The ordinary executive and administrative work of Provincial government was carried out in Holland by a body known as the Commissioned-Councillors—­Gecommitteerde-Raden; in the other provinces by Deputed-Estates—­Gedeputeerde-Staten. The Commissioned-Councillors were to the Estates of Holland what the Council of State was to the States-General.  They enjoyed considerable independence, for they were not appointed by the Estates but directly by the nobles and cities according to a fixed system of rotation, and they sat continuously, whereas the Estates only met for short sessions.  Their duty was to see that all provincial edicts and ordinances decreed by the Estates were published and enforced, to control the finances and to undertake the provision and oversight of all military requirements; and to them it belonged to summon the meetings of the Estates.  The Deputed-Estates in the other provinces had similar but generally less extensive and authoritative functions.

Such a medley of diverse and often conflicting authorities within a state of so small an area has no counterpart in history.  It seemed impossible that government could be carried on, or that there could be any concerted action or national policy in a republic which was rather a many-headed confederation than a federal state.  That the United Netherlands, in spite of all these disadvantages, rapidly rose in the 17th century to be a maritime and commercial power of the first rank was largely due to the fact that the foreign policy of the republic and the general control of its administration was directed by a succession of very able men, the stadholders of the house of Orange-Nassau and the council-pensionaries of Holland.  For a right understanding of the period of Dutch history with which we are about to deal, it is necessary to define clearly what was the position of the stadholder and of the council-pensionary in this cumbrous and creaking machinery of government that has just been described, and the character of those offices, which conferred upon their holders such wide-reaching influence and authority.

The Stadholder or governor was really, both in title and office, an anomaly in a republic.  Under the Burgundian and Habsburg rulers the Stadholder exercised the local authority in civil and also in military matters as representing the sovereign duke, count or lord in the province to which he was appointed, and was by that fact clothed with certain sovereign attributes during his tenure of office.  William the Silent was Stadholder of Holland and Zeeland at the outbreak of the revolt, and, though deprived of his offices, he continued until the time of the Union of Utrecht to exercise authority in those and other provinces professedly in the name of the king.  After his death one would have expected that the office would have fallen into abeyance, but the coming of Leicester into the Netherlands led to a revival of the stadholderate.  Holland and Zeeland, in their desire to exercise a