d as it
were at random, in their diplomas, the chief monuments of the
history of the Middle Ages. The counts of Holland and the apostolic
nuncios addressed their acts and rescripts indiscriminately to
the nobles, clergy, magistrates, judges, consuls, or commons of
Friesland. Sometimes appeared in those documents the vague and
imposing title of "the great Frison," applied to some popular
leader. All this confusion tends to prove, on the authority of the
historians of the epoch, and the charters so carefully collected
by the learned, that this question, now so impossible to solve,
was even then not rightly understood--what were really those
fierce and redoubtable Frisons in their popular and political
relations? The fact is, that liberty was a matter so difficult
to be comprehended by the writers of those times that Froissart
gave as his opinion, about the year 1380, that the Frisons were
a most unreasonable race, for not recognizing the authority and
power of the great lords.

The eleventh century had been for the Netherlands (with the exception
of Friesland and Flanders) an epoch of organization; and had nearly
fixed the political existence of the provinces, which were so long
confounded in the vast possessions of the empire. It is therefore
important to ascertain under what influence and on what basis
these provinces became consolidated at that period. Holland and
Zealand, animated by the spirit which we may fairly distinguish
under the mingled title of Saxon and maritime, countries scarcely
accessible, and with a vigorous population, possessed, in the
descendants of Thierry I., a race of national chieftains who
did not attempt despotic rule over so unconquerable a people. In
Brabant, the maritime towns of Berg-op-Zoom and Antwerp formed, in
the Flemish style, so many republics, small but not insignificant;
while the southern parts of the province were under the sway of
a nobility who crushed, trampled on, or sold their vassals at
their pleasure or caprice. The bishopric of Liege offered also
the same contrast; the domains of the nobility being governed
with the utmost harshness, while those prince-prelates lavished on
their plebeian vassals privileges which might have been supposed
the fruits of generosity, were it not clear that the object was
to create an opposition in the lower orders against the turbulent
aristocracy, whom they found it impossible to manage single-handed.
The wars of these bishops against the p