Harlem, Delft, Leyden, Goads, and Amsterdam) acquired the right of
sending their deputies regularly to the estates of the provinces. These
towns, therefore, with the nobles, constituted the parliamentary power of
the nation. They also acquired letters patent from the count, allowing
them to choose their burgomasters and a limited number of councillors or
senators (Vroedschappen).

Thus the liberties of Holland and Flanders waxed, daily, stronger. A
great physical convulsion in the course of the thirteenth century came to
add its influence to the slower process of political revolution. Hitherto
there had been but one Friesland, including Holland, and nearly all the
territory of the future republic. A slender stream alone separated the
two great districts. The low lands along the Vlie, often threatened, at
last sank in the waves. The German Ocean rolled in upon the inland Lake
of Flevo. The stormy Zuyder Zee began its existence by engulfing
thousands of Frisian villages, with all their population, and by
spreading a chasm between kindred peoples. The political, as well as the
geographical, continuity of the land was obliterated by this tremendous
deluge. The Hollanders were cut off from their relatives in the east by
as dangerous a sea as that which divided them from their Anglo-Saxon
brethren in Britain. The deputies to the general assemblies at Aurich
could no longer undertake a journey grown so perilous. West Friesland
became absorbed in Holland. East Friesland remained a federation of rude
but self-governed maritime provinces, until the brief and bloody dominion
of the Saxon dukes led to the establishment of Charles the Fifth's
authority. Whatever the nominal sovereignty over them, this most
republican tribe of Netherlanders, or of Europeans, had never accepted
feudalism. There was an annual congress of the whole confederacy. Each of
the seven little states, on the other hand, regulated its own internal
affairs. Each state was subdivided into districts, each district governed
by a Griet-mann (greatman, selectman) and assistants. Above all these
district officers was a Podesta, a magistrate identical, in name and
functions, with the chief officer of the Italian republics. There was
sometimes but one Podesta; sometimes one for each province. He was chosen
by the people, took oath of fidelity to the separate estates, or, if
Podesta-general, to the federal diet, and was generally elected for a
limited term, although someti