Eighty Years' War - Prelude

Prelude

Emperor Charles V began the gradual abdication of his several crowns in October 1555. His son Philip II took over as sovereign of the conglomerate of duchies, counties and other feudal fiefs known as the Habsburg Netherlands. At the time this was a personal union of seventeen provinces with little in common beyond their sovereign and a constitutional framework assembled during the preceding reigns of Burgundian and Habsburg rulers, dividing power between city governments and local nobility, provincial States and royal stadtholders, the States-General of the Netherlands, and the central government possibly represented by a Regent, assisted by three councils: the Council of State, Privy Council and Council of Finances. The balance of power was heavily weighted toward the local and regional governments.

Philip, who was also nominally King of England through his marriage to Mary I, did not assume the reins of government in person but appointed a governor-general Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, and from 1559 on, a Regent (his half-sister Margaret of Parma) to lead the central government. These Regents governed in close cooperation with Netherlandish nobles, like William, Prince of Orange, Philip de Montmorency, Count of Hoorn, and Lamoral, Count of Egmont. Philip introduced a number of Spanish councillors in the Council of State, foremost Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, a French-born cardinal who gained a large influence in the Council, much to the chagrin of the Dutch council members.

When Philip left for Spain in 1559 (Mary had died in 1558) the political strains were increased by religious policies. Different from the liberal-mindedness of his father Charles V, Philip was a fervent enemy of the Protestant movements of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and the Anabaptists. Charles had outlawed heresy in special placards that made it a capital offense, to be prosecuted by a Netherlandish version of the Inquisition, leading to more than 1,300 people executed as heretics between 1523 and 1566. Towards the end of Charles' reign enforcement had reportedly become lax. Philip, however, insisted on rigorous enforcement and this caused a lot of popular unrest. To support and strengthen the attempts at Counter-Reformation Philip launched a wholesale organisational reform of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands in 1559, which resulted in the inclusion of fourteen dioceses instead of the old three. The new hierarchy was to be headed by Granvelle as archbishop of the new archdiocese of Mechelen. The reform was especially unpopular with the old church hierarchy as the new dioceses were to be financed by transferring a number of rich abbeys. Granvelle became the focus of the opposition against the new governmental structures; and the Dutch nobles under the leadership of Orange engineered his recall in 1564.

After the recall of Granvelle, Orange persuaded Margaret and the Council to ask for a moderation of the placards against heresy. Philip delayed his response, and in the meantime the opposition against his religious policies gained more widespread support. Philip finally rejected the request for moderation in his Letters from the Segovia Woods of October, 1565. In response, a group of members of the lesser nobility, among whom Louis of Nassau, a younger brother of Orange, and the brothers John and Philip of St. Aldegonde, prepared a petition for the abolition of the Inquisition for Philip. This Compromise of Nobles was supported by about 400 nobles, both Catholic and Protestant, and was presented to Margaret on 5 April 1566. Impressed by the massive support for the compromise, she suspended the placards awaiting Philip's final ruling.