Patrician (post-Roman Europe) - Patricianship in The Netherlands

Patricianship in The Netherlands

The Netherlands also has a patriciate. It consists of extremely old and or well known Dutch families. These are registered in Nederland's Patriciaat, colloquially called The Blue Book. A listing can be found here. To be eligible for entry, families must have played an active and important role in Dutch society, fulfilling high positions in the government, in prestigious commissions and in other prominent public posts for over six generations or 150 years.

The longer a family has been listed in the Blue Book, the higher its esteem. The earliest entries are often families seen as co-equal to the high nobility (barons and counts), because they are the younger branches of the same family or have continuously married members of the Dutch nobility over a long period of time.

There are "regentenfamilies", whose forefathers were active in the administration of town councils, counties or the country itself during the Dutch Republic. Some of these families declined ennoblement because they did not keep a title in such high regard. At the end of the 19th century, they still proudly called themselves "patriciers". Other families belong to the patriciate because they are held in the same regard and respect as the nobility but for certain reasons never were ennobled. Even within the same important families there can be branches with and without noble titles.

The noble position of the lowest rank of the Dutch nobility is jonkheer, or untitled nobility. It could be seen as co-equal to the average non-noble patrician family; the lower nobility in the Netherlands is becoming more common, less noble, and is taking the form of the bourgeois upper middle-class instead of the upper-class.