page_title: First Stadtholderless period
section_title: Prequel: The Stadtholderate of William II
hierarchical_section_title: First Stadtholderless period / Prequel: The Stadtholderate of William II
caption_attribution_description: Part of a series, together with File:Gerrit van Honthorst - Portret van Friedrich Wilhelm I, keurvorst van Brandenburg (1620-1688) en zijn echtgenote Louise Henriette van Nassau (1627-1667) Rijksmuseum.jpg and File:Gerrit van Honthorst - Frederik Hendrik met familie.jpg.
context_page_description: The First Stadtholderless Period or Era is the period in the history of the Dutch Republic in which the office of a Stadtholder was absent in five of the seven Dutch provinces. It happened to coincide with the period when it reached the zenith of its economic, military and political Golden Age. The term has acquired a negative connotation in 19th-century Orangist Dutch historiography, but whether such a negative view is justified is debatable. Republicans argue that the Dutch state functioned very well under the regime of Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt, despite the fact that it was forced to fight two major wars with England, and several minor wars with other European powers. Thanks to friendly relations with France, a cessation of hostilities with Spain, and the relative weakness of other European great powers, the Republic for a while was able to play a pivotal role in the "European Concert" of nations, even imposing a pax nederlandica in the Scandinavian area. A convenient war with Portugal enabled the Dutch East India Company to take over the remnants of the Portuguese empire in Ceylon and South India.
context_section_description: The office of Stadtholder of a province predated the Republic. In the Habsburg Netherlands the Stadtholders were the representatives of the Sovereign (lately Philip II of Spain in his capacity of duke or count), who performed important constitutional functions, like appointing city magistrates (usually from double lists, drawn up by the vroedschap), and in times of war acting as provincial commander-in-chief. William the Silent had been such a stadtholder in Holland and Zeeland under the Habsburg regime, until he was removed from office in 1567. After the Dutch Revolt broke out, he simply reassumed that office in 1572 with the connivance of the rebel States of Holland, but still pretended to act in the name of the king. When the rebel provinces formed their defensive Union of Utrecht, whose treaty was to become the "constitution" of the Republic, they built upon the Habsburg constitutional framework, including the office of stadtholder. Even when independence from the King of Spain was declared with the Act of Abjuration there was no reason to change anything: the act simply declared that henceforth the magistrates, amongst whom the stadtholders, would hold their commissions from the from now on sovereign provincial states (there was no stadtholder on the federal level).
  Still, when after the death of William in 1584, and subsequently the end of the search for a new sovereign after the departure of Leicester the States General reluctantly accepted that they had to be sovereign in 1588, the office took on a vestigial character. Had it not been that the stadtholder of Holland was usually also elected to the confederal office of Captain general of the Union, which was an important office in time of war, one would have expected that the office might have been left vacant much earlier than eventually happened. However, in the circumstances of the ongoing war with Spain, the Captain-general was indispensable. And the office of stadtholder remained an important power-base, enabling its holder to exert an influence far beyond its formal powers.
  Prince Maurice demonstrated this in the constitutional crisis of 1618, when the States of Holland under Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, asserting supreme provincial sovereignty, tried to hire provincial troops rather than federal troops under Maurice's command. Maurice stopped this with a coup d'état and subsequently asserted (with the assent of the other provinces) a federal sovereignty that superseded the provincial one. He also purged the Holland regents that supported the provincial-sovereignty pretensions of Oldenbarnevelt and so managed to acquire a political dominance in the government of the Republic that assumed almost monarchical proportions. His brother, and successor as stadtholder, Frederick Henry held on to this ascendancy, due to a deft policy of divide-and conquer, playing off the regent factions against each other.
  When Frederick Henry died in March, 1647, his son William II was appointed stadtholder in Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Overijssel, and Gelderland (the office was only to become hereditary in 1747). But he did not have the stature of his father, also because Frederick Henry did not think highly of his capabilities and had refused to allow him to lead troops in the field during the war against Spain that was then in its last stages. William was opposed to the peace with Spain, but he was largely ignored by the politicians in the States General, especially the representatives of the city of Amsterdam. The Peace of Münster was duly concluded in 1648, in spite of the opposition of the province of Zeeland and William, the latter deliberately absenting himself from the discussions to masque his impotence.
  In the years directly following the peace a number of conflicts erupted between the stadtholder and especially the States of Holland about policy. William (though a lax Calvinist himself, like his father) keenly supported the Calvinist die-hards in their attempts to force the Protestant religion on the Catholic inhabitants of the recently acquired Generality Lands (though hi
caption: Willem II, prince of Orange, and his wife Maria Stuart (by Gerard van Honthorst, 1652)
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