The conclusion of the twelve years’ truce in 1609 was a triumph for Oldenbarneveldt and the province of Holland over the opposition of Maurice, prince of Orange. In 1617 the outbreak of the religious dispute between the Remonstrant Maurice Prince of Orange and John of Oldenbarneveldt.
Frederick Henry Prince of Orange.
William II. Prince of Orange. and Contra-remonstrant parties brought on a life and death struggle between the sovereign province of Holland and the States-General of the union. The sword of Maurice decided the issue in favour of the States-General. The claims of Holland were overthrown and the head of Oldenbarneveldt fell upon the scaffold (1619). The stadholder, Frederick Henry of Orange, ruled with well-nigh monarchical authority (1625-1647), but even he at the height of his power and popularity had always to reckon with the opposition of the states of Holland and of Amsterdam, and many of his plans of campaign were thwarted by the refusal of the Hollanders to furnish supplies. His son William II. was but 21 years of age on succeeding to the stadholdership, and the states of Holland were sufficiently powerful to carry through the negotiations for the peace of Münster (1648) in spite of his opposition. A life and death conflict again ensued, and once more in 1650 the prince of Orange by armed force crushed the opposition of the Hollanders. The sudden death of William in the hour of his triumph caused a complete revolution in the government of the republic. He left no heir but a posthumous infant, and the party of the burgher regents of Holland was John de Witt. once more in the ascendant. The office of stadholder was abolished, and John de Witt, the grand pensionary (Raad-Pensionaris) of Holland, for two decades held in his hands all the threads of administration, and occupied the same position of undisputed authority in the councils of the land as Oldenbarneveldt had done at the beginning of the century. Amsterdam during this period was the centre and head of the United Provinces. The principle of provincial sovereignty was carried to its extreme point in the separate treaty concluded with Cromwell in 1654, in which the province of Holland agreed to exclude for ever the prince of Orange from the office of stadholder of Holland or captain-general of the union. In 1672 William III. Prince of Orange. another revolution took place. John de Witt was murdered, and William III. was called to fill the office of dignity and authority which had been held by his ancestors of the house of Orange, and the stadholdership was declared to be hereditary in his family. But William died without issue (see [William III.]) and a stadholderless period, during which the province of Holland was supreme in the union, followed till 1737. This change was effected smoothly, for though William had many differences with Amsterdam, he had in Anthony Heinsius (van der Heim), who was grand pensionary of Holland from 1690 to his death in 1720, a statesman whom he thoroughly trusted, who worked with him in the furtherance of his policy during life and who continued to carry out that policy after his death. In 1737 there was once more a reversion William IV. Prince of Orange. to the stadholdership in the person of William IV., whose powers were strengthened and declared hereditary both in the male and female line in 1747. But until the final destruction of the federal republic by the French armies, the perennial struggle went on between the Holland or federal party (Staatsgesinden) centred at Amsterdam—out of which grew the patriot party under William V.—and the Orange or unionist party (Oranjegesinden), which was strong in the smaller provinces and had much popular support among the lower classes. The French conquest swept away the old condition of things never to reappear; but allegiance to the Orange dynasty survived, and in 1813 became the rallying point of a united Dutch people. At the same time the leading part played by the province of Holland in the history of the republic has not been unrecognized, for the country ruled over by the sovereigns of the house of Orange is always popularly, and often officially, known as Holland.
The full title of the states of Holland in the 17th and 18th centuries was: de Edele Groot Mogende Heeren Staaten van Holland en Westfriesland. After 1608 this assembly consisted of nineteen members, one representing the Constitution of the States of Holland. nobility (ridderschap), and eighteen, the towns. The member for the nobles had precedence and voted first. The interests of the country districts (het platte land) were the peculiar charges of the member for the nobles. The nobles also retained the right of appointing representatives to sit in the College of Deputed Councillors, in certain colleges of the admiralty, and upon the board of directors of the East India Company, and to various public offices. The following eighteen towns sent representatives: South Quarter—(1) Dordrecht, (2) Haarlem, (3) Delft, (4) Leiden, (5) Amsterdam, (6) Gouda, (7) Rotterdam, (8) Gorinchem, (9) Schiedam, (10) Schoonhoven, (11) Brill; North Quarter:—(12) Alkmaar, (13) Hoorn, (14) Enkhuizen, (15) Edam, (16) Monnikendam, (17) Medemblik, (18) Purmerend. Each town (as did also the nobles) sent as many representatives as they pleased, but the nineteen members had only one vote each. Each town’s deputation was headed by its pensionary, who was the spokesman on behalf of the representatives. Certain questions such as peace and war, voting of subsidies, imposition of taxation, changes in the mode of government, &c., required unanimity of votes. The grand pensionary (Raad-Pensionaris) The Grand Pensionary. was at once the president and chief administrative officer of the states. He presided over all meetings, conducted the business, kept the minutes, and was charged with the maintenance of the rights of the states, with the execution of their resolutions and with the entire correspondence. Nor were his functions only provincial. He was the head and the spokesman of the deputation of the states to the States-General of the union; and in the stadholderless period the influence of such grand pensionaries of Holland as John de Witt and Anthony Heinsius enabled the complicated and intricate machinery of government in a confederacy of many sovereign and semi-sovereign authorities without any recognized head of the state, to work with comparative smoothness and a remarkable unity of policy. This was secured by the indisputable predominance in the union of the province of Holland. The policy of the states of Holland swayed the policy of the generality, and historical circumstances decreed that the policy of the states of Holland during long and critical periods should be controlled by a succession of remarkable men filling the office of grand pensionary. The states of Holland sat at the Hague in the months of March, July, September and November. During the periods of prorogation the continuous oversight of the business and interests of the province was, however, never neglected. College of Deputed Councillors. This duty was confided to a body called the College of Deputed Councillors (het Kollegie der Gekommitteerde Raden), which was itself divided into two sections, one for the south quarter, another for the north quarter. The more important—that for the south quarter—consisted of ten members, (1) the senior member of the nobility, who sat for life, (2) representatives (for periods of three years) of the eight towns: Dordrecht, Haarlem, Delft, Leiden, Amsterdam, Gouda, Rotterdam and Gorinchem, with a tenth member (usually elected biennially) for the towns of Schiedam, Schoonhoven and Brill conjointly. The grand pensionary presided over the meetings of the college, which had the general charge of the whole provincial administration, especially of finance, the carrying out of the resolutions of the states, the maintenance of defences, and the upholding of the privileges and liberties of the land. With particular regard to this last-named duty the college deputed two of its members to attend all meetings of the states-general, to watch the proceedings and report at once any proposals which they held to be contrary to the interests or to infringe upon the rights of the province of Holland. The institution of the College of Deputed Councillors might thus be described as a vigilance committee of the states in perpetual session. The existence of the college, with its many weighty and important functions, must never be lost sight of by students who desire to have a clear understanding of the remarkable part played by the province of Holland in the history of the United Netherlands.
(G. E.)
HOLLAND, a city of Ottawa county, Michigan, U.S.A., on Macatawa Bay (formerly called Black Lake), near Lake Michigan, and 25 m. W.S.W. of Grand Rapids. Pop. (1890) 3945; (1900) 7790, of whom a large portion were of Dutch descent; (1904) 8966; (1910) 10,490. It is served by the Père Marquette Railroad, by steamboat lines to Chicago and other lake ports, and by electric lines connecting with Grand Rapids, Saugatuck, and the neighbouring summer resorts. On Macatawa Bay are Ottawa Beach, Macatawa Park, Jenison Park, Central Park, Castle Park and Waukezoo. In the city itself are Hope College (co-educational; founded in 1851 and incorporated as a college in 1866), an institution of the (Dutch) Reformed Church in America; and the Western Theological Seminary (1869; suspended 1877-1884) of the same denomination. Holland is a grain and fruit shipping centre, and among its manufactures are furniture, leather, grist mill products, iron, beer, pickles, shoes, beet sugar, gelatine, biscuit (Holland rusk), electric and steam launches, and pianos. In 1908 seven weekly, one daily, and two monthly papers (four denominational) were published at Holland, five of them in Dutch. The municipality owns its water-works and electric-lighting plant. Holland was founded in 1847 by Dutch settlers, under the leadership of the Rev. A. C. Van Raalte, and was chartered as a city in 1867. In 1871 much of it was destroyed by a forest fire.
HOLLAND, a cloth so called from the country where it was first made. It was originally a fine plain linen fabric of a brownish colour—unbleached flax. Several varieties are now made: hollands, pale hollands and fine hollands. They are used for aprons, blinds, shirts, blouses and dresses.
HOLLAR, WENZEL or WENCESLAUS [Vaclaf Holar] (1607-1677), Bohemian etcher, was born at Prague on the 13th of July 1607, and died in London, being buried at St Margaret’s church, Westminster, on the 28th of March 1677. His family was ruined by the capture of Prague in the Thirty Years’ War, and young Hollar, who had been destined for the law, determined to become an artist. The earliest of his works that have come down to us are dated 1625 and 1626; they are small plates, and one of them is a copy of a Virgin and Child by Dürer, whose influence upon Hollar’s work was always great. In 1627 he was at Frankfort, working under Matthew Merian, an etcher and engraver; thence he passed to Strassburg, and thence, in 1633, to Cologne. It was there that he attracted the notice of the famous amateur Thomas, earl of Arundel, then on an embassy to the imperial court; and with him Hollar travelled to Vienna and Prague, and finally came in 1637 to England, destined to be his home for many years. Though he lived in the household of Lord Arundel, he seems to have worked not exclusively for him, but to have begun that slavery to the publishers which was afterwards the normal condition of his life. In his first year in England he made for Stent, the printseller, the magnificent View of Greenwich, nearly a yard long, and received thirty shillings for the plate,—perhaps a twentieth part of what would now be paid for a single good impression. Afterwards we hear of his fixing the price of his work at fourpence an hour, and measuring his time by a sandglass. The Civil War had its effect on his fortunes, but none on his industry. Lord Arundel left England in 1642, and Hollar passed into the service of the duke of York, taking with him a wife and two children. With other royalist artists, notably Inigo Jones and Faithorne, he stood the long and eventful siege of Basing House; and as we have some hundred plates from his hand dated during the years 1643 and 1644 he must have turned his enforced leisure to good purpose. Taken prisoner, he escaped or was released, and joined Lord Arundel at Antwerp, and there he remained eight years, the prime of his working life, when he produced his finest plates of every kind, his noblest views, his miraculous “muffs” and “shells,” and the superb portrait of the duke of York. In 1652 he returned to London, and lived for a time with Faithorne the engraver near Temple Bar. During the following years were published many books which he illustrated:—Ogilby’s Virgil and Homer, Stapylton’s Juvenal, and Dugdale’s Warwickshire, St Paul’s and Monasticon (part i.). The booksellers continued to impose on the simple-minded foreigner, pretending to decline his work that he might still further reduce the wretched price he charged them. Nor did the Restoration improve his position. The court did nothing for him, and in the great plague he lost his young son, who, we are told, might have rivalled his father as an artist. After the great fire he produced some of his famous “Views of London”; and it may have been the success of these plates which induced the king to send him, in 1668, to Tangier, to draw the town and forts. During his return to England occurred the desperate and successful engagement fought by his ship the “Mary Rose,” under Captain Kempthorne, against seven Algerine men-of-war,—a brilliant affair which Hollar etched for Ogilby’s Africa. He lived eight years after his return, still working for the booksellers, and retaining to the end his wonderful powers; witness the large plate of Edinburgh (dated 1670), one of the greatest of his works. He died in extreme poverty, his last recorded words being a request to the bailiffs that they would not carry away the bed on which he was dying.
Hollar’s variety was boundless; his plates number some 2740, and include views, portraits, ships, religious subjects, heraldic subjects, landscapes, and still life in a hundred different forms. No one that ever lived has been able to represent fur, or shells, or a butterfly’s wing as he has done. His architectural drawings, such as those of Antwerp and Strassburg cathedrals, and his views of towns, are mathematically exact, but they are pictures as well. He could reproduce the decorative works of other artists quite faultlessly, as in the famous chalice after Mantegna’s drawing. His Theatrum mulierum and similar collections reproduce for us with literal truth the outward aspects of the people of his day; and his portraits, a branch of art in which he has been unfairly disparaged, are of extraordinary refinement and power.