The ancestors of William, as Dukes of Gueldres, had begun to exercise sovereignty in the provinces four centuries before the advent of the house of Burgundy.  That overshadowing family afterwards numbered the Netherland Nassaus among its most stanch and powerful adherents.  Engelbert the Second was distinguished in the turbulent councils and in the battle-fields of Charles the Bold, and was afterwards the unwavering supporter of Maximilian, in court and camp.  Dying childless, he was succeeded by his brother John, whose two sons, Henry and William, of Nassau, divided the great inheritance after their father’s death, William succeeded to the German estates, became a convert to Protestantism, and introduced the Reformation into his dominions.  Henry, the eldest son, received the family possessions and titles in Luxembourg, Brabant, Flanders and Holland, and distinguished himself as much as his uncle Engelbert, in the service of the Burgundo-Austrian house.  The confidential friend of Charles the Fifth, whose governor he had been in that Emperor’s boyhood, he was ever his most efficient and reliable adherent.  It was he whose influence placed the imperial crown upon the head of Charles.  In 1515 he espoused Claudia de Chalons, sister of Prince Philibert of Orange, “in order,” as he wrote to his father, “to be obedient to his imperial Majesty, to please the King of France, and more particularly for the sake of his own honor and profit.”

His son Rene de Nassau-Chalons succeeded Philibert.  The little principality of Orange, so pleasantly situated between Provence and Dauphiny, but in such dangerous proximity to the seat of the “Babylonian captivity” of the popes at Avignon, thus passed to the family of Nassau.  The title was of high antiquity.  Already in the reign of Charlemagne, Guillaume au Court-Nez, or “William with the Short Nose,” had defended the little—­town of Orange against the assaults of the Saracens.  The interest and authority acquired in the demesnes thus preserved by his valor became extensive, and in process of time hereditary in his race.  The principality became an absolute and free sovereignty, and had already descended, in defiance of the Salic law, through the three distinct families of Orange, Baux, and Chalons.

In 1544, Prince Rene died at the Emperor’s feet in the trenches of Saint Dizier.  Having no legitimate children, he left all his titles and estates to his cousin-german, William of Nassau, son of his father’s brother William, who thus at the age of eleven years became William the Ninth of Orange.  For this child, whom the future was to summon to such high destinies and such heroic sacrifices, the past and present seemed to have gathered riches and power together from many sources.  He was the descendant of the Othos, the Engelberts, and the Henries, of the Netherlands, the representative of the Philiberts and the Renes of France; the chief of a house, humbler in resources and position in Germany, but still of high rank, and which had already done good service to humanity by being among the first to embrace the great principles of the Reformation.