ABSTRACT
In 1672 gales and a legendary ebb tide had prevented an English invasion of the Netherlands and enabled William to save the Republic and the Protestant cause. A number of years earlier a member of a Utrecht patrician family, Gijsbert van der Hoolck, had collected facts about the life and reign of the Tudor king Edward VI with the intention of showing William how to bring about a positive change in the relation between state and church. Vollenhove was naturally aware of the new relevance of this work now that William III occupied the throne once held by Edward VI. William was sufficiently intelligent to understand that Johan de Witt resembled Northumberland, inasmuch as he also pursued his own interests alongside those of his republican adherents. In Middelburg, on the other hand, William supported the strict Calvinists in their desire to remove two ministers, who were considered insufficiently orthodox.
