This is the first full-scale analysis of the social and political transformation of the nobility of Holland during the revolt against Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the age of Rembrandt, nobles seemed to have been obliterated by the rising bourgeois merchants. However, in this study of the impact of the Dutch revolt, the author finds that Dutch nobles were extremely successful in maintaining their positions within the supposedly bourgeois Republic, forming the elite in administrative, political and economic systems. This is a revised edition of van Nierop's widely acclaimed Dutch publication.