Autograph letter signed by William V, Prince of Orange dated 1783

WILLIAM V (1748–1806), Prince of Orange and last Hereditary Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic.
Autograph letter signed, The Hague, 22 August 1783.
 
One folded sheet (190 × 220 mm), written in German in a clear chancery hand. Some loss at the fold otherwise in clear and legible, very good condition.
 
A formal political letter written during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War and the growing crisis between the House of Orange and the Patriot movement. William V acknowledges receipt of a recent letter from the recipient and expresses his satisfaction at the writer’s steadfast loyalty in the “present state of affairs”. He commends the addressee’s unshaken attachment to the House of Orange and to the Reformed religion, praises his constancy and services under the current unsettled conditions, and encourages him to persevere in supporting what he terms the “good cause”. The letter closes with an assurance of princely favour and goodwill.
 
With an early nineteenth-century German collector’s or archival docket in brown ink at the head identifying the writer as Wilhelm V, Prince of Orange, last Hereditary Stadtholder of Holland. A well-preserved example of Wilhelm V correspondence from the years preceding the collapse of the Dutch Republic.