On New Year's Day 1610 a delegation representing Alkmaar's civic militias arrived in The Hague to lodge a complaint with the States of Holland about the behaviour of their town councillors. The day before, the civic militia had seized control of Alkmaar, with militiamen occupying the town hall, the gates and the walls of the city. Their reign, which was to last for nearly eight weeks, was the provisional outcome of a conflict that had started two years earlier. Like so many cities in the Republic at that time, Alkmaar was torn by religious strife. In the Reformed congregation in Alkmaar, the rigidly orthodox clergyman Cornelis Hillenius confronted the very free-thinking Adolfus Venator. Venator was the favourite of the congregation, but Hillenius had the support of the majority in the town council, which after the election of 1608 had dismissed the entire magistrates court – something that, at least in the opinion of the dissatisfied militiamen, ‘had not occurred in living memory’ – and replaced them with adherents of the orthodox movement. The following year saw the implementation of even more extreme measures. During the election of magistrates in December 1609, the stadholder – at the insistence of Hillenius, but in violation of the local ordinance – appointed six men who had only recently acquired citizenship in Alkmaar. The new appointments resulted in some fathers and sons serving at the same time, which was also in breach of the ordinance.