check upon the governor-general’s arbitrary exercise of his powers, appointed Maurice of Nassau to take his father’s place; and at the same time William Lewis of Nassau became Stadholder of Friesland, and stadholders were also appointed in Utrecht, Gelderland and Overyssel.  In 1609 Maurice was Stadholder in the five provinces of Holland, Zeeland, Gelderland, Utrecht and Overyssel; his cousin William Lewis in Friesland and Groningen with Drente.  The powers of the stadholder were not the same in the different provinces, but generally speaking he was the executive officer of the Estates; and in Holland, where his authority was the greatest, he had the supervision of the administration of justice, the appointment of a large number of municipal magistrates, and the prerogative of pardon, and he was charged with the military and naval defence of the province.  The stadholder received his commission both from the Provincial Estates and from the States-General and took an oath of allegiance to the latter.  In so far, then, as he exercised quasi-sovereign functions, he did it in the name of the States, whose servant he nominally was.  But when the stadholder, as was the case with Maurice and the other Princes of Orange, was himself a sovereign-prince and the heir of a great name, he was able to exercise an authority far exceeding those of a mere official.  The descendants of William the Silent—­Maurice, Frederick Henry, William II and William III—­were, moreover, all of them men of exceptional ability; and the stadholderate became in their hands a position of almost semi-monarchical dignity and influence, the stadholder being regarded both by foreign potentates and by the people of the Netherlands generally as “the eminent head of the State.”  Maurice, as stated above, was stadholder in five provinces; Frederick Henry, William II and William III in six; the seventh province, Friesland, remaining loyal, right through the 17th century, to their cousins of the house of Nassau-Siegen, the ancestors of the present Dutch royal family.  That the authority of the States-General and States-Provincial should from time to time come into conflict with that of the stadholder was to be expected, for the relations between them were anomalous in the extreme.  The Stadholder of Holland for instance appointed, directly or indirectly, the larger part of the municipal magistrates; they in their turn the representatives who formed the Estates of the Province.  But, as the stadholder was the servant of the Estates, he, in a sense, may be said to have had the power of appointing his own masters.  The stadholders of the house of Orange had also, in addition to the prestige attaching to their name, the possession of large property and considerable wealth, which with the emoluments they received from the States-General, as Captain-General and Admiral-General of the Union, and from the various provinces, where they held the post of stadholder, enabled them in the days of Frederick Henry and his successors to maintain the state and dignity of a court.