United Provinces, or of the United Netherlands, and in later times the
Kingdom of the Netherlands, are found outside official documents. Just
as the title "History of England" gradually includes the histories of
Wales, of Scotland, of Ireland, and finally of the widespread British
Empire, so is it in a smaller way with the history that is told in the
following pages. That history, to be really complete, should begin with
an account of mediaeval Holland in the feudal times which preceded the
Burgundian period; and such an account was indeed actually written, but
the plan of this work, which forms one of the volumes of a series,
precluded its publication.

The character, however, of the people of the province of Holland, and of
its sister and closely allied province of Zeeland, its qualities of
toughness, of endurance, of seamanship and maritime enterprise, spring
from the peculiar amphibious nature of the country, which differs from
that of any other country in the world. The age-long struggle against
the ocean and the river floods, which has converted the marshes, that
lay around the mouths of the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt, by
toilsome labour and skill into fertile and productive soil, has left its
impress on the whole history of this people. Nor must it be forgotten
how largely this building up of the elaborate system of dykes, dams and
canals by which this water-logged land was transformed into the Holland
of the closing decades of the sixteenth century, enabled her people to
offer such obstinate and successful resistance to the mighty power of
Philip II.

The earliest dynasty of the Counts of Holland--Dirks, Floris, and
Williams--was a very remarkable one. Not only did it rule for an
unusually long period, 922 to 1299, but in this long period without
exception all the Counts of Holland were strong and capable rulers. The