Yet there was every reason why Maurice should be ambitious of that position.

It would have been in accordance with the openly expressed desire of Henry IV.

and other powerful allies of the Netherlands.

His father's assassination had alone prevented his elevation to the rank of sovereign Count of Holland.
The federal policy of the Provinces had drifted into a republican form after their renunciation of their Spanish sovereign, not because the people, or the States as representing the people, had deliberately chosen a republican system, but because they could get no powerful monarch to accept the sovereignty.

They had offered to become subjects of Protestant England and of Catholic France.