of [the fugitive's] appearance."^[62]

Baerdes's effectiveness was limited, however, by the bitter feud that seems to have begun as soon as he accepted appointment from the Queen (1550). Friction between locally elected magistrates and a sheriff appointed by the prince was commonplace in Holland's towns,^[63] but the struggle in Amsterdam had an intensity and a duration that suggests deep-seated animosity. The shift (after 1538) from one ruling faction to another had been accompanied by recriminations against leaders of the former regime with whom Baerdes had close ties; moreover, his initial appointment as Sheriff (1542) seems to have been a peace offering from the current magistrates to those who were now excluded from power.^[64] In any event, after 1550, Baerdes was refused admission to meetings of the vroedschap; he was not allowed to appoint a deputy, and when he finally did so, the burgomasters contested the appointment for years. Worst of all, in 1553 Baerdes, his wife, and daughter were acccused of heresy by two informants who came forward with the support of Meester Hendrik Dirkszoon and of the pastor of the Old Church, Floris Engelbrechtszoon. After many years of litigation, the tables were turned: the two key witnesses were convicted of bearing false accusations, and their two sponsors were convicted of having suborned them. The leading witness, a woman of mean estate, was executed; Dirkszoon got off with four years of house arrest in The Hague, the pastor with perpetual banishment from Amsterdam.^[65]

There is little doubt that officials in both Brussels and The Hague favored the Sheriff, not his accusers. Sent to Amsterdam to place Dirkszoon and the pastor under arrest as quietly as possible, Vere reported that he had gotten a promise that nominations for the college of schepenen would be made "in the presence of Assendelft, or of the Sheriff," but he feared that nothing less than the King's "absolute power" was required to break the power of Dirkszoon's friends among the burgomasters and

the vroedschap .^[66] The Council in The Hague sought but did not obtain permission to put the pastor under torture, and when asked to investigate further in subsequent years, they insisted there was no other way to get at the truth.^[67]

This vindictive campaign against the Sheriff diminished not only his political effectiveness, but also that of Amsterdam's magistrates. Relative to Holland's other towns, Amsterdam grew steadily larger and wealthier as time went on,^[68] but its continuing economic strength somehow did not translate into a leadership in the States like that exercised by its deputies during the Guelders wars of the 1520s or the Baltic crises of the 1530s (see chaps. 3 and 4). Amsterdam had much to bargain with in its dealings with a penurious government—the city carried a surplus forward from year to year in its accounts—but the ongoing feud with Baerdes seems to have narrowed the magistrates' vision of what to bargain for.

In February 1557, asked to endorse a 50,000 pound obligatie in the city's name, the magistrates wanted the office of the sheriff to be included among the parcels of domain-that would be placed in their keeping for the duration of the loan. Savoy wrote Vere that "for several reasons" he was unwilling to place the sheriff's office into their hands, not even for 50,000 pounds. When Amsterdam insisted on precisely this condition, dragging out the negotiations, Savoy raised the stakes by ordering Vere to delay the election of magistrates beyond the customary January term, on the grounds that privileges granted by Mary of Hungary had not been renewed in Philip's reign. Finally, in April 1558, the magistrates signed off on the obligatie in return for renewal of the city's election privileges and the keeping of certain parcels of domain, not including the sheriff's office.^[69] In 1564 the magistrates finally persuaded Margaret of Parma to surrender control of the sheriff's office, for a cash payment of 20,000 pounds. But the certain knowledge that Baerdes would be removed when his current three-year contract expired prompted his supporters in the town to file a grievance or Doleantie with the government, charging the burgomasters with nepotism, misappropriation of tax revenue, and other abuses. The seventy burghers (henceforth known as Doleanten ) who signed this grievance included many of the city's

prominent merchants, and it was on this account to be taken seriously. It seems to have been well received in Brussels where Margaret of Parma was especially interested in hearing more about those allegedly misappropriated revenues.^[70] Thus if the magistrates did gain their partisan objective, they did so at the price of their credibility, both at home and in Brussels.

Even in regard to the Baltic trade, Amsterdam's Dirkist magistrates were not so prominent in discussions in the States as their predecessors had been.^[71] For one thing, they apparently did not have the kind of contacts in the Baltic region that Cornelis Bennink enjoyed in earlier decades. In 1561, when France sent an envoy to Copenhagen, Philip II and his government heard about this potentially dangerous connection not from Amsterdam, but from William of Orange, who had learned of it on one of his trips to Germany.^[72] The same year, the States decided, with Margaret's approval, to send an envoy to protest an increase in the rates of the Sound Toll. The initial choice fell on Meester Pieter Bicker, a wealthy Amsterdammer, but not a magistrate. But since the government apparently felt that a man of greater dignity should be sent, Bicker was replaced by Meester Philips Coebel, a member of the Secret Council, and brother of Holland's Receiver for the Common Land.^[73] Finally, as mentioned earlier, when Amsterdam's grain merchants sought relief from the monopolistic practices of "great purses" seeking to control eastern grain markets, they approached the Netherlands government through Baerdes, not the magistrates.^[74] Amsterdam's burghers were in a sense bound to become less important in the formal dealings between their government and the Baltic states than they once had been, if only because the placement of diplomacy on a more regular basis required the employment of important nobles or at least high officials like Philips Coebel rather than mere businessmen like Pieter Bicker. But one might also infer from what has been said that there was something less than close collaboration between Amsterdam's magistrates and the resident community of grain merchants. In fact, just as there is a curious absence of brewers among Delft's magistrates at this time, there were no grain merchants among Amsterdam's leading Dirkisten, except for Klaas Doedeszoon, who died in 1558.^[75] It is also worth not-

ing that while many magistrates lived along Warmoes Straat, they lived at the upper end of the city's most fashionable street, whereas merchant-burghers and foreign grain dealers were concentrated at the lower end where the open-air grain market was held. Conversely, one finds men from the lower end of Warmoes Straat among signatories of the Doleantie, in effect supporting Sheriff Baerdes.^[76]

In any case, Amsterdam was not the only city where one can detect a certain estrangement between the magistrate elite and the substantial population of comfortable-to-wealthy men who were their natural constituents. This stratum, known as the rijkdom, provided recruits for a town's military guilds (the schutters ), and at the upper levels for the magistracy. But there seems to have been a tendency for ruling elites to have become more tightly oligarchical as time went on—this was certainly true for Amsterdam's Dirkisten —and in the iconoclastic crisis of August 1566, many a town government was afraid to call on its schutters to stop the mobs rampaging through the churches. In an interesting study of the relations between magistrates and wider elites in Holland's towns, Christopher Grayson finds that "the crisis of authority in the Netherlands from 1564 to 1567 was not confined to the center."^[77] Another way of putting the matter is to say that the magistrates of this era understood more about lawsuits and debt servicing than they did about commerce. As time passes, the pages of the Resolutiën van de Staten van Holland (RSH) are more and more filled with petitions for tax rebates, instructions to Coebel about the sale of renten or the repayment of debt, payment orders for services rendered to the States, and summaries of lawsuits sustained by the States before the Grand Council or the Secret Council. This development obviously reflects the devolution of fiscal responsibility in the Low Countries to the provincial states, and it virtually demanded the services of magistrate-deputies who were trained in the law and who were themselves major investors in the public debt. But the men who had these qualifications were necessarily somewhat detached from the business concerns of their constituents, and they had no special expertise in dealing with a political or religious crisis that threatened the foundations of the social order.

On many occasions during these years, it was the noble deputies who provided leadership in the States. Speaking first in the States, the nobles had long been accustomed to framing proposals or counter-proposals in fiscal negotiations with the government, and during Charles V's reign what the States finally agreed to was often compounded of elements from proposals by the nobles and the towns, especially Dordrecht and Amsterdam. Under Philip II, and perhaps a bit earlier, nobles attended sessions of the States in greater numbers, as if exchanging participation in this body for the government offices that their ancestors had held. For example, the son of Assendelft and the nephew of his fellow-Councillor Arent van Duvenvoirde, Lord of Warmond, frequently attended meetings of the States, but were not officials.^[78] Also, possibly because of new techniques for drainage and dike-building, the age-long process of reclaiming land for cultivation was vigorously taken up again around mid-century, overseen by officials acting for the crown as well as urban investors.^[79] But nobles great and small had always been the natural leaders of reclamation projects and still were. Egmont and Brederode had major interests in the Zijpe and elsewhere in north Holland. To the south, Egmont at least had plans for his holdings on Putten, as noted earlier, and Heyman van der Ketel, a son of Meester Vincent Corneliszoon van Mierop, diked in some land in the Maas delta that later bore his name.^[80] Thus the landed interest for which the nobles in the States spoke was a relative bright spot in Holland's economy during a period when commerce and manufacturing were periodically damaged by war in Germany, war with France, friction with England, and troubles in the Baltic. Finally, the fact that the countryside was now shouldering proportionately more of the tax burden (see chapter 5) likely gave greater weight to the single vote of the college of nobles who alone represented the countryside. It is probably in this sense that Verhofstad speaks of the "moral authority" of the nobles in the States.^[81] All in all, it is not surprising if the urban members of the States were sometimes willing to "follow the nobles," as Amsterdam's vroedschap once instructed its deputies to do.^[82]

To sum up, with a partial exception for the nobles in the States, no person or group played a leading role in Holland's

affairs, as Hoogstraten or Assendelft or Amsterdam's magistrates in the era of Cornelis Bennink and Ruysch Janszoon had once done. This situation began to change in March 1563, when Orange and Egmont withdrew from the Council of State and travelled together to Holland. En route, they evidently discussed Egmont's dispute with the States over the Spoeye. On 6 April the States voted to accept Orange's offer of mediation. On 7 May, the deputies agreed to terms proposed by Egmont: he would keep the channel open, and Holland would compensate him for whatever losses he suffered, as determined by arbiters who were experts on dikage, including Orange and the Marquis of Vere. Each side would continue to argue its case before the Secret Council, with the understanding that they could at any time conclude the suit by mutual agreement. On 22 May, when Orange's role as mediator was again affirmed, the States determined that Egmont and Hendrik van Brederode would be summoned to all future dagvaarten .^[83] Meanwhile, Orange had been building up a clientele in Holland, as great lords did. For example, Assendelft's brother, Dirk van Assendelft, was the long-time Sheriff of Orange's town of Breda in northern Brabant. Orange arranged for Cornelis Suys to become ambachtsheer of Rijswijk, near The Hague (1557), and he was also instrumental in Suys's appointment as President of the Council of Holland (1559). Aert Coebel, it will be recalled, served as rentmeester for some of Orange's lands in south Holland even while serving the States as Receiver for the Common Land.^[84] The only sour note came from the patrician feud in Amsterdam; Margaret asked Orange to mediate the factional dispute, but the vroedschap refused to bear the costs of his visit to the city since it had come at the behest of certain "private persons," that is, the Doleanten . From the tone of this comment in the vroedschap resolutions it sounds as if the Doleanten too had been added to Orange's long list of friends.^[85]

Meetings of the States were not very frequent during the troubled final years of' Margaret of Parma's regency, but one sees the deputies calling on Orange to present their case for diplomatic initiatives to keep the Sound open, postponing their response to the government's request for a bede until his return, and petitioning Margaret to instruct him to reside in Holland

for the winter of 1565/1566.^[86] To show their appreciation to the Stadtholder, the States offered him a 30,000-pound gratuity, the same amount Hoogstraten had demanded for himself in the 1520s. When Orange indicated that he did not want the money, the States insisted on giving him 10,000 anyway, assigned to the impost and land tax account for 1566/1567. The Prince's advisers later suggested he could use the rest of the money, and an additional 20,000 pounds was assigned to the same account. Two years later, when this account was audited, both payments to Orange were disallowed for "certain reasons." By this time, Orange was in Germany, the exiled leader of a rebellion.^[87]

Earlier chapters of this book have suggested that the States of Holland could work their will against powerful government officials only in collaboration with the great lords. Thus the States went to IJsselstein and others to have Castre removed, despite Hoogstraten's objections (1528); they rewarded members of the Council of State for their decision to remand the congie dispute to the Grand Council of Mechelen (1531); and they persuaded IJsselstein and Hoogstraten to refuse the Queen's order to lead their bandes d'ordonnance against Meynert van Ham, meaning that troops destined for the unpopular expedition to Copenhagen would have to be used instead (1536). One might even suggest that Mary of Hungary was able to assert real authority in the Netherlands only because alliances of this sort, joining the power of the purse in the states and the political influence of the great nobles, were temporary rather than permanent. But under Margaret of Parma there was a new constellation of relationships in the Council of State, and hence in the provinces as well. Individually, men like Egmont and Orange asserted their personal authority more forcefully than ever so that, as Vermij observes, the government had the novel experience of seeing the influence of the high nobility as "ruinously competitive with royal authority."^[88] As a group, joined together against Granvelle, these men commanded an allegiance never before enjoyed by subjects of a Habsburg or Burgundian ruler. Under Orange's leadership, Holland was being drawn into a national movement of opposition, first against Granvelle, then against the placards .

Holland's Resistance to the Placards

As in other parts of the Netherlands,^[89] the continuing enforcement of the placards against heresy brought numerous protests in Holland, sometimes with overtones of violence. In April 1557 two Anabaptists, including one burgher, were held in Haarlem's St. John's gate prison under sentence of death by the town gerecht . One or both became known to the populace because of sermons preached through the prison window, attracting large crowds. On the night of 25 April, around midnight, Sheriff Pieter van Soutelande ordered his deputies to bring the prisoners to the town hall, whence they were to be led out to the scaffold on the main square the next day. Despite the lateness of the hour, a numerous and angry company attended the deputies, causing the Sheriff to have the prisoners brought inside his own house. At first light he set off with them for the town hall, but this time a crowd estimated by the Sheriff at 300 gathered again, many kissing the prisoners and bidding them adieu en route. Ouside the town hall, the square was so full that it took strenuous efforts by the Sheriff and all members of the gerecht to form the "ring" within which the executions were to take place. When the excutioner had done his work, one of the bystanders grabbed a board from the pile meant for burning the bodies of the victims and threatened the Sheriff. Soutelande drew his sword, and when (according to the Sheriff's testimony) someone cried out, "Strike them dead!" all the magistrates scattered to the safety of the town hall, leaving Soutelande alone to face the crowd.^[90] Savoy's instinct was to have a member of the Grand Council deputed to investigate the Sheriff's complaints about this incident as well as about the generally lax attitude of the magistrates toward enforcement of the law. But at Viglius's suggestion the matter was referred to Vere and the Council of Holland. Four months later, Savoy reminded Vere and the Council that they had not reported on what happened in Haarlem. In reply, the Council said that inquiries by one of the Councillors had not turned up reliable evidence that any crime had been committed, since the claim about "seditious words" was supported only by one of the Sheriff's servants. Savoy had to be content with scolding Haarlem for giving the

prisoners access to a window; the magistrates replied that they had no cells without windows.^[91]

Sometimes it was not possible to tell the difference between old-fashioned anticlericalism and new-style heresy, as at Oude-water where women and children made a show of barring the town gate to the inquisitor and deputy procurator who had come to arrest the vice-curate.^[92] In Enkhuizen, on the night of 26 July 1557, the schutters, "having made good cheer all day," marched with fife and drum to the house of Sir Balthasar Platander, pastor of the Old Church. When one of their officers received no reply after striking the door three times with his staff, the men smashed in the door with a beam, but the pastor had fled. According to the complaint that reached Savoy, it was the intention of the culprits to "help [the pastor] out of this world," because they blamed him for the fact that Ruard Tapper, chief Inquisitor for the Netherlands, had removed from his post a popular but suspect preacher at the New Church, Cornelis Coelthuyn.^[93] As described in reports from the Council of Holland, this episode has overtones of a counter-ritual enactment of the way the minions of the law sometimes sought out accused persons in their homes at night.^[94] But Procurator General Christiaan de Waert could not confirm the more serious allegations during his inquiry in the city. The schutters did indeed stove in the pastor's door, but neither he nor the pastor of the New Church believed there was any heresy involved. Rather, as the schutters claimed, they were amusing themselves in the way the men of such companies sometimes did. Later, the Council wrote Philip II urging him not to "reform" the light sentence Enkhuizen's gerecht had meted out to the offenders, noting that criminal sentences were not easily corrected (the accused was not allowed to appeal a conviction), and that lawless behavior was common when schutters convened among themselves.^[95]

The most serious incident took place in Rotterdam on 28 March 1558 when three men and two women Anabaptists, arrested early in the month, were to be executed in front of the town hall. Perhaps mindful of what had happened at Haarlem, the magistrates took the precaution of enclosing the "ring" within which the hangings were to take place with a double row of stakes. A large crowd watched as the first victim, a man,

dangled at the end of a rope. Thinking he was dead, the executioner tried to light a pile of straw under his feet, but at this point the unfortunate man's legs moved. At this "there came a great outcry from the people, who were mostly from outside the city," or so Rotterdam's deputies claimed in their initial report to the Council of Holland. A woman's slipper flew into the ring, and before long the stakes were broken down, the victim was cut down, and the bailiff and the magistrates sought shelter in the tower of' the town hall; "to save their lives" they had to release the other four prisoners still in their keeping, while a mob rummaged through the building, smashing doors and windows and burning records. This time the Council reported directly to Philip II who demanded an additional report from the Count of Boussu (substituting for his brother-in-law, Vere, who was ill) and Johan van Cruningen, lord of nearby Heenvliet. Because the escaped Anabaptists (including the man who was nearly dead) had not been recaptured, the Council and the two lords acted jointly to interrogate and punish leaders of the mob, some of whom were arrested in Delfshaven and Zwartewaal. One man who had heaved a stone to break down the town hall door was executed, as was another who had helped "a crippled woman prisoner" to escape, and several others were severely punished.^[96]

Both the Council and the two lords strictly instructed Rotterdam's magistrates to take greater precautions next time, by closing the town gates and assembling the schutters at the place of execution. In fact there was not to be a next time for Rotterdam's magistrates, and there do not seem to have been any further executions for heresy by any town government in Holland prior to 1566, except in The Hague where a kinsman of David Joris is reported to have been "punished according to the placards" in 1564.^[97] Meanwhile, the States kept up their defense of the principle of de non evocando, by joining in suits by various towns to prevent their burghers from being tried against their will outside the province.^[98]

That there were Mennonite communities in various localities was common knowledge. In 1562 a repentant Anabaptist in Amsterdam, Jan Janszoon Mandemaker, gained clemency by giving the names of fifty-two Mennonites and three other sec-

tarians of his acquaintaince, many of whom were still living in Amsterdam. Margaret of Parma transmitted this list to the Council in The Hague and instructed Suys to contact one of Amsterdam's burgomasters "discreetly" and to bring Jan Janszoon to The Hague for further questioning. Instead, another Councillor going to Amsterdam on other business contacted Sheriff Baerdes; fourteen persons were arrested as a result. Questioned on this matter some years later, the Council acknowledged that all fourteen had somehow escaped, but had no further information.^[99] When the placards against heresy were reissued in Holland in 1564, deputies in the States expressed alarm at their apparent novelty, not understanding that the text was made up from "extracts" of earlier placards or that the wording did not mean that persons found in possession of forbidden books would not have an opportunity to exculpate themselves.^[100]

The Council itself was somewhat more zealous about enforcing the placards than town governments were, but not much.^[101] Margaret of Parma repeatedly asked the Council to investigate reports she was receiving from unnamed informants, but seldom did she receive a reply that she would likely consider satisfactory.^[102] In March 1561 Frans van Boschuysen, Sheriff of the island of Texel, submitted to the Council a detailed plan, requiring two caravels and four oared barges, to seize numerous "sectarians" who had taken refuge on the neighboring island of Vlieland. Margaret liked the plan and ordered the receiver of domain revenues for north Holland to give the Procurator General 600 pounds to put it into effect. Instead, the Council consulted further with Boschhuysen and with Amsterdam's Sheriff Baerdes, then reported to William of Orange that the plan was unwise because many of those being sought would already be at sea for the sailing season and because there was already "murmuring" on Vlieland.^[103] In January 1562 Andries Dirkszoon, pastor of Enkhuizen's New Church, was summoned to Hoorn and detained there by the Dean of West Friesland on charges that he "preached against the Pope" at nighttime gatherings. One night some burghers of Enkhuizen called up to the prisoner's window and had him jump onto a bed they had brought; after preaching again in Enkhuizen, Dirkszoon escaped to

Emden, as Cornelis Coelthuyn had done a few years earlier. Margaret wanted a report from the Council because Orange had informed her that the Sheriff of Enkhuizen dared not lay hands on the culprits, "which makes us think that things are not as they should be in Enkhuizen." When the Procurator General found that those accused had "alibis" for the night in question, they were released.^[104]

In the summer of 1564 Margaret received two private reports on the state of religion in Holland, probably from trusted noblemen, including an assurance that the Council was "doing their duty" in regard to heresy. In fact, it was about this time that Jan Gerritszoon Ketelboeter was burned in The Hague as a "stubborn Anabaptist," the first person to be executed for heresy by the Council since 1552.^[105] Finally, in January 1565 the Council accepted the word of Medemblik's magistrates that none of their burghers were "infected" with heresy. Margaret replied that she would be happy to believe this report but could not because her "informations" told her otherwise. Thus she ordered the Council to check again.^[106]

From this correspondence one may infer a pattern of tension between Regent and Council that both sides understood without wishing to acknowledge. The Council often found ways of not doing what the Regent ordered, while avoiding a direct refusal, and Margaret kept up the pretense of treating the Councillors as loyal executors of her will, while manifestly doubting some of what they told her. If there was anyone in Holland whom Margaret could trust fully on the delicate matter of enforcing heresy law, it would surely have been the new bishops—Niklaas van Nieuwland, Bishop of Haarlem, and Willem Lindanus, dean of the chapter in The Hague and Bishop-elect of Roermond. In fact, however, neither of these men was entirely suitable for her purposes. Nieuwland had a drinking problem, and at his previous post as auxiliary bishop of Utrecht, he had been popularly known as "Nick the drunk" (dronken Klaasje ). He was appropriately critical of Church officials who took fees for granting petitions, but he apparently did not support the draconian policies that were a test of loyalty in Philip's eyes. Early in 1564 he asked permission to grant remission to repentant heretics in the West Friesland district, in effect

a reversion to milder policies tried during the 1530s. With reluctance, Margaret approved his request, noting that Philip II had determined not to let any of his provincial councils have authority to grant remission.^[107]

After his unfortunate experience in Friesland, Lindanus lived quietly in The Hague. He accepted a new commission as inquisitor for Holland only after it became apparent that the town of Roermond, where he had been appointed Bishop (1562), would not admit him within its gates. The terms of' his commission authorized him to interrogate suspected heretics, with the understanding that on his recommendation accused persons would be arrested by the local officer of justice and tried by the Council of Holland.^[108] In 1564 one of Margaret's informants told her that Lindanus was "held in meager esteem" in Holland. His activity as inquisitor has left no trace in the correspondence between Brussels and The Hague, but he probably had something to do with the two trials that ended in executions in The Hague in 1564, one by the city government and one by the Council. By 1565 there was evident friction between Lindanus and the Council. In March, Margaret ordered the Council to make sure the chapter allowed Lindanus the income from his benefice even when he was absent from The Hague, since his absence was in the service of Church and King. There was also a three-cornered exchange of letters between Margaret of Parma, Lindanus, and the Council concerning two stained-glass artists from The Hague, Meinert Pieterszoon and Joris Janszoon. The two had been arrested for heresy at Lindanus's recommendation by the Bailiff of The Hague, and when the schepenen of the town voted to acquit them, the Bailiff appealed their verdict to the Council. Margaret wanted to know in April 1565 why the Council had not proceeded against the two prisoners, and in November she was still asking. The Council insisted that, although these men admitted being communicants of the "upright church of Christ" and would not produce evidence that their children had been baptized, there was no evidence that they had committed overt acts against the placards and they should therefore be tried by Church courts for their heretical opinions. Lindanus countered that there was no point in turning such stiff-necked heretics as these over to the Church courts, which lacked the power to impose a

death sentence. There were unfortunately lots of Anabaptists, and what was needed was honest enforcement of the placards by the secular courts.^[109]

Lindanus did agree to compile a list of complaints of dereliction of duty by the Council and lesser courts in Holland and Zeeland, a copy of which was sent to the Council in April 1565. Many of the incidents he raised go back several years, like the smashing-in of the pastor's door in Enkhuizen (1557), or the escape of fourteen Anabaptists in Amsterdam. He also entered on slippery ground by associating himself with those for whom charges of heresy were a partisan weapon against their adversaries, as when he alleged that the punishment of the pastor of Amsterdam's Old Church (one of Sheriff Baerdes's accusers) had deterred many honest Catholics from coming forward with accusations. In the case of the small town of Medemblik where Lindanus repeated Margaret of Parma's contention that heresy was rife, the Council was able to reply that such accusations were part of an ongoing feud among the town's, few patrician families.^[110]

Elswhere, Lindanus had gotten his information wrong, or else the local authorities whom the Council consulted before responding had found a clever retort; for instance, the chamber of rhetoric in Capelle (Zeeland) had indeed put on a scurrilous play on Shrove Tuesday, but the object of their merriment was "the pants of Priapus," not "the pants of St. Francis." As to Lindanus's question whether "the number of people in church and at Easter mass [in Holland] does not diminish continually," the Council reported that recent inquiries in Hoorn and West Friesland, an area thought to be suspect, produced reliable information that "the Catholic religion grows more than declines"; in Hoorn itself, there were 500 more communicants than the previous year. It might be noted that one of Margaret of Parma's private informants had made a similar observation about Catholicism in north Holland in 1564. Finally, the fact that the Council waited ten months before submitting its formal reply, despite the King's interest in Lindanus's charges, suggests that no one in Brussels took the matter too seriously.^[111]

Orthodox zealots like Lindanus were at most an irritant in the delicate play of evasion conducted by Margaret of Parma

and the officials and magisitrates to whom she communicated her instructions. The Regent undoubtedly knew that her correspondents were ignoring the placards as far as they dared, but, given the tenor of Philip's instructions, confirmed once again in the letters from Segovia Wood, she had no choice but to pretend that she was writing to people who would obey her. In Holland, men in responsible positions had no desire to undermine the authority of their sovereign lord, the King of Spain, but neither were they so foolish as to persist in the enforcement of laws that the King's subjects deemed unlawful. That crowds were breaking through the "ring" of punishment, that visible emblem of the majesty of the law, shows clearly enough what people thought of the idea that religious dissent was punishable by death. J. J. Woltjer has identified opposition to the death penalty for religious offenses as the key political question in the Netherlands after 1560. He rejects the claim that Orange seized on this issue opportunistically, as if something more important were at stake, and he points out that even a figure like Hippolytus Persijn, erstwhile hammer of heretics in Friesland, had concluded by 1565 that heresy should no longer be punished by death. But Philip II, in the privacy of his study in far-off Madrid, could not distinguish between maintainance of the Catholic religion and maintainance of the placards .^[112]

No one, it seems, contested the principle that the sovereign prince had residual powers (potestas absoluta ) to override existing laws and privileges. Philip II's problem was that he chose to exercise this authority on an issue for which there was almost no support. Had he chosen to override the tax exemptions of Holland's "three personages," he would have had the States fully behind him. Instead, by confirming the privileges of Orange and the others, he showed the States how powerless they were without the cooperation of these great lords. When he revealed himself unremitting in his insistence on the placards, both the provincial states and, in a quieter way, the King's officials rallied to the position taken by Orange and others in the Council of State. It was, finally, by demanding obedience to this unpopular law that the King made his subjects aware of their strength.