States of Friesland

The Frisian stadtholder was their "First Servant" (mostly in military matters, as he had few other powers before 1748, when the Government Regulations for Friesland were promulgated by then-stadtholder William IV, Prince of Orange).

Originally the citizens of the eleven cities were mixed in with the peasants and nobles in the grietenijen, but just before the accession of Friesland to the Union of Utrecht in 1580, they were allowed to form a separate fourth "quarter", apart from the three Goals just mentioned, by then-stadtholder George de Lalaing, Count of Rennenberg, and have their own representation in the States.

However, Friesland did have notable families of great substance, who lived on castles known as Stinsen, and enjoyed the respect of the local population, whose "natural leaders" they were.

[11] For all volmachten was required that they be: The Landdag was usually convened once a year (in January), by a summons issued by the Gedeputeerde Staten to the Grietmannen of the grietenijen and the city governments, who were charged with organizing the elections.

The States were (at least after 1588, when the last of the Governors-General, who before then were considered the founts of sovereignty, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, left Dutch territory forever) considered the governing bodies where sovereignty ultimately resided[Note 6] But under the Union of Utrecht the seven provinces had concluded a defensive alliance in 1579 and delegated certain sovereign powers upward to the States General of the Netherlands, such as the common defense and foreign policy.

It is often assumed that the provincial stadtholder (an office held over from the Habsburg Netherlands) was the true "Executive", but this was only the case in any meaningful sense of the word after the Orangist revolution of 1747.

These problems were widely felt abuses like the trade in votes in the grietenijen and the sale of offices, or in general rampant corruption.

Also, the "rules of the game" embedded in the existing system favored certain political players over others, and this led to attempts to arrive at a more equitable set-up.

[19] The States appointed a commission of inquiry on 13 December 1626 that had to gather comments from the population about its grievances through the intermediary of the grietmannen and the city governments, and report by 30 January 1627 (i.e. at the time the new Landdag was to be convened).

The States had already on 2 March 1672 formed a commission to draw up proposals for military and financial reform, but without result, so the petition may be explained from the frustrations of the population at this inaction.

The military situation became threatening for Friesland when on 25 June 1672 the troops of the Prince-Bishopric of Münster, led by Christoph Bernhard von Galen, who had invaded the Dutch Republic from the East, came near to the Frisian border.

The danger was soon averted, but the Countess Albertine Agnes of Nassau, Regent[Note 10] for her son Henry Casimir II, Prince of Nassau-Dietz, the putative stadtholder after the death of her husband William Frederick, Prince of Nassau-Dietz, had already petitioned the States on behalf of her son, to inundate the countryside as a means to stop the enemy.

[22] In Leeuwarden the mob put pressure on the Magistrate to promote the appointment of the only 15-year old Prince as Frisian stadtholder, and this was actually done on 13 July 1672.

This was intended to diminish the power of the grietmannen and would cause great problems when the proposals were adopted under pressure of the Leeuwarden mob by the States in the Resolution of 27 September 1672.

The two competing Landdagen (in Leeuwarden and Sneek) then published so-called Deducties (Arguments) in pamphlet form in which they pleaded their cases during November and December 1672.

On 17 February the newly elected Landdag was opened with a speech by one of the commissioners from the States General, but the commission left Leeuwarden on 1 March 1673, without having attained a result.

After the death of king-stadtholder William III in 1702 the stadtholderate was abolished in all provinces, except Friesland and Groningen, and a regime of Dutch States Party regenten came into power that would stay there until the French invasion of 1747, which caused a popular revolt.

At the time of his death his wife, Landgravine Marie Louise of Hesse-Kassel, was pregnant with their son William IV, Prince of Orange, who was born six weeks later.

[31] The French invasion of 1747 showed the military unpreparedness of the Republic, as in 1672, and as in 1672 the population revolted against the States party and demanded that a stadtholder be appointed to take charge of the country's defenses.

[34] This mob violence was in Friesland, however, canalized into a movement to reform the old regime, starting with a deputation that on 1 June 1748 was sent by the city of Harlingen to the States in Leeuwarden, with a petition, containing the following demands: These demands were accepted by the hastily assembled States on 5 June, but meanwhile a large number of citizen-delegates from all over Friesland had assembled in Leeuwarden to present further grievances.

These lists contained (in random order) the usual forms of redress of grievances against the combination of offices; forms of official corruption, like sale of offices; appointment of minors in offices as sinecures; election abuses; the abolition of the regulation of stud horses (which appears to have been an enduring grievance); accountability in the public finances, including the mustering of the troops; reduction of the standing army in peacetime; increase of the minimum size of the parcel of land attached to a vote, to ten pondematen clay soil and twenty pondematen woodland, but only for new cases; the prohibition of payments by the authorities in the form of paper money or IOUs; incompatibilities of all kinds of public offices, especially for grietmannen; abolition of a number of privileges; and many others of more or less importance.

[38] In August 1748 he did send troops "to restore order" (though the disturbances had ceased by then) and delegated a commission of the States General to hold an inquiry into the causes of the unrest in Friesland.

[Note 16] This commission consisted of a number of his henchmen from other provinces: Schimmelpenninck van der Oye (delegate for Gelderland), Gevaerts (Holland), Verelst (Zeeland), Perzoon (Overijssel).

They arrived in Leeuwarden at the end of August and immediately started hearings of a number of people specifically selected by William himself (mostly grietmannen from well-known noble families) to inform them about what had been going on.

[Note 17] After referring to the request of the States of 11 June 1748, the stadtholder enumerated 60 articles, among which were the following: William left Leeuwarden for The Hague at the end of 1748 in the belief that he had finally laid down a written constitution for Friesland that would actually be observed.

However, this appears not to have been the case, as shown by the facts in the Apologie ("Apologia") of Frisian politician Court Lambertus van Beyma, published during his exile in Saint-Omer in 1790.

[43] When William V came of age in 1766 and was duly appointed stadtholder in all provinces, he remained under the tutelage of his equally corrupt mentor Duke Louis Ernest of Brunswick-Lüneburg, with whom he concluded the Acte van Consulentschap.

In any case, around the 1770s the main investors in these mortgage loans were wealthy members of the Mennonite religious minority, who were discriminated against in public life.

This helped convince the latter body to recognise the United States on 19 April 1782, against the will of the stadtholder, which represented an important diplomatic coup for Adams.

[48] Before the civil war could begin in earnest, however, the Prussian invasion of Holland started on 13 September 1787, and soon the resistance of the Frisian Patriots collapsed.