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Updated: June 24, 2025
The statesman had been foremost to urge the claim of William the Silent's son upon the stadholderate of Holland and Zeeland, and had been, as it were, the youth's political guardian. He had himself borne arms more than once before, having shouldered his matchlock under Batenburg, and marched on that officer's spirited but disastrous expedition for the relief of Haarlem.
He called for the register-books of the States of Holland, and turning back to the pages on which was recorded his accession to the stadholderate soon after his father's murder, ordered the oath then exchanged between himself and the States to be read aloud. That oath bound them mutually to support the Reformed religion till the last drop of blood in their veins.
Further instructions were therefore sent to Van Welderen, but they were delayed by tempestuous weather. In any case they would have been of no avail. The British government was in no mood for temporising. On December 20, 1780 war was declared against the United Provinces; and three days later Yorke left the Hague. STADHOLDERATE OF WILLIAM V, continued, 1780-1788
He, accordingly, described him, in general, as a man whose principles, in the main, were good, but who was easily led by his own vanity and the perverse counsels of others. He represented him as having been originally a warm supporter of the new bishoprics, and as having expressed satisfaction that two of them, those of Bruges and Ypres, should have been within his own stadholderate.
When the stadholderate of the provinces of Gelderland, Utrecht, and Overyssel became vacant, it was again Barneveld's potent influence and sincere attachment to the House of Nassau that procured the election of Maurice to those posts.
The result of all this was that the movement became more and more revolutionary in its aims. To such an extent was this the case that many of the old aristocratic anti-stadholder regents began to perceive that the carrying out of the patriots' programme of popular reform would mean the overthrow of the system of government which they upheld, at the same time as that of the stadholderate.
Both Prussia and England gave a strong guarantee for the upholding of the hereditary stadholderate.
The descendants of William the Silent Maurice, Frederick Henry, William II and William III were, moreover, all of them men of exceptional ability; and the stadholderate became in their hands a position of almost semi-monarchical dignity and influence, the stadholder being regarded both by foreign potentates and by the people of the Netherlands generally as "the eminent head of the State."
The statesman had been foremost to urge the claim of William the Silent's son upon the stadholderate of Holland and Zeeland, and had been, as it were, the youth's political guardian. He had himself borne arms more than once before, having shouldered his matchlock under Batenburg, and marched on that officer's spirited but disastrous expedition for the relief of Haarlem.
Such was the inherent weakness of the Republic that it was an independent State in little more than name; its form of government was guaranteed by foreign powers on whom it had to rely for its defence against external foes. Prussia by armed force, England by diplomatic support, had succeeded in restoring the hereditary stadholderate to a predominant position in the State.
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