Lordship of Utrecht

The Lordship of Utrecht was formed in 1528 when Charles V of Habsburg conquered the Bishopric of Utrecht, during the Guelders Wars.

In 1528, at the demand of Henry of the Palatinate, Prince-Bishop of Utrecht, Habsburg forces under Georg Schenck van Toutenburg, liberated the Bishopric, which was occupied by the Duchy of Guelders since 1521–22. On October 20, 1528, Bishop Henry handed over power to Charles of Habsburg. The Bishopric of Utrecht came to an end and was divided into the Lordship of Utrecht and the Lordship of Overijssel, both ruled by a Habsburg Stadtholder.

Between 1528 and 1584 the Stadtholder of Utrecht was the same as the Stadtholder of the County of Holland. The Lordship became part of the Burgundian Circle by the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549, and one of the Seventeen Provinces.

During the Eighty Years' War, Utrecht joined the revolt against Charles's son Philip II of Spain from the beginning. It was at the center of the Union of Utrecht in 1579.

When the Batavian Republic was created in 1795, the Lordship of Utrecht was abolished.

George Edmundson wrote, in Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911 edition, that the bishops had no hereditary or dynastic interest in his land, and, as a temporal ruler, their powers were limited by the necessity of having to secure the goodwill of the higher clergy, of the nobles and of the cities, and also because of their relations to the Holy Roman emperors and the popes as ecclesiastical princes of the Holy Roman Empire. Edmundson also wrote that the bishops, in fact, as the result of grants of immunities by a succession of German kings, and notably by the Saxon and Franconian emperors, gradually became the temporal rulers of a dominion as great as the neighboring counties and duchies. Through the grants of land and privileges bestowed by these emperors the bishops of Utrecht became among the most powerful feudal lords of the north-western part of the empire.

Henry of the Palatinate who was also Bishop of Freising and Worms, resigned the see in 1528 with the consent of the chapter, and transferred his secular authority to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, who was also Duke of Brabant and Count of Holland. Thus Utrecht came under the sovereignty of the Habsburgs; the chapters voluntarily transferred their right of electing the bishop to Charles V, and Pope Clement VII gave his consent to the proceeding. The first bishop appointed by Charles V, Cardinal Willem van Enckevoirt, died in 1533 without having ever entered his diocese.

In 1548 the Lordship of Utrecht, together with Guelders, was transferred from the Lower Rhenish–Westphalian Circle to the Burgundian Circle, aligning it with the other Habsburg territories in the Low Countries in terms of imperial administration.