Menteith








Gelderland
Gelderland occupies a central position within the Netherlands, and sits astride the division between the sandy glacial till (Veluwe, "Bad Land") in the north and east, and the marshy, more fertile alluvial soil (Betuwe, "Good Land") in the south. Historically, the region had been a Saxon county, but that was broken up in the early 11th century. A west German family based at Geldern began acquiring land in the central Netherlands, and in 1096 were invested with a countship of Gelderland. They expanded and prospered, gaining control of the Lower Rhine, Waal, Maas, and IJssel Rivers - in 1339 they were created Dukes of Gelders. The Duchy resisted Burgundian expansion in the 15th and early 16th centuries, but Duke Wilhelm the Rich of Jülich-Cleves-Berg-Gelders was forced to cede the region to Spain in 1543. Gelderland joined the Dutch independence movement in 1579, and thereafter became an integral part of the Netherlands. In 1713, the old Ducal capital of Geldern was annexed by Prussia following the conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession, and remains within Germany to this day.

This page contains local Gelderland estates: Gelderland (General Survey), Baar,  Batenburg, Borculo, Bredevoort, Buren, Hoekelom, Lathum, Lichtenvoorde, Nijmegen, Zutphen.

Neighbouring states: Cleves (Ger.), Münster (Ger.), Overijssel, Utrecht.

GELDERLAND (Guelders, Gelre) In the central Netherlands, east of Utrecht. A County 1096, a Duchy 1339.
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Gelders Estates
BAAR (also spelled Baer, Bare, Bahr) and LATHUM Two small lordships, adjacent to one another, near the splitting-off of the Gelderse IJssel river from the Lower Rhine river, southeast of Arnhem (Baar 8½ km, Lathum 11 km) near the present village of Lathum. Baar was a ‘bannerheerlijkheid’, see Bronckhorst. Baar is first attested 1212, Lathum 1227. The earliest lords of Baar and Lathum might have belonged to the same family (Van R(h)eden), or Lathum was ceded to a member of a younger line of the house of Baar

BATENBURG A lordship on the northern bank of the river Maas (Meuse), the border between Gelderland and Brabant, about 9 miles (15 km.) west of Nijmegen and a mile or so north of Ravenstein. It was a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, independent of Gelderland and Brabant until 1664, when it became a fief of the States of Gelderland. It claimed - with Bronckhorst, Baer and Berg-'s-Heerenberg - the status of  'Bannerheerlijkheid', meaning the right of its lord to keep his own banner during a battle, not the banner of the count/duke of Gelderland.
  • BATENBURG The relationship of the first three attested rulers with Dirk I is unknown.
  • Albero............................fl. betw. 1078/9-1086 with...
  • Dirk..............................fl. betw. 1078/9-1086 and...
  • Rudolf............................fl. betw. 1078/9-1086
  • ?
  • Dirk I.........................................fl. 1122
  • Dirk II...................................fl. 1159-1166
  • Dirk III..................................fl. 1191-1201
  • Dirk IV........................................fl. 1227
  • Dirk V ? ................................fl. betw. 1227/c. 1230 > ?
  • Floris, regent fl. (>)1227-betw. 1237/40 d. 1247 >
  • Gerard....................................fl. 1247-betw. 1289/91
  • Dirk VI..........................fl. betw. 1289/91-betw. 1311/4
  • Johanna (fem.).........................betw. 1311/4-1351 with...
  • BRONCKHORST
  • Willem (lord of Bronckhorst 1315-28)..........1317-1328 and then...
  • Dirk (VII)....................................1328-1336 > and...
  • Boudewijn.....................................1328-1347
  • BRONCKHORST-BATENBURG
  • Gijsbert (I) (lord of Bronckhorst 1328-1358)..1351-1358
  • Partitioned into Batenburg and Bronkhorst
  • Dirk (VIII)...................................1359-1407
  • Gijsbert (II) (lord of Anholt 1402-1429)......1407-1408/29 d. 1429
  • Batenburg in receivership, and it's rights pawned, 1408-1432.
    • BERLAER
    • Jan (Jan II, lord of Helmond)............1408-1425
    • GULIK (JÜLICH)
    • Willem (lord of Wachtendonk).............1425-1432 d. 1439
  • BRONCKHORST-BATENBURG
  • Dirk (IX) (lord of Anholt).................1429/32-1451
  • Gijsbert (III) (lord of Anholt)...............1451-1473
  • To Gelderland.................................1473-1476
  • Jakob (lord of Anholt 1473-1512)..............1476-1516
  • Gijsbert (IV) (claiment lord of Anholt).......1516-1525
  • To Gelderland.................................1525-1534
  • Partitioned between itself and Anholt.
  • Herman........................................1534-1556
  • Willem........................................1556-1573
  • Herman Dirk...................................1573-1602
  • Succession dispute 1602-1623
  • Maximiliaan................................1602/23-1641
  • Another bitter succession dispute erupted 1641-1659, when the last male heir to this family found his claim to the lordship challenged owing to the morganatic nature of his father's marriage to his mother - her middle-class origin made Frederik Willem non-noble, in the eyes of many.
  • Frederik Willem...............................1641-1659 opposed by...
  • Johanna (fem.).................................1641-1676 with...
  • HORN
  • Johan Belgicus (baron of Kessel)...........1641/59-c.1662 (or 1659-< 1664)
  • Batenburg mediatized and attached to Gelderland, 1664.
    • Willem Adriaan...........................1676-1694
    • Isabella Justina (fem.)...................1694-1713 d. 1734: with...
  • To Bentheim-Steinfurt.........................1701-1795
    • GÖTTERSWYK
    • Ernst (Count of Ben.-Steinf. 1693-1713)..1701-1713
    • Karl Friedrich (Co. of B.-Steinfurt).....1713-1733
    • Karl Paul Ernst (Co. of B.-Steinfurt)....1733-1780
    • Ludwig (Co. of B.-Steinf. to 1806).......1780-1795 d. 1817
  • To the Batavian Republic 1795, Holland 1806, France 1810, the Netherlands from 1814.

BORCULO A small town in eastern Gelderland, about 7 miles (11 km.) west of the German frontier and 14 miles (22 km.) east of Zutphen. Borculo was an autonomous Barony during the Middle Ages.

BREDEVOORT A town in the extreme east of the quarter of Zutphen, province of Gelderland (42 miles - 68 km. - east of Arnhem, 3 miles (5 km.) from the Dutch-German border). This lordship, stretching along the German border south of Borculo came into being during the 11th century (first mentioned 1188) as a part of the county of Lohn/Loen. Bredevoort was a sovereign lordship from 1326 until 1795.


BUREN A lordship in the western part of the province of Gelderland, along the southern bank of the Lek river - the Lordship of Culemborg is immediately on it's western flank, and the town of Wijk stands across the river by Buren's northeastern corner. It originated in the 12th century,  a successor of the county of Teisterbant, which fell apart during the 11th century. The lords of Buren were vassals of the county of Gelderland but became more-or-less independent rulers when Buren was raised a county of the HRE by emperor Maximilian I in 1492. The use of the title “count/countess of Buren” has served some of the Dutch royals to occasionally maintain a measure of privacy when among the public.

HOEKELUM A small lordship in the province of Gelderland in the southwestern Veluwe region, 23 miles (37 km.) east of Utrecht and 11 miles (18 km) west of Arnhem, just south of Ede and and a bit north of Wageningen. Its lords occupied a high position at the court of the counts and dukes of Gelders, the hereditary office of Master of the Hunt in the Veluwe and the Reichswald. They lost this office ca. 1477.

LICHTENVOORDE A town in the Graafschap (= Achterhoek), the eastern quarter of the province of Gelderland, 53 km east of Arnhem, near the present German-Dutch border, between the lordship of Borculo and the county of Zutphen. The lordship Lichtenvoorde is first mentioned in 1312 (or 1277?), an allodium of the lords of Bronckhorst, who might have bought the territory around the castle of Lichtenvoorde from Borculo. The prince-bishops of Münster considered Lichtenvoorde a fief of Münster from the Middle Ages until 1674.

NIJMEGEN A city in southern Gelderland, on the Waal River. It is the oldest settled town in the country, having been established on a strategic location in the Rhine-Waal valley in 5 CE as the headquarters camp of  the Legio X Gemina. The civilian village outside the fort was initially named Oppidum Batavorum but after the Tenth Legion was transferred to Vienna the town's name was changed (in 103 CE) to Ulpia Noviomagus Batavorum - "Noviomagus" forms the root underlying the modern name (it itself is a superficially Latinized transcription of a Gaulish term [Noviio Magos] meaning "Newfield" or "Newmarket").

ZUTPHEN A town and district in Gelderland, 8 miles (13 km.) south of Deventer and some 15 miles (24 km.) northeast of Arnhem. The lordship of Zutphen emerged in the first part of the 11th century (but with some evidence pointing to an earlier Carolingian origin), between the river IJssel and the modern Dutch-German border, to the east of the town of Arnhem. It occupied more or less the eastern part of the modern Dutch province of Gelderland. It was inherited 1138 by Henry, count of Gelderland (son of Irmgard, sister of Henry the Old of Zutphen) and remained in personal union with the county/duchy of Gelderland, as one of its four ‘quarters’ (the others being Veluwe, Domain of Nijmegen, and Upper Gelre).
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