From them it devolved upon the Dukes of Bavaria, the last representative of which house was dispossessed by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, who held the rest of the Netherlands under his rule. By the marriage of his daughter, Mary of Burgundy, with the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, the entire Netherlands passed from the House of Burgundy to the Imperial House of Austria. In 1496, Philip the Fair married Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile and Arragon, and the Netherlands, through this marriage came under the dominion of the Kings of Spain. Philip the Fair was succeeded by his only son, the Emperor Charles the Fifth, who was born in the Netherlands, and ruled the country as a part of his empire till 1555, when he abdicated in favor of his son Philip II. By Philip II. as King of Spain, through savage persecutions and ferocious wars, were the people of the Netherlands driven into a rebellion and war of Independence, which after an heroic struggle of forty years continuance, Avas successfully terminated by the famous twelve years truce of 1609.>

One of the strange results of this truce, was the voyage of Hudson in search of a western pas.sage to Cathay, and his momentous discovery of the Bay of New York and the magnificent river which has immortalized his name. Another remarkable result, was the establishment in the same year of the Bank of Amsterdam, which so long ruled the exchanges of Europe, and through which, the financial transactions of the first merchants and Patroous of New Netherland were subsequently carried on.