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Updated: May 22, 2025
Zeeland, far more important than Overyssel, had a revenue of perhaps five hundred thousand dollars, rather a slender budget for an independent republic, wedged in as it was by the most powerful empires of the earth, and half drowned by the ocean, from which it had scarcely emerged. There was therefore no popular representation, and on the other hand no executive head.
That proposition was the sovereignty of all the Netherlands, save Holland and Zeeland, under a constitution maintaining the reformed religion and the ancient laws and privileges of the respective provinces. But the death of Francis of Anjou had brought about a considerable change in French policy. It was now more sharply defined than ever, a right-angled triangle of almost mathematical precision.
In this the whole population was interested, while the India navigation, although vital to the well-being of the nation, was not yet universally recognised as so supremely important, and was declared by a narrow-minded minority to concern the provinces of Holland and Zeeland alone. All were silently agreed, therefore, to defer the religious question to the last.
Representatives came from Flanders, Brabant, Artois and Namur, in the southern, and from Holland and Zeeland in the northern Netherlands. Mary saw there was no course open to her but to accede to their demands. Only eight days after the Assembly met, the charter of Netherland liberties, called The Great Privilege, was agreed to and signed.
The province of Zeeland consists of islands washed by the sea on their western coasts, and separated by the many channels through which the Schelde and some other rivers find their way to the ocean. In the twelfth century these islands were much smaller and more numerous than at present.
Had the most skilful pilot in Zeeland held the helm of the 'Hope, with a choice crew obedient to his orders, he could not have guided her more carefully than she had been directed by wind and tide.
He showed the impossibility of any arrangement, except by the submission of Zeeland to a vote of the majority. "It is certain," he said, "that six provinces will never be willing to be conquered by a single one, nor permit her to assert that, according to a fundamental law of the commonwealth, her dissent can prevent the others from forming a definite conclusion.
"Considering," it said, "that during these present wearisome wars within our provinces of Holland and Zeeland, all good instruction of youth in the sciences and literary arts is likely to come into entire oblivion; considering the difference of religion; considering that we are inclined to gratify our city of Leyden, with its burghers, on account of the heavy burden sustained by them during this war with such faithfulness, we have resolved after ripely deliberating with our dear cousin William Prince of Orange, stadtholder to erect a free public school, and university," &c.
Among the foremost was Sainte Aldegonde, poet, orator, hymn-book maker, burgomaster, lawyer, polemical divine now armed to the teeth and cheering on his men, in the very thickest of the fight. The diversion was successful, and Sainte Aldegonde gallantly drove the Spaniards quite off the field. The whole combined force from Antwerp and Zeeland now effected their landing.
I invite them, if they intend to address your Majesty, to proceed as they ought towards a veritably grand monarch, without hunting up any of their old quibbles, or reservations of provinces, or any thing else which could inspire suspicion. I have sent into Gelderland and Friesland, for I find I must stay here in Holland and Zeeland myself.
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