The Royal Households in the Habsburg Netherlands after the Departure of the Household of Burgundy

In September 1517, Archduke Charles left the Habsburg Netherlands to make his way to Castile accompanied by his complete entourage, including the Household of Burgundy. After that date, other than during the occasional visit by Charles V or Philip II, the Burgundian service was not to return to Flemish lands, which prompted the search for a new model to hold the various elites in the Habsburg Netherlands together when the monarch was not present. Until quite recently, historiography had systematically neglected the study of the households of the governors-general in the Habsburg Netherlands in favour of the political history arising from the famous Dutch Revolt. Lately, however, this has been changing, so that we are now able to present a general framework describing the way these households were used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as they searched for a suitable model. This, as we shall see, was bound up with the changing circumstance­s affecting the Court in Madrid and was modified as the dominant Court factions came to decisions about the way that the Spanish Monarchy should be organized and the various nations integrated into it. With this in mind, this article will examine the way in which the choice of one model or another enabled the Flemish elites to feel that they were involved, at least to some extent, in governing their own territories, and the difficulties that arose when they felt excluded

Archaeology · Dictator · Economic history · Flemish · Historiography · Monarchy · Political science · Politics · Classics · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Influence and Diplomacy · History · Law · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

• Beyond the Crisis of the Nobility. Recent Historiography on the Nobility in the Medieval Low Countries II

  Open Access•Arie Van Steensel•History Compass•2014

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