William I

William I (born April 24, 1533, Dillenburg, Nassau [now in Germany]—died July 10, 1584, Delft, Holland [now in the Netherlands]) was the first of the hereditary stadtholders (1572–84) of the United Provinces of the Netherlands and leader of the revolt of the Netherlands against Spanish rule and the Catholic religion.

Family and inheritance

William, the eldest son of William, count of Nassau-Dillenburg, grew up in a cultivated Lutheran environment. Far richer than his father’s ancestral possessions in the region of the Lahn River in Nassau were the estates that, since 1404, another branch of the family had obtained in Brabant and elsewhere in the Low Countries, where its main seat was at Breda. At the time of William’s birth, the Brabant branch was represented by his father’s elder brother Henry and by Henry’s only son, René, who in 1530 had inherited from a maternal uncle the domains of the house of Chalon-Arlay, so becoming the greatest seigneur of the Franche-Comté and ruler of the Provençal principality of Orange. René of Orange was killed in 1544, leaving the combined wealth of the houses of Nassau-Breda and of Chalon-Orange to his cousin William, then aged 11.

In view of the importance of this heritage, the lord of the Burgundian Netherlands, the Habsburg emperor Charles V, stipulated that William’s parents should renounce his guardianship and that the young prince should be educated in his new fatherland as a Catholic. So William passed his formative years at Breda and Brussels, under the guidance of suitable tutors, and was duly imbued with the principles proper to a youth of his standing. French became his daily language, and he acquired a colloquial command of Dutch.

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In spite of his immense landed property, his financial circumstances were straitened from the beginning. Scarcity of liquid assets continued to hamper him, even after his marriage (July 8, 1551) to a wealthy heiress, Countess Anne of Egmond-Buren, who brought him several additional baronies, mainly in Holland. These “structural” pecuniary straits he shared with most of his class and with the Burgundian government itself.

A favourite with Charles V and with the court at Brussels, the prince faithfully discharged the social, military, and diplomatic duties that were expected of him. He continued to do so under Philip II, the emperor’s son and successor as king of Spain and lord of the Burgundian dominions. Together with his later enemies Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, bishop of Arras, and the duke of Alba, he was a negotiator of the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559), which, in ending prolonged strife between Burgundy-Habsburg and France, released from French occupation his princedom of Orange and made the Netherlands accessible to Calvinist preachers from France. Philip II, at his accession in 1555, had admitted William to the Council of State, and, now before his departure to Spain, the king appointed him his stadtholder (governor and commander in chief) in Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht (August 1559) and afterward in Franche-Comté (February 1561).

Loyal opposition to the king’s government

From about 1561 William, the prince of Orange, together with other great lords who felt themselves excluded from their rightful share in the country’s government, began to protest openly against the conduct of the Brussels administration, in which Granvelle, the principal adviser of the regent Margaret, duchess of Parma, was the most powerful figure. At first religious questions were not prominent among the causes of discontent, but they gradually became so with the spread of Protestant ideas and the determination of Philip II not to tolerate any deviation from the strictest Catholic orthodoxy. The prince and his associates, in varying degrees influenced by the comprehensive views of the humanist Desiderius Erasmus, shared in this respect the feelings of the majority of their countrymen, who, while remaining conventional Roman Catholics, resented religious persecution. Besides, several of the nobles had, as had William, friends and parents among the Protestants. On August 25, 1561, the prince, a widower since 1558, reinforced his Lutheran and German connections by taking as his second wife Anna of Saxony.

In the mind of William, the prince of Orange, the religious issue gradually assumed paramount importance. In a sensational speech in the Council of State, he argued that it was not feasible to enforce religious unity and that it was not right for princes to presume to rule over the consciences of their subjects. But the king in October 1565 gave strict orders that the ordinances against heretics should be inexorably applied.

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Consequently, the situation became increasingly dangerous. The leadership of the opposition was now taken over by a confederation of lesser nobles and gentlemen, some of them Calvinists, who were more desperate than the grandees and less averse to a violent solution; they and their followers soon came to be called the Gueux (Beggars). The great lords kept aloof, but William and a few others showed sympathy for the movement, with which the prince was personally in touch through his brother, Count Louis of Nassau, a Lutheran with Calvinistic leanings. Orange persuaded the confederates not to resort to armed action but instead to petition the regent Margaret for a suspension of the decrees against Protestants. The duchess did indeed promise a moderation of the anti-heretical measures, but it was already too late for minor relaxations to avert trouble. Misery caused by the economic depression contributed to the violent explosions of religious fanaticism that shook the Low Countries in August 1566. Calvinist mobs forcibly entered churches, smashing the images and destroying the furnishings. Besides causing irreparable damage, these excesses had a threefold effect: peaceful coexistence of Catholics and Protestants became more difficult; the opposition movement was weakened because its responsible members felt it necessary to defend the church; and, finally, it caused King Philip to resort to force in an attempt to crush heresy and rebellion at one blow. To this end, in December 1566, he appointed the duke of Alba as his captain general in the Netherlands.

Orange seems to have contemplated immediate active resistance but in the end did nothing because the popular hero Lamoral, count of Egmond, stadtholder of Flanders and Artois, would not support him. William allowed the Protestants, now openly rebellious, to hail him as their defender, but he upheld public order. As hereditary viscount of Antwerp, he quelled an insurrection of the numerous Calvinists there, and he kept the city gates closed to rebels and government forces alike. He protested his loyalty to the king, yet he refused to take the new oath of unconditional obedience that the regent required from all officeholders and prudently retired in April 1567 to the family seat at Dillenburg. Many thousands followed William’s example or had preceded him; a general exodus to England, Germany, and France took place.