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THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND

WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR

By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.



MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, Project Gutenberg Edition, Volume 89

Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v4, 1610-12


CHAPTER V.

     Interviews between the Dutch Commissioners and King James--Prince
     Maurice takes command of the Troops--Surrender of Julich--Matthias
     crowned King of Bohemia--Death of Rudolph--James's Dream of a
     Spanish Marriage--Appointment of Vorstius in place of Arminius at
     Leyden--Interview between Maurice and Winwood--Increased Bitterness
     between Barneveld and Maurice--Projects of Spanish Marriages in
     France.

It is refreshing to escape from the atmosphere of self-seeking faction,
feverish intrigue, and murderous stratagem in which unhappy France was
stifling into the colder and calmer regions of Netherland policy.

No sooner had the tidings of Henry's murder reached the States than
they felt that an immense responsibility had fallen on their shoulders.
It is to the eternal honour of the Republic, of Barneveld, who directed
her councils, and of Prince Maurice, who wielded her sword, that she was
equal to the task imposed upon her.

There were open bets on the Exchange in Antwerp, after the death of
Henry, that Maurice would likewise be killed within the month.  Nothing
seemed more probable, and the States implored the Stadholder to take
special heed to himself.  But this was a kind of caution which the Prince
was not wont to regard.  Nor was there faltering, distraction, cowardice,
or parsimony in Republican councils.

We have heard the strong words of encouragement and sympathy addressed by
the Advocate's instructions to the Queen-Regent and the leading statesmen
of France.  We have seen their effects in that lingering sentiment of
shame which prevented the Spanish stipendiaries who governed the kingdom
from throwing down the mask as cynically as they were at first inclined
to do.

Not less manful and statesmanlike was the language held to the King of
Great Britain and his ministers by the Advocate's directions.  The news
of the assassination reached the special ambassadors in London at three
o'clock of Monday, the 17th May.  James returned to Whitehall from a
hunting expedition on the 21st, and immediately signified his intention
of celebrating the occasion by inviting the high commissioners of the
States to a banquet and festival at the palace.

Meantime they were instructed by Barneveld to communicate the results of
the special embassy of the States to the late king according to the
report just delivered to the Assembly.  Thus James was to be informed of
the common resolution and engagement then taken to support the cause of
the princes.  He was now seriously and explicitly to be summoned to
assist the princes not only with the stipulated 4000 men, but with a much
greater force, proportionate to the demands for the security and welfare
of Christendom, endangered by this extraordinary event.  He was assured
that the States would exert themselves to the full measure of their
ability to fortify and maintain the high interests of France, of the
possessory princes, and of Christendom, so that the hopes of the
perpetrators of the foul deed would be confounded.

"They hold this to be the occasion," said the envoys, "to show to all the
world that it is within your power to rescue the affairs of France,
Germany, and of the United Provinces from the claws of those who imagine
for themselves universal monarchy."

They concluded by requesting the King to come to "a resolution on this
affair royally, liberally, and promptly, in order to take advantage of
the time, and not to allow the adversary to fortify himself in his
position"; and they pledged the States-General to stand by and second
him with all their power.

The commissioners, having read this letter to Lord Salisbury before
communicating it to the King, did not find the Lord Treasurer very prompt
or sympathetic in his reply.  There had evidently been much jealousy at
the English court of the confidential and intimate relations recently
established with Henry, to which allusions were made in the documents
read at the present conference.  Cecil, while expressing satisfaction in
formal terms at the friendly language of the States, and confidence in
the sincerity of their friendship for his sovereign, intimated very
plainly that more had passed between the late king and the authorities of
the Republic than had been revealed by either party to the King of Great
Britain, or than could be understood from the letters and papers now
communicated.  He desired further information from the commissioners,
especially in regard to those articles of their instructions which
referred to a general rupture.  They professed inability to give more
explanations than were contained in the documents themselves.  If
suspicion was felt, they said, that the French King had been proposing
anything in regard to a general rupture, either on account of the retreat
of Conde, the affair of Savoy, or anything else, they would reply that
the ambassadors in France had been instructed to decline committing the
States until after full communication and advice and ripe deliberation
with his British Majesty and council, as well as the Assembly of the
States-General; and it had been the intention of the late king to have
conferred once more and very confidentially with Prince Maurice and Count
Lewis William before coming to a decisive resolution.

It was very obvious however to the commissioners that their statement
gave no thorough satisfaction, and that grave suspicions remained of
something important kept back by them.  Cecil's manner was constrained
and cold, and certainly there were no evidences of profound sorrow at the
English court for the death of Henry.

"The King of France," said the High Treasurer, "meant to make a master-
stroke--a coup de maistre--but he who would have all may easily lose all.
Such projects as these should not have been formed or taken in hand
without previous communication with his Majesty of Great Britain."

All arguments on the part of the ambassadors to induce the Lord Treasurer
or other members of the government to enlarge the succour intended for
the Cleve affair were fruitless.  The English troops regularly employed
in the States' service might be made use of with the forces sent by the
Republic itself.  More assistance than this it was idle to expect, unless
after a satisfactory arrangement with the present regency of France.  The
proposition, too, of the States for a close and general alliance was
coldly repulsed.  "No resolution can be taken as to that," said Cecil;
"the death of the French king has very much altered such matters."

At a little later hour on the same day the commissioners, according to
previous invitation, dined with the King.

No one sat at the table but his Majesty and themselves, and they all kept
their hats on their heads.  The King was hospitable, gracious,
discursive, loquacious, very theological.

He expressed regret for the death of the King of France, and said
that the pernicious doctrine out of which such vile crimes grew must be
uprooted.  He asked many questions in regard to the United Netherlands,
enquiring especially as to the late commotions at Utrecht, and the
conduct of Prince Maurice on that occasion.  He praised the resolute
conduct of the States-General in suppressing those tumults with force,
adding, however, that they should have proceeded with greater rigour
against the ringleaders of the riot.  He warmly recommended the Union of
the Provinces.

He then led the conversation to the religious controversies in the
Netherlands, and in reply to his enquiries was informed that the points
in dispute related to predestination and its consequences.

"I have studied that subject," said James, "as well as anybody, and have
come to the conclusion that nothing certain can be laid down in regard to
it.  I have myself not always been of one mind about it, but I will bet
that my opinion is the best of any, although I would not hang my
salvation upon it.  My Lords the States would do well to order their
doctors and teachers to be silent on this topic.  I have hardly ventured,
moreover, to touch upon the matter of justification in my own writings,
because that also seemed to hang upon predestination."

Thus having spoken with the air of a man who had left nothing further to
be said on predestination or justification, the King rose, took off his
hat, and drank a bumper to the health of the States-General and his
Excellency Prince Maurice, and success to the affair of Cleve.

After dinner there was a parting interview in the gallery.  The King,
attended by many privy councillors and high functionaries of state,
bade the commissioners a cordial farewell, and, in order to show his
consideration for their government, performed the ceremony of knighthood
upon them, as was his custom in regard to the ambassadors of Venice.  The
sword being presented to him by the Lord Chamberlain, James touched each
of the envoys on the shoulder as he dismissed him.  "Out of respect to My
Lords the States," said they in their report, "we felt compelled to allow
ourselves to be burthened with this honour."

Thus it became obvious to the States-General that there was but little to
hope for from Great Britain or France.  France, governed by Concini and
by Spain, was sure to do her best to traverse the designs of the
Republic, and, while perfunctorily and grudgingly complying with the
letter of the Hall treaty, was secretly neutralizing by intrigue the
slender military aid which de la Chatre was to bring to Prince Maurice.
The close alliance of France and Protestantism had melted into air.  On
the other hand the new Catholic League sprang into full luxuriance out
of the grave of Henry, and both Spain and the Pope gave their hearty
adhesion to the combinations of Maximilian of Bavaria, now that the
mighty designs of the French king were buried with him.  The Duke of
Savoy, caught in the trap of his own devising, was fain to send his son
to sue to Spain for pardon for the family upon his knees, and expiated
by draining a deep cup of humiliation his ambitious designs upon the
Milanese and the matrimonial alliance with France.  Venice recoiled in
horror from the position she found herself in as soon as the glamour of
Henry's seductive policy was dispelled, while James of Great Britain,
rubbing his hands with great delight at the disappearance from the world
of the man he so admired, bewailed, and hated, had no comfort to impart
to the States-General thus left in virtual isolation.  The barren burthen
of knighthood and a sermon on predestination were all he could bestow
upon the high commissioners in place of the alliance which he eluded,
and the military assistance which he point-blank refused.  The possessory
princes, in whose cause the sword was drawn, were too quarrelsome and too
fainthearted to serve for much else than an incumbrance either in the
cabinet or the field.

And the States-General were equal to the immense responsibility.
Steadily, promptly, and sagaciously they confronted the wrath, the
policy, and the power of the Empire, of Spain, and of the Pope.  Had the
Republic not existed, nothing could have prevented that debateable and
most important territory from becoming provinces of Spain, whose power
thus dilated to gigantic proportions in the very face of England would
have been more menacing than in the days of the Armada.  Had the Republic
faltered, she would have soon ceased to exist.  But the Republic did not
falter.

On the 13th July, Prince Maurice took command of the States' forces,
13,000 foot and 3000 horse, with thirty pieces of cannon, assembled at
Schenkenschans.  The July English and French regiments in the regular
service of the United Provinces were included in these armies, but there
were no additions to them: "The States did seven times as much,"
Barneveld justly averred, "as they had stipulated to do."  Maurice,
moving with the precision and promptness which always marked his military
operations, marched straight upon Julich, and laid siege to that
important fortress.  The Archdukes at Brussels, determined to keep out
of the fray as long as possible, offered no opposition to the passage of
his supplies up the Rhine, which might have been seriously impeded by
them at Rheinberg.  The details of the siege, as of all the Prince's
sieges, possess no more interest to the general reader than the working
out of a geometrical problem.  He was incapable of a flaw in his
calculations, but it was impossible for him quite to complete the
demonstration before the arrival of de la Chatre.  Maurice received with
courtesy the Marshal, who arrived on the 18th August, at the head of his
contingent of 8000 foot and a few squadrons of cavalry, and there was
great show of harmony between them.  For any practical purposes, de la
Chatre might as well have remained in France.  For political ends his
absence would have been preferable to his presence.

Maurice would have rejoiced, had the Marshal blundered longer along the
road to the debateable land than he had done.  He had almost brought
Julich to reduction.  A fortnight later the place surrendered.  The terms
granted by the conqueror were equitable.  No change was to be made in the
liberty of Roman Catholic worship, nor in the city magistracy.  The
citadel and its contents were to be handed over to the Princes of
Brandenburg and Neuburg.  Archduke Leopold and his adherents departed to
Prague, to carry out as he best could his farther designs upon the crown
of Bohemia, this first portion of them having so lamentably failed, and
Sergeant-Major Frederick Pithan, of the regiment of Count Ernest Casimir
of Nassau, was appointed governor of Julich in the interest of the
possessory princes.

Thus without the loss of a single life, the Republic, guided by her
consummate statesman and unrivalled general, had gained an immense
victory, had installed the Protestant princes in the full possession of
those splendid and important provinces, and had dictated her decrees on
German soil to the Emperor of Germany, and had towed, as it were, Great
Britain and France along in her wake, instead of humbly following those
powers, and had accomplished all that she had ever proposed to do, even
in alliance with them both.

The King of England considered that quite enough had been done, and was
in great haste to patch up a reconciliation.  He thought his ambassador
would soon "have as good occasion to employ his tongue and his pen as
General Cecil and his soldiers have done their swords and their
mattocks."

He had no sympathy with the cause of Protestantism, and steadily refused
to comprehend the meaning of the great movements in the duchies.  "I only
wish that I may handsomely wind myself out of this quarrel, where the
principal parties do so little for themselves," he said.

De la Chatre returned with his troops to France within a fortnight after
his arrival on the scene.  A mild proposition made by the French
government through the Marshal, that the provinces should be held in
seguestration by France until a decision as to the true sovereignty could
be reached, was promptly declined.  Maurice of Nassau had hardly gained
so signal a triumph for the Republic and for the Protestant cause only to
hand it over to Concini and Villeroy for the benefit of Spain.  Julich
was thought safer in the keeping of Sergeant Pithan.

By the end of September the States' troops had returned to their own
country.

Thus the Republic, with eminent success, had accomplished a brief and
brilliant campaign, but no statesman could suppose that the result was
more than a temporary one.  These coveted provinces, most valuable in
themselves and from their important position, would probably not be
suffered peacefully to remain very long under the protection of the
heretic States-General and in the 'Condominium' of two Protestant
princes.  There was fear among the Imperialists, Catholics, and
Spaniards, lest the baleful constellation of the Seven Provinces might be
increased by an eighth star.  And this was a project not to be tolerated.
It was much already that the upstart confederacy had defied Pope,
Emperor, and King, as it were, on their own domains, had dictated
arrangements in Germany directly in the teeth of its emperor, using
France as her subordinate, and compelling the British king to acquiesce
in what he most hated.

But it was not merely to surprise Julich, and to get a foothold in the
duchies, that Leopold had gone forth on his adventure.  His campaign, as
already intimated, was part of a wide scheme in which he had persuaded
his emperor-cousin to acquiesce.  Poor Rudolph had been at last goaded
into a feeble attempt at revolt against his three brothers and his cousin
Ferdinand.  Peace-loving, inert, fond of his dinner, fonder of his
magnificent collections of gems and intagli, liking to look out of window
at his splendid collection of horses, he was willing to pass a quiet
life, afar from the din of battles and the turmoil of affairs.  As he
happened to be emperor of half Europe, these harmless tastes could not
well be indulged.  Moon-faced and fat, silent and slow, he was not
imperial of aspect on canvas or coin, even when his brows were decorated
with the conventional laurel wreath.  He had been stripped of his
authority and all but discrowned by his more bustling brothers Matthias
and Max, while the sombre figure of Styrian Ferdinand, pupil of the
Jesuits, and passionate admirer of Philip II., stood ever in the
background, casting a prophetic shadow over the throne and over Germany.

The brothers were endeavouring to persuade Rudolph that he would find
more comfort in Innsbruck than in Prague; that he required repose after
the strenuous labours of government.  They told him, too, that it would
be wise to confer the royal crown of Bohemia upon Matthias, lest, being
elective and also an electorate, the crown and vote of that country might
pass out of the family, and so both Bohemia and the Empire be lost to the
Habsburgs.  The kingdom being thus secured to Matthias and his heirs, the
next step, of course, was to proclaim him King of the Romans.  Otherwise
there would be great danger and detriment to Hungary, and other
hereditary states of that conglomerate and anonymous monarchy which owned
the sway of the great Habsburg family.

The unhappy emperor was much piqued.  He had been deprived by his brother
of Hungary, Moravia, and Austria, while Matthias was now at Prague with
an army, ostensibly to obtain ratification of the peace with Turkey, but
in reality to force the solemn transfer of those realms and extort the
promise of Bohemia.  Could there be a better illustration of the
absurdities of such a system of Imperialism?

And now poor Rudolph was to be turned out of the Hradschin, and sent
packing with or without his collections to the Tyrol.

The bellicose bishop of Strassburg and Passau, brother of Ferdinand, had
little difficulty in persuading the downtrodden man to rise to vengeance.
It had been secretly agreed between the two that Leopold, at the head of
a considerable army of mercenaries which he had contrived to levy, should
dart into Julich as the Emperor's representative, seize the debateable
duchies, and hold them in sequestration until the Emperor should decide
to whom they belonged, and, then, rushing back to Bohemia, should
annihilate Matthias, seize Prague, and deliver Rudolph from bondage.  It
was further agreed that Leopold, in requital of these services, should
receive the crown of Bohemia, be elected King of the Romans, and declared
heir to the Emperor, so far as Rudolph could make him his heir.

The first point in the program he had only in part accomplished.  He had
taken Julich, proclaimed the intentions of the Emperor, and then been
driven out of his strong position by the wise policy of the States under
the guidance of Barneveld and by the consummate strategy of Maurice.  It
will be seen therefore that the Republic was playing a world's game at
this moment, and doing it with skill and courage.  On the issue of the
conflict which had been begun and was to be long protracted in the
duchies, and to spread over nearly all Christendom besides, would depend
the existence of the United Netherlands and the fate of Protestantism.

The discomfited Leopold swept back at the head of his mercenaries, 9000
foot and 3000 horse, through Alsace and along the Danube to Linz and so
to Prague, marauding, harrying, and black-mailing the country as he went.
He entered the city on the 15th of February 1611, fighting his way
through crowds of exasperated burghers.  Sitting in full harness on
horseback in the great square before the cathedral, the warlike bishop
compelled the population to make oath to him as the Emperor's commissary.
The street fighting went on however day by day, poor Rudolph meantime
cowering in the Hradschin.  On the third day, Leopold, driven out of the
town, took up a position on the heights, from which he commanded it with
his artillery.  Then came a feeble voice from the Hradschin, telling all
men that these Passau marauders and their episcopal chief were there by
the Emperor's orders.  The triune city--the old, the new, and the Jew--
was bidden to send deputies to the palace and accept the Imperial
decrees.  No deputies came at the bidding.  The Bohemians, especially the
Praguers, being in great majority Protestants knew very well that Leopold
was fighting the cause of the Papacy and Spain in Bohemia as well as in
the duchies.

And now Matthias appeared upon the scene.  The Estates had already been
in communication with him, better hopes, for the time at least, being
entertained from him than from the flaccid Rudolph.  Moreover a kind of
compromise had been made in the autumn between Matthias and the Emperor
after the defeat of Leopold in the duchies.  The real king had fallen at
the feet of the nominal one by proxy of his brother Maximilian.  Seven
thousand men of the army of Matthias now came before Prague under command
of Colonitz.  The Passauers, receiving three months pay from the Emperor,
marched quietly off.  Leopold disappeared for the time.  His chancellor
and counsellor in the duchies, Francis Teynagel, a Geldrian noble, taken
prisoner and put to the torture, revealed the little plot of the Emperor
in favour of the Bishop, and it was believed that the Pope, the King of
Spain, and Maximilian of Bavaria were friendly to the scheme.  This was
probable, for Leopold at last made no mystery of his resolve to fight
Protestantism to the death, and to hold the duchies, if he could, for the
cause of Rome and Austria.

Both Rudolph and Matthias had committed themselves to the toleration of
the Reformed religion.  The famous "Majesty-Letter," freshly granted by
the Emperor (1609), and the Compromise between the Catholic and
Protestant Estates had become the law of the land.  Those of the Bohemian
confession, a creed commingled of Hussism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism,
had obtained toleration.  In a country where nine-tenths of the
population were Protestants it was permitted to Protestants to build
churches and to worship God in them unmolested.  But these privileges
had been extorted by force, and there was a sullen, dogged determination
which might be easily guessed at to revoke them should it ever become
possible.  The House of Austria, reigning in Spain, Italy, and Germany,
was bound by the very law of their being to the Roman religion.
Toleration of other worship signified in their eyes both a defeat and a
crime.

Thus the great conflict, to be afterwards known as the Thirty Years' War,
had in reality begun already, and the Netherlands, in spite of the truce,
were half unconsciously taking a leading part in it.  The odds at that
moment in Germany seemed desperately against the House of Austria, so
deep and wide was the abyss between throne and subjects which religious
difference had created.  But the reserved power in Spain, Italy, and
Southern Germany was sure enough to make itself felt sooner or later on
the Catholic side.

Meantime the Estates of Bohemia knew well enough that the Imperial house
was bent on destroying the elective principle of the Empire, and on
keeping the crown of Bohemia in perpetuity.  They had also discovered
that Bishop-Archduke Leopold had been selected by Rudolph as chief of the
reactionary movement against Protestantism.  They could not know at that
moment whether his plans were likely to prove fantastic or dangerous.

So Matthias came to Prague at the invitation of the Estates, entering the
city with all the airs of a conqueror.  Rudolph received his brother with
enforced politeness, and invited him to reside in the Hradschin. This
proposal was declined by Matthias, who sent a colonel however, with six
pieces of artillery, to guard and occupy that palace.  The Passau
prisoners were pardoned and released, and there was a general
reconciliation.  A month later, Matthias went in pomp to the chapel
of the holy Wenceslaus, that beautiful and barbarous piece of mediaeval,
Sclavonic architecture, with its sombre arches, and its walls encrusted
with huge precious stones.  The Estates of Bohemia, arrayed in splendid
Zchech costume, and kneeling on the pavement, were asked whether they
accepted Matthias, King of Hungary, as their lawful king.  Thrice they
answered Aye.  Cardinal Dietrichstein then put the historic crown of St.
Wenceslaus on the King's head, and Matthias swore to maintain the laws
and privileges of Bohemia, including the recent charters granting liberty
of religion to Protestants.  Thus there was temporary, if hollow, truce
between the religious parties, and a sham reconciliation between the
Emperor and his brethren.  The forlorn Rudolph moped away the few months
of life left to him in the Hradschin, and died 1612 soon after the new
year.  The House of Austria had not been divided, Matthias succeeded his
brother, Leopold's visions melted into air, and it was for the future to
reveal whether the Majesty-Letter and the Compromise had been written on
very durable material.

And while such was the condition of affairs in Germany immediately
following the Cleve and Julich campaign, the relations of the Republic
both to England and France were become rapidly more dangerous than they
ever had been.  It was a severe task for Barneveld, and enough to overtax
the energies of any statesman, to maintain his hold on two such slippery
governments as both had become since the death of their great monarchs.
It had been an easier task for William the Silent to steer his course,
notwithstanding all the perversities, short-comings, brow-beatings, and
inconsistencies that he had been obliged to endure from Elizabeth and
Henry.  Genius, however capricious and erratic at times, has at least
vision, and it needed no elaborate arguments to prove to both those
sovereigns that the severance of their policy from that of the
Netherlands was impossible without ruin to the Republic and
incalculable danger themselves.

But now France and England were both tending towards Spain through a
stupidity on the part of their rulers such as the gods are said to
contend against in vain.  Barneveld was not a god nor a hero, but a
courageous and wide-seeing statesman, and he did his best.  Obliged by
his position to affect admiration, or at least respect, where no emotion
but contempt was possible, his daily bread was bitter enough.  It was
absolutely necessary to humour those whom knew to be traversing his
policy and desiring his ruin, for there was no other way to serve his
country and save it from impending danger.  So long as he was faithfully
served by his subordinates, and not betrayed by those to whom he gave his
heart, he could confront external enemies and mould the policy of
wavering allies.

Few things in history are more pitiable than the position of James in
regard to Spain.  For seven long years he was as one entranced, the slave
to one idea, a Spanish marriage for his son.  It was in vain that his
counsellors argued, Parliament protested, allies implored.  Parliament
was told that a royal family matter regarded himself alone, and that
interference on their part was an impertinence.  Parliament's duty was a
simple one, to give him advice if he asked it, and money when he required
it, without asking for reasons.  It was already a great concession that
he should ask for it in person.  They had nothing to do with his affairs
nor with general politics.  The mystery of government was a science
beyond their reach, and with which they were not to meddle.  "Ne sutor
ultra crepidam," said the pedant.

Upon that one point his policy was made to turn.  Spain held him in the
hollow of her hand.  The Infanta, with two million crowns in dowry, was
promised, withheld, brought forward again like a puppet to please or
irritate a froward child.  Gondemar, the Spanish ambassador, held him
spellbound.  Did he falter in his opposition to the States--did he cease
to goad them for their policy in the duchies--did he express sympathy
with Bohemian Protestantism, or, as time went on, did he dare to lift a
finger or touch his pocket in behalf of his daughter and the unlucky
Elector-Palatine; did he, in short, move a step in the road which England
had ever trod and was bound to tread--the road of determined resistance
to Spanish ambition--instantaneously the Infanta withheld, and James was
on his knees again.  A few years later, when the great Raleigh returned
from his trans-Alantic expedition, Gondemar fiercely denounced him to the
King as the worst enemy of Spain.  The usual threat was made, the wand
was waved, and the noblest head in England fell upon the block, in
pursuance of an obsolete sentence fourteen years old.

It is necessary to hold fast this single clue to the crooked and amazing
entanglements of the policy of James.  The insolence, the meanness, and
the prevarications of this royal toad-eater are only thus explained.

Yet Philip III.  declared on his death-bed that he had never had a
serious intention of bestowing his daughter on the Prince.

The vanity and the hatreds of theology furnished the chief additional
material in the policy of James towards the Provinces.  The diplomacy of
his reign so far as the Republic was concerned is often a mere mass of
controversial divinity, and gloomy enough of its kind.  Exactly at this
moment Conrad Vorstius had been called by the University of Leyden to the
professorship vacant by the death of Arminius, and the wrath of Peter
Plancius and the whole orthodox party knew no bounds.  Born in Cologne,
Vorstius had been a lecturer in Geneva, and beloved by Beza.  He had
written a book against the Jesuit Belarmino, which he had dedicated to
the States-General.  But he was now accused of Arminianism, Socianism,
Pelagianism, Atheism--one knew not what.  He defended himself in writing
against these various charges, and declared himself a believer in the
Trinity, in the Divinity of Christ, in the Atonement.  But he had written
a book on the Nature of God, and the wrath of Gomarus and Plancius and
Bogerman was as nothing to the ire of James when that treatise was one
day handed to him on returning from hunting.  He had scarcely looked into
it before he was horror-struck, and instantly wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood,
his ambassador at the Hague, ordering him to insist that this blasphemous
monster should at once be removed from the country.  Who but James knew
anything of the Nature of God, for had he not written a work in Latin
explaining it all, so that humbler beings might read and be instructed.

Sir Ralph accordingly delivered a long sermon to the States on the brief
supplied by his Majesty, told them that to have Vorstius as successor to
Arminius was to fall out of the frying-pan into the fire, and handed them
a "catalogue" prepared by the King of the blasphemies, heresies, and
atheisms of the Professor.  "Notwithstanding that the man in full
assembly of the States of Holland," said the Ambassador with headlong and
confused rhetoric, "had found the means to palliate and plaster the dung
of his heresies, and thus to dazzle the eyes of good people," yet it was
necessary to protest most vigorously against such an appointment, and to
advise that "his works should be publicly burned in the open places of
all the cities."

The Professor never was admitted to perform his functions of theology,
but he remained at Leyden, so Winwood complained, "honoured, recognized
as a singularity and ornament to the Academy in place of the late Joseph
Scaliger."--"The friendship of the King and the heresy of Vorstius are
quite incompatible," said the Envoy.

Meantime the Advocate, much distressed at the animosity of England
bursting forth so violently on occasion of the appointment of a divinity
professor at Leyden, and at the very instant too when all the acuteness
of his intellect was taxed to keep on good or even safe terms with
France, did his best to stem these opposing currents.  His private
letters to his old and confidential friend, Noel de Carom, States'
ambassador in London, reveal the perplexities of his soul and the upright
patriotism by which he was guided in these gathering storms.  And this
correspondence, as well as that maintained by him at a little later
period with the successor of Aerssens at Paris, will be seen subsequently
to have had a direct and most important bearing upon the policy of the
Republic and upon his own fate.  It is necessary therefore that the
reader, interested in these complicated affairs which were soon to bring
on a sanguinary war on a scale even vaster than the one which had been
temporarily suspended, should give close attention to papers never before
exhumed from the musty sepulchre of national archives, although
constantly alluded to in the records of important state trials.  It is
strange enough to observe the apparent triviality of the circumstances
out of which gravest events seem to follow.  But the circumstances were
in reality threads of iron which led down to the very foundations of the
earth.

"I wish to know," wrote the Advocate to Caron, "from whom the Archbishop
of Canterbury received the advices concerning Vorstius in order to find
out what is meant by all this."

It will be remembered that Whitgift was of opinion that James was
directly inspired by the Holy Ghost, and that as he affected to deem him
the anointed High-priest of England, it was natural that he should
encourage the King in his claims to be 'Pontifex maximus' for the
Netherlands likewise.

"We are busy here," continued Barneveld, "in examining all things for the
best interests of the country and the churches.  I find the nobles and
cities here well resolved in this regard, although there be some
disagreements 'in modo.'  Vorstius, having been for many years professor
and minister of theology at Steinfurt, having manifested his learning in
many books written against the Jesuits, and proved himself pure and
moderate in doctrine, has been called to the vacant professorship at
Leyden.  This appointment is now countermined by various means.
We are doing our best to arrange everything for the highest good of the
Provinces and the churches.  Believe this and believe nothing else.  Pay
heed to no other information.  Remember what took place in Flanders,
events so well known to you.  It is not for me to pass judgment in these
matters.  Do you, too, suspend your judgment."

The Advocate's allusion was to the memorable course of affairs in
Flanders at an epoch when many of the most inflammatory preachers and
politicians of the Reformed religion, men who refused to employ a footman
or a housemaid not certified to be thoroughly orthodox, subsequently
after much sedition and disturbance went over to Spain and the Catholic
religion.

A few weeks later Barneveld sent copies to Caron of the latest harangues
of Winwood in the Assembly and the reply of My Lords on the Vorstian
business; that is to say, the freshest dialogue on predestination between
the King and the Advocate.  For as James always dictated word for word
the orations of his envoy, so had their Mightinesses at this period no
head and no mouthpiece save Barneveld alone.  Nothing could be drearier
than these controversies, and the reader shall be spared as much, as
possible the infliction of reading them.  It will be necessary, however,
for the proper understanding of subsequent events that he should be
familiar with portions of the Advocate's confidential letters.

"Sound well the gentleman you wot of," said Barneveld, "and other
personages as to the conclusive opinions over there.  The course of the
propositions does not harmonize with what I have myself heard out of the
King's mouth at other times, nor with the reports of former ambassadors.
I cannot well understand that the King should, with such preciseness,
condemn all other opinions save those of Calvin and Beza.  It is
important to the service of this country that one should know the
final intention of his Majesty."

And this was the misery of the position.  For it was soon to appear that
the King's definite and final intentions, varied from day to day.  It was
almost humorous to find him at that moment condemning all opinions but
those of Calvin and Beza in Holland, while his course to the strictest
confessors of that creed in England was so ferocious.

But Vorstius was a rival author to his Majesty on subjects treated of by
both, so that literary spite of the most venomous kind, stirred into
theological hatred, was making a dangerous mixture.  Had a man with the
soul and sense of the Advocate sat on the throne which James was
regarding at that moment as a professor's chair, the world's history
would have been changed.

"I fear," continued Barneveld, "that some of our own precisians have been
spinning this coil for us over there, and if the civil authority can be
thus countermined, things will go as in Flanders in your time.  Pray
continue to be observant, discreet, and moderate."

The Advocate continued to use his best efforts to smooth the rising
waves.  He humoured and even flattered the King, although perpetually
denounced by Winwood in his letters to his sovereign as tyrannical,
over-bearing, malignant, and treacherous.  He did his best to counsel
moderation and mutual toleration, for he felt that these needless
theological disputes about an abstract and insoluble problem of casuistry
were digging an abyss in which the Republic might be swallowed up for
ever.  If ever man worked steadily with the best lights of experience
and inborn sagacity for the good of his country and in defence of a
constitutional government, horribly defective certainly, but the only
legal one, and on the whole a more liberal polity than any then existing,
it was Barneveld.  Courageously, steadily, but most patiently, he stood
upon that position so vital and daily so madly assailed; the defence of
the civil authority against the priesthood.  He felt instinctively and
keenly that where any portion of the subjects or citizens of a country
can escape from the control of government and obey other head than the
lawful sovereignty, whether monarchical or republican, social disorder
and anarchy must be ever impending.

"We are still tortured by ecclesiastical disputes," he wrote a few weeks
later to Caron.  "Besides many libels which have appeared in print, the
letters of his Majesty and the harangues of Winwood have been published;
to what end you who know these things by experience can judge.  The truth
of the matter of Vorstius is that he was legally called in July 1610,
that he was heard last May before My Lords the States with six preachers
to oppose him, and in the same month duly accepted and placed in office.
He has given no public lectures as yet.  You will cause this to be known
on fitting opportunity.  Believe and cause to be believed that his
Majesty's letters and Sir R. Winwood's propositions have been and shall
be well considered, and that I am working with all my strength to that
end.  You know the constitution of our country, and can explain
everything for the best.  Many pious and intelligent people in this State
hold themselves assured that his Majesty according to his royal exceeding
great wisdom, foresight, and affection for the welfare of this land will
not approve that his letters and Winwood's propositions should be
scattered by the press among the common people.  Believe and cause to
be believed, to your best ability, that My Lords the States of Holland
desire to maintain the true Christian, Reformed religion as well in the
University of Leyden as in all their cities and villages.  The only
dispute is on the high points of predestination and its adjuncts,
concerning which moderation and a more temperate teaching is furthered
by some amongst us.  Many think that such is the edifying practice in
England.  Pray have the kindness to send me the English Confession of
the year 1572, with the corrections and alterations up to this year."

But the fires were growing hotter, fanned especially by Flemish
ministers, a brotherhood of whom Barneveld had an especial distrust, and
who certainly felt great animosity to him.  His moderate counsels were
but oil to the flames.  He was already depicted by zealots and
calumniators as false to the Reformed creed.

"Be assured and assure others," he wrote again to Caron, "that in the
matter of religion I am, and by God's grace shall remain, what I ever
have been.  Make the same assurances as to my son-in-law and brother.
We are not a little amazed that a few extraordinary Puritans, mostly
Flemings and Frisians, who but a short time ago had neither property nor
kindred in the country, and have now very little of either, and who have
given but slender proofs of constancy or service to the fatherland, could
through pretended zeal gain credit over there against men well proved in
all respects.  We wonder the more because they are endeavouring, in
ecclesiastical matters at least, to usurp an extraordinary authority,
against which his Majesty, with very weighty reasons, has so many times
declared his opinion founded upon God's Word and upon all laws and
principles of justice."

It was Barneveld's practice on this as on subsequent occasions very
courteously to confute the King out of his own writings and speeches,
and by so doing to be unconsciously accumulating an undying hatred
against himself in the royal breast.  Certainly nothing could be easier
than to show that James, while encouraging in so reckless a manner the
emancipation of the ministers of an advanced sect in the Reformed Church
from control of government, and their usurpation of supreme authority
which had been destroyed in England, was outdoing himself in dogmatism
and inconsistency.  A king-highpriest, who dictated his supreme will to
bishops and ministers as well as to courts and parliaments, was
ludicrously employed in a foreign country in enforcing the superiority
of the Church to the State.

"You will give good assurances," said the Advocate, "upon my word, that
the conservation of the true Reformed religion is as warmly cherished
here, especially by me, as at any time during the war."

He next alluded to the charges then considered very grave against certain
writings of Vorstius, and with equal fairness to his accusers as he had
been to the Professor gave a pledge that the subject should be examined.

"If the man in question," he said, "be the author, as perhaps falsely
imputed, of the work 'De Filiatione Christi' or things of that sort, you
may be sure that he shall have no furtherance here."  He complained,
however, that before proof the cause was much prejudiced by the
circulation through the press of letters on the subject from important
personages in England.  His own efforts to do justice in the matter were
traversed by such machinations.  If the Professor proved to be guilty of
publications fairly to be deemed atheistical and blasphemous, he should
be debarred from his functions, but the outcry from England was doing
more harm than good.

"The published extract from the letter of the Archbishop," he wrote,
"to the effect that the King will declare My Lords the States to be his
enemies if they are not willing to send the man away is doing much harm."

Truly, if it had come to this--that a King of England was to go to war
with a neighbouring and friendly republic because an obnoxious professor
of theology was not instantly hurled from a university of which his
Majesty was not one of the overseers--it was time to look a little
closely into the functions of governments and the nature of public and
international law.  Not that the sword of James was in reality very
likely to be unsheathed, but his shriekings and his scribblings, pacific
as he was himself, were likely to arouse passions which torrents of blood
alone could satiate.

"The publishing and spreading among the community," continued Barneveld,
"of M. Winwood's protestations and of many indecent libels are also doing
much mischief, for the nature of this people does not tolerate such
things.  I hope, however, to obtain the removal according to his
Majesty's desire.  Keep me well informed, and send me word what is
thought in England by the four divines of the book of Vorstius, 'De Deo,'
and of his declarations on the points sent here by his Majesty.  Let me
know, too, if there has been any later confession published in England
than that of the year 1562, and whether the nine points pressed in the
year 1595 were accepted and published in 1603.  If so, pray send them,
as they maybe made use of in settling our differences here."

Thus it will be seen that the spirit of conciliation, of a calm but
earnest desire to obtain a firm grasp of the most reasonable relations
between Church and State through patient study of the phenomena exhibited
in other countries, were the leading motives of the man.  Yet he was
perpetually denounced in private as an unbeliever, an atheist, a tyrant,
because he resisted dictation from the clergy within the Provinces and
from kings outside them.

"It was always held here to be one of the chief infractions of the laws
and privileges of this country," he said, "that former princes had placed
themselves in matter of religion in the tutelage of the Pope and the
Spanish Inquisition, and that they therefore on complaint of their good
subjects could take no orders on that subject.  Therefore it cannot be
considered strange that we are not willing here to fall into the same
obloquy.  That one should now choose to turn the magistrates, who were
once so seriously summoned on their conscience and their office to adopt
the Reformation and to take the matter of religion to heart, into
ignorants, to deprive them of knowledge, and to cause them to see with
other eyes than their own, cannot by many be considered right and
reasonable.  'Intelligenti pauca.'"

     [The interesting letter from which I have given these copious
     extracts was ordered by its writer to be burned.  "Lecta vulcano"
     was noted at the end of it, as was not unfrequently the case with
     the Advocate.  It never was burned; but, innocent and reasonable as
     it seems, was made use of by Barneveld's enemies with deadly effect.
     J.L.M.]

Meantime M. de Refuge, as before stated, was on his way to the Hague,
to communicate the news of the double marriage.  He had fallen sick at
Rotterdam, and the nature of his instructions and of the message he
brought remained unknown, save from the previous despatches of Aerssens.
But reports were rife that he was about to propose new terms of alliance
to the States, founded on large concessions to the Roman Catholic
religion.  Of course intense jealousy was excited at the English court,
and calumny plumed her wings for a fresh attack upon the Advocate.  Of
course he was sold to Spain, the Reformed religion was to be trampled out
in the Provinces, and the Papacy and Holy Inquisition established on its
ruins.  Nothing could be more diametrically the reverse of the fact than
such hysterical suspicions as to the instructions of the ambassador
extraordinary from France, and this has already appeared.  The Vorstian
affair too was still in the same phase, the Advocate professing a
willingness that justice should be done in the matter, while courteously
but firmly resisting the arrogant pretensions of James to take the matter
out of the jurisdiction of the States.

"I stand amazed," he said, "at the partisanship and the calumnious
representations which you tell me of, and cannot imagine what is thought
nor what is proposed.  Should M. de Refuge make any such propositions as
are feared, believe, and cause his Majesty and his counsellors to
believe, that they would be of no effect.  Make assurances upon my word,
notwithstanding all advices to the contrary, that such things would be
flatly refused.  If anything is published or proven to the discredit of
Vorstius, send it to me.  Believe that we shall not defend heretics nor
schismatics against the pure Evangelical doctrine, but one cannot
conceive here that the knowledge and judicature of the matter belongs
anywhere else than to My Lords the States of Holland, in whose service he
has legally been during four months before his Majesty made the least
difficulty about it.  Called hither legally a year before, with the
knowledge and by the order of his Excellency and the councillors of state
of Holland, he has been countermined by five or six Flemings and
Frisians, who, without recognizing the lawful authority of the
magistrates, have sought assistance in foreign countries--in Germany
and afterwards in England.  Yes, they have been so presumptuous as to
designate one of their own men for the place.  If such a proceeding
should be attempted in England, I leave it to those whose business it
would be to deal with it to say what would be done.  I hope therefore
that one will leave the examination and judgment of this matter freely to
us, without attempting to make us--against the principles of the
Reformation and the liberties and laws of the land--executors of the
decrees of others, as the man here wishes to obtrude it upon us."

He alluded to the difficulty in raising the ways and means; saying that
the quota of Holland, as usual, which was more than half the whole, was
ready, while other provinces were in arrears.  Yet they were protected,
while Holland was attacked.

"Methinks I am living in a strange world," he said, "when those who have
received great honour from Holland, and who in their conscience know that
they alone have conserved the Commonwealth, are now traduced with such
great calumnies.  But God the Lord Almighty is just, and will in His own
time do chastisement."

The affair of Vorstius dragged its slow length along, and few things are
more astounding at this epoch than to see such a matter, interesting
enough certainly to theologians, to the University, and to the rising
generation of students, made the topic of unceasing and embittered
diplomatic controversy between two great nations, who had most pressing
and momentous business on their hands.  But it was necessary to humour
the King, while going to the verge of imprudence in protecting the
Professor.  In March he was heard, three or four hours long, before the
Assembly of Holland, in answer to various charges made against him, being
warned that "he stood before the Lord God and before the sovereign
authority of the States."  Although thought by many to have made a
powerful defence, he was ordered to set it forth in writing, both in
Latin and in the vernacular.  Furthermore it was ordained that he should
make a complete refutation of all the charges already made or that might
be made during the ensuing three months against him in speech, book, or
letter in England, Germany, the Netherlands, or anywhere else.  He was
allowed one year and a half to accomplish this work, and meantime was to
reside not in Leyden, nor the Hague, but in some other town of Holland,
not delivering lectures or practising his profession in any way.  It
might be supposed that sufficient work had been thus laid out for the
unfortunate doctor of divinity without lecturing or preaching.  The
question of jurisdiction was saved.  The independence of the civil
authority over the extreme pretensions of the clergy had been vindicated
by the firmness of the Advocate.  James had been treated with overflowing
demonstrations of respect, but his claim to expel a Dutch professor from
his chair and country by a royal fiat had been signally rebuked.
Certainly if the Provinces were dependent upon the British king in
regard to such a matter, it was the merest imbecility for them to affect
independence.  Barneveld had carried his point and served his country
strenuously and well in this apparently small matter which human folly
had dilated into a great one.  But deep was the wrath treasured against
him in consequence in clerical and royal minds.

Returning from Wesel after the negotiations, Sir Ralph Winwood had
an important interview at Arnheim with Prince Maurice, in which they
confidentially exchanged their opinions in regard to the Advocate,
and mutually confirmed their suspicions and their jealousies in
regard to that statesman.

The Ambassador earnestly thanked the Prince in the King's name for his
"careful and industrious endeavours for the maintenance of the truth of
religion, lively expressed in prosecuting the cause against Vorstius and
his adherents."

He then said:

"I am expressly commanded that his Majesty conferring the present
condition of affairs of this quarter of the world with those
advertisements he daily receives from his ministers abroad, together
with the nature and disposition of those men who have in their hands
the managing of all business in these foreign parts, can make no other
judgment than this.

"There is a general ligue and confederation complotted for the subversion
and ruin of religion upon the subsistence whereof his Majesty doth judge
the main welfare of your realms and of these Provinces solely to consist.

"Therefore his Majesty has given me charge out of the knowledge he
has of your great worth and sufficiency," continued Winwood," and the
confidence he reposes in your faith and affection, freely to treat with
you on these points, and withal to pray you to deliver your opinion what
way would be the most compendious and the most assured to contrequarr
these complots, and to frustrate the malice of these mischievous
designs."

The Prince replied by acknowledging the honour the King had vouchsafed to
do him in holding so gracious an opinion of him, wherein his Majesty
should never be deceived.

"I concur in judgment with his Majesty," continued the Prince, "that the
main scope at which these plots and practices do aim, for instance, the
alliance between France and Spain, is this, to root out religion, and by
consequence to bring under their yoke all those countries in which
religion is professed.

"The first attempt," continued the Prince, "is doubtless intended against
these Provinces.  The means to countermine and defeat these projected
designs I take to be these: the continuance of his Majesty's constant
resolution for the protection of religion, and then that the King would
be pleased to procure a general confederation between the kings, princes,
and commonwealths professing religion, namely, Denmark, Sweden, the
German princes, the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, and our United
Provinces.

"Of this confederation, his Majesty must be not only the director, but
the head and protector.

"Lastly, the Protestants of France should be, if not supported, at least
relieved from that oppression which the alliance of Spain doth threaten
upon them.  This, I insist," repeated Maurice with great fervour, "is
the only coupegorge of all plots whatever between France and Spain."

He enlarged at great length on these points, which he considered so
vital.

"And what appearance can there be," asked Winwood insidiously and
maliciously, "of this general confederation now that these Provinces,
which heretofore have been accounted a principal member of the Reformed
Church, begin to falter in the truth of religion?

"He who solely governs the metropolitan province of Holland," continued
the Ambassador, with a direct stab in the back at Barneveld, "is reputed
generally, as your Excellency best knows, to be the only patron of
Vorstius, and the protector of the schisms of Arminius.  And likewise,
what possibility is there that the Protestants of France can expect
favour from these Provinces when the same man is known to depend at the
devotion of France?"

The international, theological, and personal jealousy of the King against
Holland's Advocate having been thus plainly developed, the Ambassador
proceeded to pour into the Prince's ear the venom of suspicion, and to
inflame his jealousy against his great rival.  The secret conversation
showed how deeply laid was the foundation of the political hatred, both
of James and of Maurice, against the Advocate, and certainly nothing
could be more preposterous than to imagine the King as the director and
head of the great Protestant League.  We have but lately seen him
confidentially assuring his minister that his only aim was "to wind
himself handsomely out of the whole business."  Maurice must have found
it difficult to preserve his gravity when assigning such a part to
"Master Jacques."

"Although Monsieur Barneveld has cast off all care of religion," said
Maurice, "and although some towns in Holland, wherein his power doth
reign, are infected with the like neglect, yet so long as so many good
towns in Holland stand sound, and all the other provinces of this
confederacy, the proposition would at the first motion be cheerfully
accepted.

"I confess I find difficulty in satisfying your second question,"
continued the Prince, "for I acknowledge that Barneveld is wholly devoted
to the service of France.  During the truce negotiations, when some
difference arose between him and myself, President Jeannin came to me,
requiring me in the French king's name to treat Monsieur Barneveld well,
whom the King had received into his protection.  The letters which the
States' ambassador in France wrote to Barneveld (and to him all
ambassadors address their despatches of importance), the very autographs
themselves, he sent back into the hands of Villeroy."

Here the Prince did not scruple to accuse the Advocate of doing the base
and treacherous trick against Aerssens which he had expressly denied
doing, and which had been done during his illness, as he solemnly avowed,
by a subordinate probably for the sake of making mischief.

Maurice then discoursed largely and vehemently of the suspicious
proceedings of Barneveld, and denounced him as dangerous to the State.
"When one man who has the conduct of all affairs in his sole power," he
said, "shall hold underhand intelligence with the ministers of Spain and
the Archduke, and that without warrant, thereby he may have the means so
to carry the course of affairs that, do what they will, these Provinces
must fall or stand at the mercy and discretion of Spain.  Therefore some
good resolutions must be taken in time to hold up this State from a
sudden downfall, but in this much moderation and discretion must be
used."

The Prince added that he had invited his cousin Lewis William to appear
at the Hague at May day, in order to consult as to the proper means to
preserve the Provinces from confusion under his Majesty's safeguard, and
with the aid of the Englishmen in the States' service whom Maurice
pronounced to be "the strength and flower of his army."

Thus the Prince developed his ideas at great length, and accused the
Advocate behind his back, and without the faintest shadow of proof, of
base treachery to his friends and of high-treason.  Surely Barneveld was
in danger, and was walking among pitfalls.  Most powerful and deadly
enemies were silently banding themselves together against him.  Could he
long maintain his hold on the slippery heights of power, where he was so
consciously serving his country, but where he became day by day a mere
shining mark for calumny and hatred?

The Ambassador then signified to the Prince that he had been instructed
to carry to him the King's purpose to confer on him the Order of the
Garter.

"If his Majesty holds me worthy of so great honour," said the Prince, "I
and my family shall ever remain bound to his service and that of his
royal posterity.

"That the States should be offended I see no cause, but holding the
charge I do in their service, I could not accept the honour without first
acquainting them and receiving their approbation."

Winwood replied that, as the King knew the terms on which the Prince
lived with the States, he doubted not his Majesty would first notify them
and say that he honoured the mutual amity between his realms and these
Provinces by honouring the virtues of their general, whose services, as
they had been most faithful and affectionate, so had they been
accompanied with the blessings of happiness and prosperous success.

Thus said Winwood to the King: "Your Majesty may plaster two walls with
one trowel ('una fidelia duos dealbare parietes'), reverse the designs of
them who to facilitate their own practices do endeavour to alienate your
affections from the good of these Provinces, and oblige to your service
the well-affected people, who know that there is no surety for
themselves, their wives and children, but under the protection of your
Majesty's favour.  Perhaps, however, the favourers of Vorstius and
Arminius will buzz into the ears of their associates that your Majesty
would make a party in these Provinces by maintaining the truth of
religion and also by gaining unto you the affections of their chief
commander.  But your Majesty will be pleased to pass forth whose worthy
ends will take their place, which is to honour virtue where you find it,
and the suspicious surmises of malice and envy in one instant will vanish
into smoke."

Winwood made no scruple in directly stating to the English government
that Barneveld's purpose was to "cause a divorce between the King's
realms and the Provinces, the more easily to precipitate them into the
arms of Spain."  He added that the negotiation with Count Maurice then on
foot was to be followed, but with much secrecy, on account of the place
he held in the State.

Soon after the Ambassador's secret conversation with Maurice he had an
interview with Barneveld.  He assured the Advocate that no contentment
could be given to his Majesty but by the banishment of Vorstius.  "If the
town of Leyden should understand so much," replied Barneveld, "I fear the
magistrates would retain him still in their town."

"If the town of Leyden should retain Vorstius," answered Winwood, "to
brave or despight his Majesty, the King has the means, if it pleases him
to use them, and that without drawing sword, to range them to reason, and
to make the magistrates on their knees demand his pardon, and I say as
much of Rotterdam."

Such insolence on the part of an ambassador to the first minister of a
great republic was hard to bear.  Barneveld was not the man to brook it.
He replied with great indignation.  "I was born in liberty," he said with
rising choler, "I cannot digest this kind of language.  The King of Spain
himself never dared to speak in so high a style."

"I well understand that logic," returned the Ambassador with continued
insolence.  "You hold your argument to be drawn 'a majori ad minus;' but
I pray you to believe that the King of Great Britain is peer and
companion to the King of Spain, and that his motto is, 'Nemo me impune
lacessit.'"

And so they parted in a mutual rage; Winwood adding on going out of the
room, "Whatsoever I propose to you in his Majesty's name can find with
you neither goust nor grace."

He then informed Lord Rochester that "the man was extremely distempered
and extremely distasted with his Majesty.

"Some say," he added, "that on being in England when his Majesty first
came to the throne he conceived some offence, which ever since hath
rankled in his heart, and now doth burst forth with more violent malice."

Nor was the matter so small as it superficially appeared.  Dependence of
one nation upon the dictation of another can never be considered
otherwise than grave.  The subjection of all citizens, clerical or lay,
to the laws of the land, the supremacy of the State over the Church,
were equally grave subjects.  And the question of sovereignty now raised
for the first time, not academically merely, but practically, was the
gravest one of all.  It was soon to be mooted vigorously and passionately
whether the United Provinces were a confederacy or a union; a league of
sovereign and independent states bound together by treaty for certain
specified purposes or an incorporated whole.  The Advocate and all the
principal lawyers in the country had scarcely a doubt on the subject.
Whether it were a reasonable system or an absurd one, a vigorous or an
imbecile form of government, they were confident that the Union of
Utrecht, made about a generation of mankind before, and the only tie by
which the Provinces were bound together at all, was a compact between
sovereigns.

Barneveld styled himself always the servant and officer of the States of
Holland.  To them was his allegiance, for them he spoke, wrought, and
thought, by them his meagre salary was paid.  At the congress of the
States-General, the scene of his most important functions, he was the
ambassador of Holland, acting nominally according to their instructions,
and exercising the powers of minister of foreign affairs and, as it were,
prime minister for the other confederates by their common consent.  The
system would have been intolerable, the great affairs of war and peace
could never have been carried on so triumphantly, had not the
preponderance of the one province Holland, richer, more powerful,
more important in every way than the other six provinces combined,
given to the confederacy illegally, but virtually, many of the attributes
of union.  Rather by usucaption than usurpation Holland had in many
regards come to consider herself and be considered as the Republic
itself.  And Barneveld, acting always in the name of Holland and with the
most modest of titles and appointments, was for a long time in all civil
matters the chief of the whole country.  This had been convenient during
the war, still more convenient during negotiations for peace, but it was
inevitable that there should be murmurs now that the cessation from
military operations on a large scale had given men time to look more
deeply into the nature of a constitution partly inherited and partly
improvised, and having many of the defects usually incident to both
sources of government.

The military interest, the ecclesiastical power, and the influence of
foreign nations exerted through diplomatic intrigue, were rapidly
arraying themselves in determined hostility to Barneveld and to what was
deemed his tyrannous usurpation.  A little later the national spirit, as
opposed to provincial and municipal patriotism, was to be aroused against
him, and was likely to prove the most formidable of all the elements of
antagonism.

It is not necessary to anticipate here what must be developed on a
subsequent page.  This much, however, it is well to indicate for the
correct understanding of passing events.  Barneveld did not consider
himself the officer or servant of their High Mightinesses the States-
General, while in reality often acting as their master, but the vassal
and obedient functionary of their Great Mightinesses the States of
Holland, whom he almost absolutely controlled.

His present most pressing business was to resist the encroachments of the
sacerdotal power and to defend the magistracy.  The casuistical questions
which were fast maddening the public mind seemed of importance to him
only as enclosing within them a more vital and practical question of
civil government.

But the anger of his opponents, secret and open, was rapidly increasing.
Envy, jealousy, political and clerical hate, above all, that deadliest
and basest of malignant spirits which in partisan warfare is bred out of
subserviency to rising and rival power, were swarming about him and
stinging him at every step.  No parasite of Maurice could more
effectively pay his court and more confidently hope for promotion or
reward than by vilipending Barneveld.  It would be difficult to
comprehend the infinite extent and power of slander without a study of
the career of the Advocate of Holland.

"I thank you for your advices," he wrote to Carom' "and I wish from my
heart that his Majesty, according to his royal wisdom and clemency
towards the condition of this country, would listen only to My Lords the
States or their ministers, and not to his own or other passionate persons
who, through misunderstanding or malice, furnish him with information and
so frequently flatter him.  I have tried these twenty years to deserve
his Majesty's confidence, and have many letters from him reaching through
twelve or fifteen years, in which he does me honour and promises his
royal favour.  I am the more chagrined that through false and passionate
reports and information--because I am resolved to remain good and true to
My Lords the States, to the fatherland, and to the true Christian
religion--I and mine should now be so traduced.  I hope that God Almighty
will second my upright conscience, and cause his Majesty soon to see the
injustice done to me and mine.  To defend the resolutions of My Lords the
States of Holland is my office, duty, and oath, and I assure you that
those resolutions are taken with wider vision and scope than his Majesty
can believe.  Let this serve for My Lords' defence and my own against
indecent calumny, for my duty allows me to pursue no other course."

He again alluded to the dreary affair of Vorstius, and told the Envoy
that the venation caused by it was incredible.  "That men unjustly defame
our cities and their regents is nothing new," he said; "but I assure you
that it is far more damaging to the common weal than the defamers
imagine."

Some of the private admirers of Arminius who were deeply grieved at
so often hearing him "publicly decried as the enemy of God" had been
defending the great heretic to James, and by so doing had excited the
royal wrath not only against the deceased doctor and themselves, but
against the States of Holland who had given them no commission.

On the other hand the advanced orthodox party, most bitter haters of
Barneveld, and whom in his correspondence with England he uniformly and
perhaps designedly called the Puritans, knowing that the very word was a
scarlet rag to James, were growing louder and louder in their demands.
"Some thirty of these Puritans," said he, "of whom at least twenty are
Flemings or other foreigners equally violent, proclaim that they and the
like of them mean alone to govern the Church.  Let his Majesty compare
this proposal with his Royal Present, with his salutary declaration at
London in the year 1603 to Doctor Reynolds and his associates, and with
his admonition delivered to the Emperor, kings, sovereigns, and
republics, and he will best understand the mischievous principles of
these people, who are now gaining credit with him to the detriment of the
freedom and laws of these Provinces."

A less enlightened statesman than Barneveld would have found it easy
enough to demonstrate the inconsistency of the King in thus preaching
subserviency of government to church and favouring the rule of Puritans
over both.  It needed but slender logic to reduce such a policy on his
part to absurdity, but neither kings nor governments are apt to value
themselves on their logic.  So long as James could play the pedagogue to
emperors, kings, and republics, it mattered little to him that the
doctrines which he preached in one place he had pronounced flat
blasphemy in another.

That he would cheerfully hang in England the man whom he would elevate to
power in Holland might be inconsistency in lesser mortals; but what was
the use of his infallibility if he was expected to be consistent?

But one thing was certain.  The Advocate saw through him as if he had
been made of glass, and James knew that he did.  This fatal fact
outweighed all the decorous and respectful phraseology under which
Barneveld veiled his remorseless refutations.  It was a dangerous thing
to incur the wrath of this despot-theologian.

Prince Maurice, who had originally joined in the invitation given by the
overseers of Leyden to Vorstius, and had directed one of the deputies and
his own "court trumpeter," Uytenbogaert, to press him earnestly to grant
his services to the University, now finding the coldness of Barneveld to
the fiery remonstrances of the King, withdrew his protection of the
Professor.

"The Count Maurice, who is a wise and understanding prince," said
Winwood, "and withal most affectionate to his Majesty's service, doth
foresee the miseries into which these countries are likely to fall, and
with grief doth pine away."

It is probable that the great stadholder had never been more robust, or
indeed inclining to obesity, than precisely at this epoch; but Sir Ralph
was of an imaginative turn.  He had discovered, too, that the Advocate's
design was "of no other nature than so to stem the course of the State
that insensibly the Provinces shall fall by relapse into the hands of
Spain."

A more despicable idea never entered a human brain.  Every action, word,
and thought, of Barneveld's life was a refutation of it.  But he was
unwilling, at the bidding of a king, to treat a professor with contumely
who had just been solemnly and unanimously invited by the great
university, by the States of Holland, and by the Stadholder to an
important chair; and that was enough for the diplomatist and courtier.
"He, and only he," said Winwood passionately, "hath opposed his Majesty's
purposes with might and main."  Formerly the Ambassador had been full of
complaints of "the craving humour of Count Maurice," and had censured him
bitterly in his correspondence for having almost by his inordinate
pretensions for money and other property brought the Treaty of Truce to a
standstill.  And in these charges he was as unjust and as reckless as he
was now in regard to Barneveld.

The course of James and his agents seemed cunningly devised to sow
discord in the Provinces, to inflame the growing animosity of the
Stadholder to the Advocate, and to paralyse the action of the Republic in
the duchies.  If the King had received direct instructions from the
Spanish cabinet how to play the Spanish game, he could hardly have done
it with more docility.  But was not Gondemar ever at his elbow, and the
Infanta always in the perspective?

And it is strange enough that, at the same moment, Spanish marriages were
in France as well as England the turning-point of policy.

Henry had been willing enough that the Dauphin should espouse a Spanish
infanta, and that one of the Spanish princes should be affianced to one
of his daughters.  But the proposition from Spain had been coupled with a
condition that the friendship between France and the Netherlands should
be at once broken off, and the rebellious heretics left to their fate.
And this condition had been placed before him with such arrogance that
he had rejected the whole scheme.  Henry was not the man to do anything
dishonourable at the dictation of another sovereign.  He was also not the
man to be ignorant that the friendship of the Provinces was necessary to
him, that cordial friendship between France and Spain was impossible, and
that to allow Spain to reoccupy that splendid possession between his own
realms and Germany, from which she had been driven by the Hollanders in
close alliance with himself, would be unworthy of the veriest schoolboy
in politics.  But Henry was dead, and a Medici reigned in his place,
whose whole thought was to make herself agreeable to Spain.

Aerssens, adroit, prying, experienced, unscrupulous, knew very well
that these double Spanish marriages were resolved upon, and that the
inevitable condition refused by the King would be imposed upon his widow.
He so informed the States-General, and it was known to the French
government that he had informed them.  His position soon became almost
untenable, not because he had given this information, but because the
information and the inference made from it were correct.

It will be observed that the policy of the Advocate was to preserve
friendly relations between France and England, and between both and the
United Provinces.  It was for this reason that he submitted to the
exhortations and denunciations of the English ambassadors.  It was for
this that he kept steadily in view the necessity of dealing with and
supporting corporate France, the French government, when there were many
reasons for feeling sympathy with the internal rebellion against that
government.  Maurice felt differently.  He was connected by blood or
alliance with more than one of the princes now perpetually in revolt.
Bouillon was his brother-in-law, the sister of Conde was his brother's
wife.  Another cousin, the Elector-Palatine, was already encouraging
distant and extravagant hopes of the Imperial crown.  It was not
unnatural that he should feel promptings of ambition and sympathy
difficult to avow even to himself, and that he should feel resentment
against the man by whom this secret policy was traversed in the well-
considered interest of the Republican government.

Aerssens, who, with the keen instinct of self-advancement was already
attaching himself to Maurice as to the wheels of the chariot going
steadily up the hill, was not indisposed to loosen his hold upon the man
through whose friendship he had first risen, and whose power was now
perhaps on the decline.  Moreover, events had now caused him to hate the
French government with much fervour.  With Henry IV. he had been all-
powerful.  His position had been altogether exceptional, and he had
wielded an influence at Paris more than that exerted by any foreign
ambassador.  The change naturally did not please him, although he well
knew the reasons.  It was impossible for the Dutch ambassador to be
popular at a court where Spain ruled supreme.  Had he been willing to eat
humiliation as with a spoon, it would not have sufficed.  They knew him,
they feared him, and they could not doubt that his sympathies would ever
be with the malcontent princes.  At the same time he did not like to lose
his hold upon the place, nor to have it known, as yet, to the world that
his power was diminished.

"The Queen commands me to tell you," said the French ambassador de Russy
to the States-General, "that the language of the Sieur Aerssens has not
only astonished her, but scandalized her to that degree that she could
not refrain from demanding if it came from My Lords the States or from
himself.  He having, however, affirmed to her Majesty that he had express
charge to justify it by reasons so remote from the hope and the belief
that she had conceived of your gratitude to the Most Christian King and
herself, she is constrained to complain of it, and with great frankness."

Some months later than this Aerssens communicated to the States-General
the project of the Spanish marriage, "which," said he, "they have
declared to me with so many oaths to be false."  He informed them that
M. de Refuge was to go on special mission to the Hague, "having been
designated to that duty before Aerssens' discovery of the marriage
project."  He was to persuade their Mightinesses that the marriages were
by no means concluded, and that, even if they were, their Mightinesses
were not interested therein, their Majesties intending to remain by the
old maxims and alliances of the late king.  Marriages, he would be
instructed to say, were mere personal conventions, which remained
of no consideration when the interests of the crown were touched.
"Nevertheless, I know very well," said Aerssens, "that in England
these negotiations are otherwise understood, and that the King has
uttered great complaints about them, saying that such a negotiation as
this ought not to have been concealed from him.  He is pressing more than
ever for reimbursement of the debt to him, and especially for the moneys
pretended to have been furnished to your Mightinesses in his Majesty's
name."

Thus it will be seen how closely the Spanish marriages were connected
with the immediate financial arrangements of France, England, and the
States, without reference to the wider political consequences
anticipated.

"The princes and most gentlemen," here continued the Ambassador, "believe
that these reciprocal and double marriages will bring about great changes
in Christendom if they take the course which the authors of them intend,
however much they may affect to believe that no novelties are impending.
The marriages were proposed to the late king, and approved by him, during
the negotiations for the truce, and had Don Pedro do Toledo been able to
govern himself, as Jeannin has just been telling me, the United Provinces
would have drawn from it their assured security.  What he means by that,
I certainly cannot conceive, for Don Pedro proposed the marriage of the
Dauphin (now Louis XIII.) with the Infanta on the condition that Henry
should renounce all friendship with your Mightinesses, and neither openly
nor secretly give you any assistance.  You were to be entirely abandoned,
as an example for all who throw off the authority of their lawful prince.
But his Majesty answered very generously that he would take no
conditions; that he considered your Mightinesses as his best friends,
whom he could not and would not forsake.  Upon this Don Pedro broke off
the negotiation.  What should now induce the King of Spain to resume the
marriage negotiations but to give up the conditions, I am sure I don't
know, unless, through the truce, his designs and his ambition have grown
flaccid.  This I don't dare to hope, but fear, on the contrary, that he
will so manage the irresolution, weakness, and faintheartedness of this
kingdom as through the aid of his pensioned friends here to arrive at all
his former aims."

Certainly the Ambassador painted the condition of France in striking and
veracious colours, and he was quite right in sending the information
which he was first to discover, and which it was so important for the
States to know.  It was none the less certain in Barneveld's mind that
the best, not the worst, must be made of the state of affairs, and that
France should not be assisted in throwing herself irrecoverably into the
arms of Spain.

"Refuge will tell you," said Aerssens, a little later, "that these
marriages will not interfere with the friendship of France for you nor
with her subsidies, and that no advantage will be given to Spain in the
treaty to your detriment or that of her other allies.  But whatever fine
declarations they may make, it is sure to be detrimental.  And all the
princes, gentlemen, and officers here have the same conviction.  Those of
the Reformed religion believe that the transaction is directed solely
against the religion which your Mightinesses profess, and that the next
step will be to effect a total separation between the two religions and
the two countries."

Refuge arrived soon afterwards, and made the communication to the States-
General of the approaching nuptials between the King of France and the
Infanta of Spain; and of the Prince of Spain with Madame, eldest daughter
of France, exactly as Aerssens had predicted four months before.  There
was a great flourish of compliments, much friendly phrase-making, and
their Mightinesses were informed that the communication of the marriages
was made to them before any other power had been notified, in proof of
the extraordinary affection entertained for them by France.  "You are
so much interested in the happiness of France," said Refuge, "that this
treaty by which it is secured will be for your happiness also.  He did
not indicate, however, the precise nature of the bliss beyond the
indulgence of a sentimental sympathy, not very refreshing in the
circumstances, which was to result to the Confederacy from this close
alliance between their firmest friend and their ancient and deadly enemy.
He would have found it difficult to do so.

"Don Rodrigo de Calderon, secretary of state, is daily expected from
Spain," wrote, Aerssens once more.  "He brings probably the articles of
the marriages, which have hitherto been kept secret, so they say.  'Tis a
shrewd negotiator; and in this alliance the King's chief design is to
injure your Mightinesses, as M. de Villeroy now confesses, although he
says that this will not be consented to on this side.  It behoves your
Mightinesses to use all your ears and eyes.  It is certain these are much
more than private conventions.  Yes, there is nothing private about them,
save the conjunction of the persons whom they concern.  In short, all
the conditions regard directly the state, and directly likewise, or by
necessary consequence, the state of your Mightinesses' Provinces.
I reserve explanations until it shall please your Mightinesses to
hear me by word of mouth."

For it was now taken into consideration by the States' government whether
Aerssens was to remain at his post or to return.  Whether it was his wish
to be relieved of his embassy or not was a question.  But there was no
question that the States at this juncture, and in spite of the dangers
impending from the Spanish marriages, must have an ambassador ready to do
his best to keep France from prematurely sliding into positive hostility
to them.  Aerssens was enigmatical in his language, and Barneveld was
somewhat puzzled.

"I have according to your reiterated requests," wrote the Advocate to the
Ambassador, "sounded the assembly of My Lords the States as to your
recall; but I find among some gentlemen the opinion that if earnestly
pressed to continue you would be willing to listen to the proposal.  This
I cannot make out from your letters.  Please to advise me frankly as to
your wishes, and assure yourself in everything of my friendship."

Nothing could be more straightforward than this language, but the Envoy
was less frank than Barneveld, as will subsequently appear.  The subject
was a most important one, not only in its relation to the great affairs
of state, but to momentous events touching the fate of illustrious
personages.

Meantime a resolution was passed by the States of Holland "in regard to
the question whether Ambassador Aerssens should retain his office, yes
or no?"  And it was decided by a majority of votes "to leave it to his
candid opinion if in his free conscience he thinks he can serve the
public cause there any longer.  If yes, he may keep his office one year
more.  If no, he may take leave and come home.  In no case is his salary
to be increased."

Surely the States, under the guidance of the Advocate, had thus acted
with consummate courtesy towards a diplomatist whose position from no
apparent fault of his own but by the force of circumstances--and rather
to his credit than otherwise--was gravely compromised.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Advanced orthodox party-Puritans
Atheist, a tyrant, because he resisted dictation from the clergy
Give him advice if he asked it, and money when he required
He was not imperial of aspect on canvas or coin
He who would have all may easily lose all
King's definite and final intentions, varied from day to day
Neither kings nor governments are apt to value logic
Outdoing himself in dogmatism and inconsistency
Small matter which human folly had dilated into a great one
The defence of the civil authority against the priesthood