Gerulfing

The Gerulfings, also called the House of Holland, were the first comital dynasty of the County of Holland and Zeeland, then known as West Frisia. They took their name from Gerulf the Elder, who died after 839 and was said to descend from Radbod, the Frisian king of the early eighth century. Gerolf, count in Frisia, was the father or foster-father of Dirk I, who in 922 received the lands around Egmond from Emperor Charles the Fat, an act regarded as the foundation of the County of Holland. The counts built Egmond Abbey and turned the coastal marshes into a territorial power, while bastard branches such as the Van Brederode and Van Teylingen spread their influence through the Low Countries.

The main line ended with Count John I, the fifteen-year-old son of the murdered Floris V, who died childless at Haarlem in 1299, after which Holland passed to the House of Avesnes of Hainaut. A younger branch survived longer in the County of Bentheim, inherited through Sophia of Rheineck, wife of Count Dirk VI; after a partition in 1277 into Bentheim-Bentheim and Bentheim-Tecklenburg, this branch lasted until 1421, when Bentheim passed through a collateral female line.