This book is the first full scale analysis of the social and political transformation of the nobility of Holland during the revolt against Spain. In the late medieval country of Holland the nobility played a significant role, but in the seventeenth century they appear to have been obliterated by bourgeois merchants and urban regents. In this new book the author argues that this ‘decline’ needs reexamination, and bases his study round three key aspects: the demographic evidence for the decline of the nobility, the economic vicissitudes of the sixteenth century, and the political and administrative powers of the nobility during the reigns of Charles V and Philip II. His conclusions are surprising, showing the Dutch nobility to be extremely successful in maintaining its position in a bourgeois republic and as forming the elite in administrative, political and economic systems.