ABSTRACT
The negotiations that took place during the first Anglo-Dutch war prove that in times of crisis the polyarchic government could act with as much rapidity and secrecy as any other. But in a general way the criticism was as justified as it was telling. Bornius’s Amsterdammer, who played the part of the honest man who begins by disagreeing but finally surrenders to the overwhelming force of reason. Orangism continued to be militant throughout the first stadtholderless period. It concentrated upon the advocacy of the claims of young prince William III, led in its frequent campaigns by the professionally orangist military nobility and by the clergy. The revolutionary beginnings of sixteenth-century calvinism continued to work like a leaven in the more settled century, and anti-capitalism came naturally to the shepherds of the small man, who were usually of lowly origin themselves.
