The Vice-President of the Council of State chairs meetings in his absence and is the de facto major personality of the institution.

Under Dutch constitutional law, the Vice-President of the Council is acting head of state when there is no monarch such as if the royal family were to become extinct.

Soon afterwards the Pacification of Ghent was concluded pitting the States-General of the Netherlands against the Spanish crown, represented by Don Juan.

These members were discharged by king Philip in 1578, formally ending the Council as a Habsburg institution in what was to become the Dutch Republic.

[5] When the Duke of Anjou came to be temporarily recognized as the new sovereign of the rebellious provinces in 1581, a new Council of State was appointed to advise him and to perform certain executive duties, pertaining to defense and finances.

This resulted in the Treaty of Nonsuch of 1585 with Elizabeth I of England that explicitly assumed a leading role of the Council in the evolving constitution of the provinces of the Union of Utrecht.

The next articles gave far-reaching authority to the Governor-General, acting with the council, in matters of defense, finance and government.

XXIV), though the States of Holland and West Friesland preempted this by appointing Maurice, Prince of Orange stadtholder before the Earl of Leicester, who would accept the Governor-Generalship, conferred on him by the States-General against the wish of Elizabeth, arrived in the Netherlands.

The executive powers of the Council were limited to military policy (both on land and sea); administering the Dutch States Army's financial aspects (naval affairs were administered by the five Admiralties, founded by Leicester); and formulating and executing tax policy for the Generality Lands.

[12] After the overthrow of the regime of stadtholder William V, Prince of Orange and the founding of the Batavian Republic in 1795, the Council was dissolved, together with the States-General.

For this type of advice a new subdivision of the Council was formed that came to act like an administrative court (though the formal decision rested with the Crown).

Finally, the 1861 law made the Council the institution that would exercise royal authority in the absence of the king or a regent.