though a church was erected at Utrecht by Dagobert I. about A.D. 630, it was destroyed by the Frisians, who remained obstinately heathen. The first successful attempt to convert them was made, under the powerful protection of Pippin of Heristal, by Willebrord, a Northumbrian monk, who became, A.D. 695, the first bishop of Utrecht (see Utrecht). His labours were continued with even more striking results by another Englishman, Winfred, better known as St Boniface, the Apostle of the Germans, who suffered martyrdom at Dokkum in A.D. 754 at the hands of some heathen Frisians. The complete conversion was, however, in the end due rather to the arms of the Carolingian kings than to the unaided efforts of the missionaries. Towards the end of the century, Charlemagne, himself a Netherlander by descent and ancestral possessions, after a severe struggle, thoroughly subdued the Frisians and Saxons, and compelled them to embrace Christianity.
In the triple partition of the Carolingian empire at Verdun in 843, the central portion was assigned to the emperor Lothaire, separating the kingdoms of East Francia (the later Germany) from West Francia (the later France). This middle kingdom formed a long strip stretching across Europe from the North Sea to Naples, and The duchy of Lower Lorraine. embraced the whole of the later Netherlands with the exception of the portion on the left bank of the Scheldt, which river was made the boundary of West Francia. On the death of the emperor, his son Lothaire II. received the northern part of his father’s domain, known as Lotharii or Hlutharii Regnum, corrupted later into Lotharingia or Lorraine. Lothaire had no heir, and in 870 by the treaty of Meerssen his territory was divided between the kings of East and West Francia. In 879 East Francia acquired the whole; from 912 to 924 it formed part of West Francia. Finally in 924 Lorraine passed in the reign of Henry the Fowler under German (East Frankish) overlordship. Henry’s son, Otto the Great, owing to the disordered state of the country, placed it in 953 in the hands of his able brother, Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, for pacification. Bruno, who kept for himself the title of archduke, divided the territory into the two duchies of Upper and Lower Lorraine. Godfrey of Verdun was invested by him with the government of Lower Lorraine (Nieder-Löthringen). The history of the Netherlands from this time forward—with the exception of Flanders, which continued to be a fief of the French kings—is the history of the various feudal states into which the duchy of Lower Lorraine was gradually broken up.
It is a melancholy history, telling of the invasion of the Northmen, and of the dynastic struggles between the petty feudal sovereigns who carved out counties and lordships for themselves during the dark centuries which followed the fall of the Carolingian empire. It was a time of oppression and cruelty, and of war and devastation, Growth of the feudal states. during which the country remained chiefly swamp and tangled woodland, with little communication save up and down the rivers and along the old Roman roads. Its remoteness from the control of the authority of the German and French kings, together with its inaccessibility, gave special facilities in Lower Lorraine to the growth of a number of practically independent feudal states forming a group or system apart. Chief among these states were the duchy of Brabant, the counties of Flanders, Hainault, Holland, Gelderland, Limburg and Luxemburg, and the bishoprics of Utrecht and Liége. For their separate local histories and their dynasties, their wars and political relations with one another and with neighbouring countries, reference must be made to the separate articles Flanders, Holland, Brabant, Gelderland, Limburg, Luxemburg, Utrecht, Liége.
During the 9th and 10th centuries the Netherlands suffered cruelly from the attacks of the Northmen, who ravaged the shores and at times penetrated far inland. In 834 Utrecht and Dorestad were sacked, and a few years later all Holland and Friesland was in their hands. Year after year the raids went on under a succession of The invasion of the Northmen. leaders—Heriold, Roruk, Rolf, Godfrey—and far and wide there was pillaging, burning, murder and slavery. In 873 Rolf seized Walcheren, and became the scourge of the surrounding districts. In 880 the invaders took Nijmwegen, erected a permanent camp at Elsloo and pushed on to the Rhine. Liège, Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne and Bonn fell into their hands. The emperor, Charles the Fat, was roused to collect a large army, with which he surrounded the main body of the Northmen under their leader Godfrey in the camp at Elsloo. But Charles preferred negotiation and bribery to fighting. Godfrey received a large sum of money, was confirmed in the possession of Friesland, and on being converted to Christianity in 882, received in marriage Gisela, daughter of Lothaire II. Three years later, however, Godfrey was murdered, and although the raids of the Northmen did not entirely cease for upwards of another century, no further attempt was made to establish a permanent dynasty in the land.
At the close of the 11th century the system of feudal states had been firmly established in the Netherlands under stable dynasties hereditary or episcopal, and, despite the continual wars between them, civilization had begun develop, orderly government to be carried on, and the general condition of the people to be less hopeless and miserable. The Crusades. It was at this time that the voice of Peter the Hermit roused the whole of western Europe to enthusiasm by his preaching of the first crusade. Nowhere was the call responded to with greater zeal than in the Netherlands, and nowhere had the spirit of adventure and the stimulus to enterprise, which was one of the chief fruits of the Crusades, more permanent effects for good. The foremost heroes of the first crusade were Netherlanders. Godfrey of Bouillon, the leader of the expedition and the first king of Jerusalem, was duke of Lower Lorraine, and the names of his brothers Baldwin of Edessa and Eustace of Boulogne, and of Count Robert II. of Flanders are only less famous. The third crusade numbered among its chiefs Floris III. of Holland, Philip of Flanders, Otto I. of Gelderland and Henry I. of Brabant. The so-called Latin crusade of 1203 placed the imperial crown of Constantinople on the head of Baldwin of Flanders. At the siege and capture of Damietta (1218) it was the contingent of North-Netherlanders (Hollanders and Frisians under Count William I. of Holland) who bore the brunt of the fighting and specially distinguished themselves. To the Netherlands, as to the rest of western Europe, the result of the crusades was in the main advantageous. They broke down the intense narrowness of the life of those feudal times, enlarged men’s conceptions and introduced new ideas into their minds. They first brought the products and arts of the Orient into western Europe; and in the Netherlands, by the impulse that they gave to commerce, they were one of the primary causes of the rise of the chartered towns.
Little is known about the Netherland towns before the 12th century The earliest charters date from that period. No place was reckoned to be a town unless it had received a charter from its sovereign or its local lord. The charters were of the nature of a treaty between the city and its feudal lord, and they differed much in Rise of the cities in the Netherlands. character according to the importance of the place and the pressure it was able to put upon its sovereign. The extent of the rights which the charter conceded determined whether the town was a free town (vrïje stadt—villa franca) or a commune (gemeente—communia). In the case of a commune the concessions included generally the right of inheritance, justice, taxation, use of wood, water, &c. The lord’s representative, entitled “justiciary” (schout) of “bailiff” (baljuw), presided over the administration of justice and took the command of the town levies in war. The gemeente—consisting only of those bound by the communal oath for mutual help and defence—elected their own magistrates. These electors were often a small proportion of the whole body of inhabitants: sometimes a few influential families alone had the right, and it became hereditary. This governing oligarchy was known as “the patricians.” The magistrates bore the name of scabini (schepenen or échevins), and at their head was the seigneurial official—the schout or baljuw. These schepenen appointed in their turn from the
