page_title: States of Friesland
section_title: Attempts at constitutional reform
hierarchical_section_title: States of Friesland / History / Attempts at constitutional reform
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Portret van stadhouder Willem IV van Oranje-Nassau (1711-1751)
context_page_description: The States of Friesland were the sovereign body that governed the province of Friesland under the Dutch Republic. They were formed in 1580 after the former Lordship of Frisia acceded to the Union of Utrecht and became one of the Seven United Netherlands. The Frisian stadtholder was their "First Servant". The board of Gedeputeerde Staten was the executive of the province when the States were not in session. The States of Friesland were abolished after the Batavian Revolution of 1795, when the Batavian Republic was founded. They were resurrected in name in the form of the Provincial States of Friesland under the Constitution of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
context_section_description: The "constitution" of Friesland, as in the other provinces of the Republic, was not one written document, but a quilt of medieval charters, ordinances that predated the Union of Utrecht (like the Placard of 30 October 1539, that regulated the elections in Friesland, treaties (like the Peace of Münster), and customs, and legal precedents from Roman-Dutch law. But certain problems with these largely unwritten norms formed an impetus for several attempts at constitutional reform in the form of the promulgation of a written Government Regulation. These problems were widely felt abuses like the trade in votes in the grietenijen and the sale of offices, or in general rampant corruption. The trade in votes led to a situation similar to that of the Rotten and pocket boroughs in the United Kingdom before the Reform Act 1832. The sale of offices was a universal abuse that is known as Simony in the context of the Church, and in many countries elicited periodical attempts at suppression (like e.g. the Sale of Offices Act 1551 in England). But there were other forms of corruption also, that needed to be addressed. Also, the "rules of the game" embedded in the existing system favored certain political players over others, and this led to attempts to arrive at a more equitable set-up. In Friesland these attempts at constitutional reform came to a head during three periods with a "revolutionary flavor": 1627, 1672 and 1748.
  In 1627 the proximate cause of the reform movement were new taxes that were introduced in connection with the war situation. As so often, the taxpayers rebelled at this, especially those in the cities, who felt unfairly imposed upon. The oligarchy of the grietmannen was blamed for this, and this led to a movement to diminish their power.
  The States appointed a commission of inquiry on 13 December 1626 that had to gather comments from the population about its grievances through the intermediary of the grietmannen and the city governments, and report by 30 January 1627 (i.e. at the time the new Landdag was to be convened). This procedure resulted in a Resolution of the States of 17 April 1627, which became known as the Appeal about Abuses. This formed the basis for the so-called poincten reformatoir (reform points) of 1627, a terminology that was repeated at later occasions.
  The most important of these 28 points were the following:
  A Volmacht could no longer be appointed to an Office;
  Votes recruited with corrupt means would be invalid;
  Accumulation of offices was prohibited;
  Written contracts to acquire an office were prohibited, as was the sale of offices;
  Officers could not be absent for periods of more than eight weeks;
  Gedeputeerde Staten were no longer allowed to create paid offices or pensions; this was exclusively a matter for the States;
  There was a quorum for decisions in all official bodies;
  Strict regulations about public accountancy were introduced;
  Strict regulations about the muster of troops were to be enforced;
  In case of vacancies of grietmannen and other grietenij offices, the Gedeputeerde Staten would speedily organize an election in which the voters of the grietenij would draw up a slate of nominees, and the Gedeputeerde Staten would speedily appoint one of these nominees to the vacant office.
  These points were promulgated by the Resolution of the States of 15 June 1627.
  Unfortunately, these reforms, though impressive on paper, were honored primarily in the breach. They formed the basis for new attempts at reform in 1672 therefore, when a war situation again roiled public sentiments. A petition of representatives of the cities of 12 September 1672 to the States referred explicitly to the Appeal about Abuses of 1627. The States had already on 2 March 1672 formed a commission to draw up proposals for military and financial reform, but without result, so the petition may be explained from the frustrations of the population at this inaction. The military situation became threatening for Friesland when on 25 June 1672 the troops of the Prince-Bishopric of Münster, led by Christoph Bernhard von Galen, wh
caption: Portrait of stadtholder William IV
exif: {"Image XResolution": "200", "Image YResolution": "200", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition 3.0", "Image DateTime": "2005:12:20 11:12:19", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "176", "EXIF ExifVersion": "[0, 2, 2, 0]", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "[0, 1, 0, 0]", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "854", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1108"}