Bicker family

They led the Dutch States Party and were at the centre of Amsterdam oligarchy from the beginning of the 17th century until the early 1650s,[1] influencing the government of Holland and the Republic of the United Netherlands.

The family, also known as the Bickerse league, was one of the leading republican forces striving to end the Eighty Years' War between the United Netherlands and the Kingdom of Spain.

[3][4][5] In 1650, at the height of their power, the leading protagonists Andries and Cornelis Bicker were briefly expelled from the Amsterdam city government due to internal political problems.

Their son Dirk Jansz Helmer († 1468), priest and milliner, married with Geertruid Gerritsdr van den Anxter.

[15] and threw his work in the Amsterdam Vroedschap and as one of the founders of the East India Company, he was able to launch the careers of his sons, grandchildren and nephews.

This also gave new impetus to the republican States Party, which had been weakened since the assassination of Land's Advocate Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, and was able to determine Amsterdam politics for a long period of time.

The profit that Geurt van Beuningen, Cornelis and Jacob Bicker, Elias Trip and others had made by buying up the entire stock that was in transit, went too far for some.

[17] The shareholders accused the directors in a pamphlet of mismanagement, personal enrichment, conflicts of interest and a lack of openness in the VOC's financial situation.

They desired the full sovereignty of the individual regions in a form in which the Republic of the United Seven Netherlands was not ruled by a single person.

At the time of the politically weak Grand Pensionaries Anthonie Duyck and Jacob Cats from the 1620s to the 1640s, Andries Bicker was regarded as the head of the republican regents in Holland and as a politician who resolutely opposed the striving for power of the stadtholders Frederick Henry and William II of Orange.

[20] After the Peace of Münster was signed, the Bickers were of the opinion that it was no longer necessary to maintain a standing army, bringing them into vehement conflict with prince Willem II.

His troops, led by Cornelis van Aerssen, got lost in a dense fog and were discovered by the postal courier from Hamburg.

Andries Bicker rallied the civic guard, hired 2,000 mercenaries, had the bridges lifted, the gates closed and the artillery positioned.

In 1660 she was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam.--> The Dutch historian and archivist Bas Dudok van Heel about the inppact of the Bicker and the linked De Graeff family and their missed (high) noble rank: In Florence families like Bicker and De Graeff would have been uncrowned princes.

Boekesteyn landhuis
Gezicht op kasteel Assumburg te Heemskerk
Gerrit Bicker (1554-1604) in 1583 by an anonymous painter
Cooat of arms