for a redress of grievances. But Mary showed herself possessed of
courage and statesmanship beyond her years, and she had at this critical
moment in her step-mother, Margaret of York, an experienced and capable
adviser at her side. A meeting of the States-General was at once
summoned to Ghent. It met on February 3, 1477, Mary's 20th birthday.
Representatives came from Flanders, Brabant, Artois and Namur, in the
southern, and from Holland and Zeeland in the northern Netherlands. Mary
saw there was no course open to her but to accede to their demands. Only
eight days after the Assembly met, the charter of Netherland
liberties, called The Great Privilege, was agreed to and signed. By this
Act all previous ordinances conflicting with ancient privileges were
abolished. The newly-established Court of Appeal at Mechlin was replaced
by a Great Council of twenty-four members chosen by the sovereign from
the various states, which should advise and assist in the administration
of government. Mary undertook not to marry or to declare war without the
assent of the States-General. The States-General and the Provincial
States were to meet as often as they wished, without the summons of the
sovereign. All officials were to be native-born; no Netherlander was to
be tried by foreign judges; there were to be no forced loans, no
alterations in the coinage. All edicts or ordinances infringing
provincial rights were to be _ipso facto_ null and void. By placing her
seal to this document Mary virtually abdicated the absolute sovereign
power which had been exercised by her predecessors, and undid at a
stroke the results of their really statesmanlike efforts to create out
of a number of semi-autonomous provinces a unified State. Many of their
acts and methods had been harsh and autocratic, especially those of
Charles the Bold, but who can doubt that on the whole their policy was
wise and salutary? In Holland and Zeeland a Council was erected
consisting of a Stadholder and eight councillors (six Hollanders and two
Zeelanders) of whom two were to be nobles, the others jurists. Wolferd