According to Sir John Wissels in his History of Roman Dutch Law argues that from the time of

brief Roman occupation, it has been sporadically applied and thus the reception was a gradual,
not sudden extension. As early as the thirteenth century, Latin phraseology was used in charters
and grants of privileges to towns for instance. It seems however, that the reception in the sense of
a submission of great parts of the common law by Roman law was a fairly late phenomenon and
was not complete until sixteenth century.

POLITICAL FACTORS

Political factors were also of great\ importance and responsible for the emergence of Roman laws
in the Netherlands This is evidenced by legislation of the customary law so as to promote order
and certainty in courts. In the fifteenth century, the territories of Netherlands were under
Burgundians rule and they introduced a policy of centralization as it eliminated all the diversity
which existed as a result of many different provinces which had different administrations and
law. The attempts at centralization indirectly paved the way for the reception of Roman Dutch
Law. The Burgundians issued statutes by sixteenth century which contained an explicit reference
to the application of the written law (Roman law). This was evidence that the Burgundians were
endeavouring to introduce a uniform, central system of law through Roman law.

The Burgundians attempted to remove various contradictory provincial customs and bring order
and certainty to all the prevailing customary laws by giving instructions that the provincial
customs be put in writing. The process entrenched Romanist principles because at the time of
drafting, many Romanist principles were incorporated into customary law, creating an ‘instant’
reception. Lastly customary law provide proof in seventeenth century as High Court further
ensured the success of the reception proper by strictly enforcing the requirement that customary
law has to be proved by a group of witness. Since the witnesses could not always satisfactory
prove the existence of a specific customary law rule, judges frequently applied the more easily
accessible Romanist commentaries instead.