Andries Bicker

Andries Bicker, (Amsterdam, 1586 – 24 June 1652 ibid) was a powerful Amsterdam burgomaster and Dutch politician and diplomat during the Dutch Golden Age. He was a prominent member of the Bicker family of Amsterdam regents who, together with the related De Graeff family, governed the city of Amsterdam and with it the province of Holland for about half a century (until 1672) and, at that time, effectively the Republic of the Netherlands when it was at the height of its power.

He was the leader of the Bickerse league, and after Reynier Pauw's political end in 1620, the management of the Amsterdam city council fell into the hands of the Arminian cabal around Bicker and his uncle Jacob Dircksz de Graeff. This also gave new impetus to the republican States Party, which had been weakened since the assassination of Land's Advocate Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, and was able to determine Amsterdam politics for a long period of time. At the time of the politically weak Grand Pensionaries Anthonie Duyck and Jacob Cats from the 1620s to the 1640s, Bicker was regarded as the head of the republican regents in Holland and as a politician who resolutely opposed the striving for power of the stadtholders Frederick Henry and William II of Orange. He was considered one of the greatest political opponents of the Frederik Henry. Andries Bicker, together with his brother Cornelis Bicker and Cornelis de Graeff, the so called Bicker-De Graeff clan, was one of the main initiators of peace with Spain during the Eighty Years' War and of the participation of the Dutch provinces in the Peace of Münster in 1648.