enemy's lands and more especially the supplying of the enemy with grain.
He meant it well, for he had been informed that the cutting-off of this
commerce, which he regarded as illicit, would deprive the Spaniards of
the necessaries of life, and Parma's position would become desperate.
This carrying trade had, however, for long been a source of much profit
to the merchants and shipowners of Holland and Zeeland; indeed it
supplied no small part of the resources by which those two provinces
had equipped the fleets and troops by which they had defended themselves
against the efforts of the Spanish king. Two years before this the
States-General had tried to place an embargo on the traffic in grain,
but the powerful town-council of Amsterdam had refused obedience and the
Estates of Holland supported them in their action. The deputies of the
inland provinces, which had suffered most from the Spanish armies, were
jealous of the prosperity of the maritime States, and regarded this
trade with the Spaniard as being carried on to their injury. But Holland
and Zeeland supplied the funds without which resistance would long since
have been impossible, and they claimed moreover, as sovereign provinces,
the right to regulate their trade affairs. The edict remained a
dead-letter, for there was no power to enforce it.

The governor made a still greater mistake when, in his annoyance at the
opposition of the Hollanders, he courted the democratic anti-Holland
party in Utrecht, which had as its leader the ultra-Calvinist
stadholder, Nieuwenaar, and caused one of his confidants, a Brabanter,
Gerard Prounick, surnamed Deventer, to be elected burgomaster of
Utrecht, although as a foreigner he was disqualified from holding that
office. An even more arbitrary act was his creation of a Chamber of
Finance armed with inquisitorial powers, thus invading the rights of the
Provincial Estates and depriving the Council of State of one of its most
important functions. To make matters worse, he appointed Nieuwenaar to