General Introduction
3
of the Counts of Holland the law of that province consisted principally in general and local customs supplemented to an uncertain degree by Roman Law. The numerous privileges (handvesten) wrung from the Counts by the growing power of the towns only tended to complicate the law by a multiplication of local anomalies.[1] In such a state of things it is not surprising that men should have resorted to the Roman Law as to a system logical, coherent, and complete.[2] Later, under Spanish rule, came an era of constructive legislation; but by that time the victory of the Roman Law was already assured.
The reception of the Roman Law in the Netherlands;
Prominent amongst the causes which stimulated the reception of the Roman Law in this its latest phase was the establishment of the Great Council at Mechlin[3] in the year 1473 with jurisdiction over all the provinces of the Netherlands then subject to the Duke of Burgundy. This Court, which continued to exist until the War of Independence,[4] did much to assimilate the law in the various provinces, and thus exercised a jurisdiction comparable to that of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council or (in a narrower field) of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa at the present day. Nicholaus Everardus,[5] one of our earliest authorities for the Roman-Dutch Law, was President of this Court in 1528.[6] Perhaps we shall not be wrong, then, if we select- ↑ This was particularly the case when, as usually happened, the towns enjoyed the privilege of making local regulations (keuren). Wessels, p. 210.
- ↑ Mr. Justice Kotzé in S. A. L. J., vol. xxvi, pp. 407–8.
- ↑ The Great Council (De Groote Raad) was instituted in the year 1446 by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy and Count of Holland. It was fixed at Mechlin by Charles the Bold in 1473, and again by Philip the Fair in 1503 (Fruin, Geschiedenis der Staatsinstellingen in Nederland, pp. 136–7). The Provincial Court of Holland (Hof van Holland) also exercised an important influence in the same direction. See Professor Fockema Andreae's edition of Grotius, Inleidinge tot de Hollandsche Recht-geleerdheid, vol. ii, p. 8. For a short history of these Courts, see Kotzé, S. A. L. J., vol. xxvi, pp. 39 ff.
- ↑ Fruin, p. 255. Its place was taken, as regards Holland and Zeeland only, by the Hooge Raad van Holland (en Zeeland), established in the Hague in 1581. Zeeland submitted to its jurisdiction in 1587.
- ↑ Kotzé, S. A. L. J., vol. xxvii, p. 29.
- ↑ He had previously been President of the Court of Holland from 1509.
