On a late October afternoon in 1555, the political elite of the Low Countries gathered in the Great Hall of the Ducal Palace in Brussels. The principal nobles, clergymen and representatives of the major towns in the Netherlands had come to bid farewell to Charles V. The Emperor, a native of Ghent, answered for his life and deeds and renounced an impressive number of titles in favour of his son Philip. It was a ceremony of both grandeur and disillusionment. For although Charles seemed a broken man, the very fact that his son inherited all titles covering the ‘Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands’ as they were known – such as Duke of Brabant, Duke of Guelders, Count of Flanders, Count of Holland and Lord of Friesland – could be seen as the crown on the policy of centralization of the Burgundian – Habsburg dynasty in the Low Countries. After the formal unification of the Low Countries, which in 1549 had been declared ‘one and unbreakable’ by ‘pragmatic sanction’, Philip was the first, and, one should add, the last to govern the Low Countries as a whole.

The new sovereign was probably the sole dissonant in the political theatre played out in Brussels on that October day. As Philip did not speak Dutch, Antoine Perrenot, Bishop of Arras, had to answer for his lord. In a memorable speech he pointed out that it was natural for the prince to protect and uphold the liberty of the country.