He had proclaimed that all landed estates should, in lack of heirs male, escheat to his own exchequer.

He had debased the coin of the country, and thereby authorized unlimited swindling on the part of all his agents, from stadholders down to the meanest official.

If such oppression and knavery did not justify the resistance of the Flemings to the guardianship of Maximilian, it would be difficult to find any reasonable course in political affairs save abject submission to authority.
In 1493, Maximilian succeeds to the imperial throne, at the death of his father.

In the following year his son, Philip the Fair, now seventeen years of age, receives the homage of the different states of the Netherlands.

He swears to maintain only the privileges granted by Philip and Charles of Burgundy, or their ancestors, proclaiming null and void all those which might have been acquired since the death of Charles.
Holland, Zeland, and the other provinces accept him upon these conditions, thus ignominiously, and without a struggle, relinquishing the Great Privilege, and all similar charters.
Friesland is, for a brief season, politically separated from the rest of the country.