I think war with Spain was seen as inevitable in the 1580's so why did she refuse the offer ?
And what would her title have been ?
And what would her title have been ?
Q: Why did Elizabeth I refuse the offer of sovereignty from the Dutch?
- Thread starter Vercigentorix
- Start date
To do so would commit her to all-out war with Spain, and she always preferred tokeep her options open.
Probably either "Stadtholder" or "Duchess of Burgundy" but there are many possibilities.
No a stadholder is basicly just the Dutch term for steward, a representative for the king. If Elisabeth would become the monarch of the Netherlands she would be representate by stadholders in the Netherlands, but she herself would not become a stadholder. Shewould either get a newly created title, or simply get the titles for the Dutch states, like countess of Holland, duchess of Brabant, lady of Utrecht*, etc.
* I assume the female equivalent of lord of Utrecht, would be lady of Utrecht, although it could simply remain lord. I am not that familiar with nobe titles to be sure.
The British sovereign also holds the title Lord of Mann and Duke of Normandy, regardless of gender.
The title would probably be something like "Queen of the Seven United Netherlands", followed by a string of titles referring to each state.
The position of Stadholder would probably evolve into something like the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, or Governor-General of Canada.
At the time of Elisabeth the number 7 is a bit anachronistic. It refers to the 7 Dutch provinces that managed to become independent after the Dutch revolt, while not counting Drenthe for being too poor and Brabant for not being protestant (and being still half in the hands of the Spanish). A better number would be 17, which would include the southern Netherlands. But I suspect that it would just be queen of the Netherlands. Assuming the would want to create a new kingdom. The Dutch wikipedia page gives Philip II the title lord of the Netherlands. So maybe that would be used as a title, Elisabeth, lord of the Netherlands, duke of Brabant, Gueldres, etc. The next quetion would be if she will use all the Dutch tiles, or only the ones that manages to get rid of the Spanish. Or, would she call herself count(ess?) of Artois, even though Artois was still occupied by the Spanish did not even join the Dutch revolt. Maybe she would use only the titles of the provincesthat joined the union of Utrecht or signed the act of abjuration?
String of titles referring to each state is more likely than "Queen of the United Netherlands". Until the Brabant Revolution, the Habsburgs held individual titles in the south (margrave of Namur, count of Flanders, duke of Brabant etc) while same went for the north, AIUI, the Stadtholder was stadtholder of each "individual" province (Groningen, Utrecht, Holland, Drenthe, etc).
To take a title like "Queen of the Netherlands" would be seen by the Spanish to imply sovereignty over the entirety rather than just the north. It would be needlessly antagonistic. Not saying that "Queen of England, Ireland and the Netherlands/Holland" wouldn't become shorthand for it, but officially, I suspect it would be "countess of Holland and Zeeland, lady of Utrecht and the Frisians, duchess of Guelders, etc"
Until the house of Orange took it over, was it that different to start with?
You are now making a mistake many people seem to make, differencing between the northern and southern Netherlands at the time of the revolt. This is especialy wrong at the time of Elisabeth at the start of the revolt. There was no distinction. or at least not the way many people assume. The south, especialy Flanders and large swats of Brabant were part of the revolt and in many ways the place were it started, the south was the origin of Dutch protestantism,after all. During the Dutch revolt it was always the intention to recapture the lost southern provinces. So if Elisabeth is calling herself count (or countess, I don't care) of Holland, she will also call herself count (or countess, I still don't care) of Flanders.
That said, there was part of the Netherlands that did not join the revolt, the union of Atrecht (or Arras, but I like Atrecht as opposed to the union of Utrecht). I can imagine Elisabeth not calling herself count (yeah, yeah or countess) of Artois, since Artois and a couple of other southern provinces/places did not join the Dutch revolt. But Brabant and Flanders most certainly did.
While war with Spain may have been inevitable, the duration of this war could be variable. If she did not claim territory there, she could get out of the conflict more easily if it went badly. Also, if she claimed the throne of the the Netherlands and then had to renounce it later, it would be a humiliation.
Also, the Netherlands would be more open to foreign attack than England itself.
Significantly reduced conflicts over colonisation, for a start. Possibly a joint Anglo-Dutch East India Company.
More yoinking of Portuguese colonies. Could end up with a longer-lasting Anglo-Dutch Brazil, maybe even an Anglo-Dutch Angola.
England has to devote more resources into its army, in order to defend the Netherlands.
I suppose England becomes an economic power on par with France, sooner I guess as well?
Frisian is already a sister language in the area to English and Scots, though i think it had long been in decline by this period. Still, it might become more influential in the way dutch is standardized, especially as a dutch translation of the bible hasn't happened yet.
And thats another thing to consider if Elizabeth accepts the crown: her relationship to the Protestant Church in the Netherlands and saud church's relationship to the church of England
And when the Act of Union comes along, then you have three distinct churches in the mix...
Both the Church of Scotland and the Dutch Reformed Church are Calvinist, though.
Though there are a decent number of Lutherans in the Netherlands.
I don't think they about that in this time period. I would say the opposite is trhue. england had been looking for a foothold in Europe after the loss of Calais. In the non-such (or whatever it was called) treaty Flushing would have become English. Dunkirk became British for a while. And even during the 3rd-Anglo-Dutch war England wasplanning to take part of Zeeland.
I think it would have been very cool if she had taken the offer, and it stuck--though the fact she had no dynastic successor and passed the throne, at this time just a personal union, on to James might have torn this personal union apart, and then there is the English Civil War--especially considering that Charles playing footsie with the Catholic Church was a major cause of that rupture. Could Cromwell assert control not only over the British Isles but the (Protestant, separatist) Netherlands as well? Or vice versa, given that the portion of the Low Countries Elizabeth could conceivably get credit for preserving would be entirely Roundhead in general drift (if not exact denomination) and anti-Royalist therefore--would reinforcement of the Commonwealth by the Dutch insisting on creating some federal entity, capital at York say or alternating between York and, oh, Amsterdam, result in no restoration and a Federated Commonwealth of Scotland, England, and the Netherlands, with perhaps Ireland getting resolved by tacking it in as a fourth component nation within a successfully ongoing Commonwealth Federation, perhaps adopting governing notes and tips from the Swiss?
Actually given that the separate districts of the Netherlands are themselves supposed to be autonomous, or at one point were assumed to be so, perhaps the Dutch can broker some kind of weighted mixed level of representation deal whereby the numerous small Netherlands states have a handful of seats and England has a huge number, not quite proportional by population, with Scotland and later Ireland getting intermediate numbers, or Ireland coming in as say four commonwealths, Ulster, Leinster, Murray and Connaught with modest numbers, thus achieving something vaguely along lines of the US constitution only with Senate and House fused? Or would the system become dependent on Lords acting as pan-federation Senators?
So, no Royal restoration at all, just this many-headed hydra of a North Sea Confederation?
Certain aspects would be centralized from the get-go I imagine--one united Commonwealth Navy for a start, whereas armies might be devolved down to the nations. Such a mammoth state as England might well get split into several Heptarchy-replicating bits with Wales and Cornwall thrown into the mix.
All this speculation is cool and fun. However:
My major education on this is the book The Armada by Garrett Mattingly, 1959. It was assigned in a historiography class. Having not read more broadly I might be much misled by notions of Mattingly since debunked, but this is my major window into Elizabeth's character and style.
One thing I think that Elizabeth personally did a great deal to foster was the modern English patriotic identity, sort of a joint project of her and William Shakespeare. Her victory in the Armada crisis included securing the loyalty of a great many Catholic subjects despite the virulent anti-Papism of the English establishment.
Mattingly offers the suggestion that had Philip been able to be more cold-blooded about the provocation of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots and take his methodical time about putting down "the English Jezebel," a more effective route to Hapsburg and Catholic victory might have been to put all the treasure the king extorted or finagled to fund the Armada venture into backing Parma more fully in the Low Countries. With a greater purse and undivided attention, Mattingly seemed to think total conquest of the whole Netherlands was in the cards for Parma, and once he managed to get the northern provinces under his thumb (Mattingly implies Parma and Philip would be astute and flexible in imposing conditions so as not to drive the Protestants into utter desperation) Parma could then gather together a fleet under Dutch operation and assemble a sufficient force of soldiers to force their way across the Channel into the Catholic countryside of England, where indeed the country folk and much of their gentry might join to the Spanish banner and quite overwhelm the most formidable land force Elizabeth could muster, driving her to death or exile and taking control of England wholesale. (It is unclear to me if Mattingly contemplated the Hapsburgs trying to round it out by subduing Scotland as well).
Even if the Hapsburgs never get quite around to invading England, Elizabeth's status as "Gloriana" was much bolstered by the victory over the Armada. If Elizabeth had been persuaded to accept some kind of crown over the Netherlands in rebellion against Spain and HRE, and then Parma proved able to seize her claimed protectorates one by one and drive her quite back to England, the condition of the English monarchy might have been quite dire.
Mattingly stresses the manner in which she played off against one another the various larger than life and fractious men of ambition she ruled over and maneuvered for time and latitude, and how her procrastination and parsimony often worked out to English advantage. And he stresses how she played a theatrical role with the English public. Could she have stretched this to court and charm the Dutch people as well? In any case, jumping into bed irrevocably with them, when the contest was as severely in doubt as it was before the failure of the Armada and its extensive decimation put Philip far onto the back foot, would have been pretty far out of her cautious, pragmatically coquettish dance of balance.
Much as I would love to see such an Anglo-Dutch Union therefore, I don't think Elizabeth is the right monarch to risk it all trying to pull it off. With all else said against it, I daresay also it would result in yet another ploy to get her to properly marry some Dutch notable or other to cement the alliance, and if she judged that was in the cards, I guess that would quite doom the notion. (I do not understand just how and why Elizabeth came to treasure and use the cult of her Virgin Majesty, or what her deep personal feelings in the whole mess were, but the fact that she had herself uniquely set up as a Fairie Queene in a mystic soap bubble that would surely burst if she wedded anyone, no matter how compliant to her direction, seems quite too apparent to gainsay).
Actually given that the separate districts of the Netherlands are themselves supposed to be autonomous, or at one point were assumed to be so, perhaps the Dutch can broker some kind of weighted mixed level of representation deal whereby the numerous small Netherlands states have a handful of seats and England has a huge number, not quite proportional by population, with Scotland and later Ireland getting intermediate numbers, or Ireland coming in as say four commonwealths, Ulster, Leinster, Murray and Connaught with modest numbers, thus achieving something vaguely along lines of the US constitution only with Senate and House fused? Or would the system become dependent on Lords acting as pan-federation Senators?
So, no Royal restoration at all, just this many-headed hydra of a North Sea Confederation?
Certain aspects would be centralized from the get-go I imagine--one united Commonwealth Navy for a start, whereas armies might be devolved down to the nations. Such a mammoth state as England might well get split into several Heptarchy-replicating bits with Wales and Cornwall thrown into the mix.
All this speculation is cool and fun. However:
All three of these arguments, along with the fact that Elizabeth was among other things very frugal, are very weighty. In the event, England gave the mainland Dutch quite a lot of aid, and until the debacle of the Armada turned the whole game board over, the Anglo-Dutch alliance was not doing so hot. Parma was winning victories, reducing and securing control of one rebel outpost after another.
My major education on this is the book The Armada by Garrett Mattingly, 1959. It was assigned in a historiography class. Having not read more broadly I might be much misled by notions of Mattingly since debunked, but this is my major window into Elizabeth's character and style.
One thing I think that Elizabeth personally did a great deal to foster was the modern English patriotic identity, sort of a joint project of her and William Shakespeare. Her victory in the Armada crisis included securing the loyalty of a great many Catholic subjects despite the virulent anti-Papism of the English establishment.
Mattingly offers the suggestion that had Philip been able to be more cold-blooded about the provocation of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots and take his methodical time about putting down "the English Jezebel," a more effective route to Hapsburg and Catholic victory might have been to put all the treasure the king extorted or finagled to fund the Armada venture into backing Parma more fully in the Low Countries. With a greater purse and undivided attention, Mattingly seemed to think total conquest of the whole Netherlands was in the cards for Parma, and once he managed to get the northern provinces under his thumb (Mattingly implies Parma and Philip would be astute and flexible in imposing conditions so as not to drive the Protestants into utter desperation) Parma could then gather together a fleet under Dutch operation and assemble a sufficient force of soldiers to force their way across the Channel into the Catholic countryside of England, where indeed the country folk and much of their gentry might join to the Spanish banner and quite overwhelm the most formidable land force Elizabeth could muster, driving her to death or exile and taking control of England wholesale. (It is unclear to me if Mattingly contemplated the Hapsburgs trying to round it out by subduing Scotland as well).
Even if the Hapsburgs never get quite around to invading England, Elizabeth's status as "Gloriana" was much bolstered by the victory over the Armada. If Elizabeth had been persuaded to accept some kind of crown over the Netherlands in rebellion against Spain and HRE, and then Parma proved able to seize her claimed protectorates one by one and drive her quite back to England, the condition of the English monarchy might have been quite dire.
Mattingly stresses the manner in which she played off against one another the various larger than life and fractious men of ambition she ruled over and maneuvered for time and latitude, and how her procrastination and parsimony often worked out to English advantage. And he stresses how she played a theatrical role with the English public. Could she have stretched this to court and charm the Dutch people as well? In any case, jumping into bed irrevocably with them, when the contest was as severely in doubt as it was before the failure of the Armada and its extensive decimation put Philip far onto the back foot, would have been pretty far out of her cautious, pragmatically coquettish dance of balance.
Much as I would love to see such an Anglo-Dutch Union therefore, I don't think Elizabeth is the right monarch to risk it all trying to pull it off. With all else said against it, I daresay also it would result in yet another ploy to get her to properly marry some Dutch notable or other to cement the alliance, and if she judged that was in the cards, I guess that would quite doom the notion. (I do not understand just how and why Elizabeth came to treasure and use the cult of her Virgin Majesty, or what her deep personal feelings in the whole mess were, but the fact that she had herself uniquely set up as a Fairie Queene in a mystic soap bubble that would surely burst if she wedded anyone, no matter how compliant to her direction, seems quite too apparent to gainsay).
Maybe she could marry a dutch prince to her heir? Lady Kathrine Grey (younger sister to the nine day queen) would've made a good choice had she not secretly gotten married