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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Life of John of Barneveld, 1619-23
+#97 in our series by John Lothrop Motley
+
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+Title: The Life of John of Barneveld, 1619-23
+
+Author: John Lothrop Motley
+
+Release Date: January, 2004  [EBook #4897]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 24, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF JOHN OF BARNEVELD, 1619-23 ***
+
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+This eBook was produced by David Widger
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+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
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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 97
+
+Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v11, 1619-23
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+     Barneveld's Execution--The Advocate's Conduct on the Scaffold--The
+     Sentence printed and sent to the Provinces--The Proceedings
+     irregular and inequitable.
+
+In the beautiful village capital of the "Count's Park," commonly called
+the Hague, the most striking and picturesque spot then as now was that
+where the transformed remains of the old moated castle of those feudal
+sovereigns were still to be seen.  A three-storied range of simple,
+substantial buildings in brown brickwork, picked out with white stone in
+a style since made familiar both in England and America, and associated
+with a somewhat later epoch in the history of the House of Orange,
+surrounded three sides of a spacious inner paved quadrangle called the
+Inner Court, the fourth or eastern side being overshadowed by a beechen
+grove.  A square tower flanked each angle, and on both sides of the
+south-western turret extended the commodious apartments of the
+Stadholder.  The great gateway on the south-west opened into a wide open
+space called the Outer Courtyard.  Along the north-west side a broad and
+beautiful sheet of water, in which the walls, turrets, and chapel-spires
+of the enclosed castle mirrored themselves, was spread between the mass
+of buildings and an umbrageous promenade called the Vyverberg, consisting
+of a sextuple alley of lime-trees and embowering here and there a stately
+villa.  A small island, fringed with weeping willows and tufted all over
+with lilacs, laburnums, and other shrubs then in full flower, lay in the
+centre of the miniature lake, and the tall solid tower of the Great
+Church, surmounted by a light openwork spire, looked down from a little
+distance over the scene.
+
+It was a bright morning in May.  The white swans were sailing tranquilly
+to and fro over the silver basin, and the mavis, blackbird, and
+nightingale, which haunted the groves surrounding the castle and the
+town, were singing as if the daybreak were ushering in a summer festival.
+
+But it was not to a merry-making that the soldiers were marching and the
+citizens.  thronging so eagerly from every street and alley towards the
+castle.  By four o'clock the Outer and Inner Courts had been lined with
+detachments of the Prince's guard and companies of other regiments to the
+number of 1200 men.  Occupying the north-eastern side of the court rose
+the grim, time-worn front of the ancient hall, consisting of one tall
+pyramidal gable of ancient grey brickwork flanked with two tall slender
+towers, the whole with the lancet-shaped windows and severe style of the
+twelfth century, excepting a rose-window in the centre with the decorated
+mullions of a somewhat later period.
+
+In front of the lower window, with its Gothic archway hastily converted
+into a door, a shapeless platform of rough, unhewn planks had that night
+been rudely patched together.  This was the scaffold.  A slight railing
+around it served to protect it from the crowd, and a heap of coarse sand
+had been thrown upon it.  A squalid, unclean box of unplaned boards,
+originally prepared as a coffin for a Frenchman who some time before had
+been condemned to death for murdering the son of Goswyn Meurskens, a
+Hague tavern-keeper, but pardoned by the Stadholder--lay on the scaffold.
+It was recognized from having been left for a long time, half forgotten,
+at the public execution-place of the Hague.
+
+Upon this coffin now sat two common soldiers of ruffianly aspect playing
+at dice, betting whether the Lord or the Devil would get the soul of
+Barneveld.  Many a foul and ribald jest at the expense of the prisoner
+was exchanged between these gamblers, some of their comrades, and a few
+townsmen, who were grouped about at that early hour.  The horrible
+libels, caricatures, and calumnies which had been circulated, exhibited,
+and sung in all the streets for so many months had at last thoroughly
+poisoned the minds of the vulgar against the fallen statesman.
+
+The great mass of the spectators had forced their way by daybreak into
+the hall itself to hear the sentence, so that the Inner Courtyard had
+remained comparatively empty.
+
+At last, at half past nine o'clock, a shout arose, "There he comes!
+there he comes!" and the populace flowed out from the hall of judgment
+into the courtyard like a tidal wave.
+
+In an instant the Binnenhof was filled with more than three thousand
+spectators.
+
+The old statesman, leaning on his staff, walked out upon the scaffold and
+calmly surveyed the scene.  Lifting his eyes to Heaven, he was heard to
+murmur, "O God! what does man come to!"  Then he said bitterly once more:
+"This, then, is the reward of forty years' service to the State!"
+
+La Motte, who attended him, said fervently: "It is no longer time to
+think of this.  Let us prepare your coming before God."
+
+"Is there no cushion or stool to kneel upon?"  said Barneveld, looking
+around him.
+
+The provost said he would send for one, but the old man knelt at once
+on the bare planks.  His servant, who waited upon him as calmly and
+composedly as if he had been serving him at dinner, held him by the arm.
+It was remarked that neither master nor man, true stoics and Hollanders
+both, shed a single tear upon the scaffold.
+
+La Motte prayed for a quarter of an hour, the Advocate remaining on his
+knees.
+
+He then rose and said to John Franken, "See that he does not come near
+me," pointing to the executioner who stood in the background grasping his
+long double-handed sword.  Barneveld then rapidly unbuttoned his doublet
+with his own hands and the valet helped him off with it.  "Make haste!
+make haste!" said his master.
+
+The statesman then came forward and said in a loud, firm voice to the
+people:
+
+"Men, do not believe that I am a traitor to the country.  I have ever
+acted uprightly and loyally as a good patriot, and as such I shall die."
+
+The crowd was perfectly silent.
+
+He then took his cap from John Franken, drew it over his eyes, and went
+forward towards the sand, saying:
+
+"Christ shall be my guide.  O Lord, my heavenly Father, receive my
+spirit."
+
+As he was about to kneel with his face to the south, the provost said:
+
+"My lord will be pleased to move to the other side, not where the sun is
+in his face."
+
+He knelt accordingly with his face towards his own house.  The servant
+took farewell of him, and Barneveld said to the executioner:
+
+"Be quick about it.  Be quick."
+
+The executioner then struck his head off at a single blow.
+
+Many persons from the crowd now sprang, in spite of all opposition, upon
+the scaffold and dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood, cut wet
+splinters from the boards, or grubbed up the sand that was steeped in it;
+driving many bargains afterwards for these relics to be treasured, with
+various feelings of sorrow, joy, glutted or expiated vengeance.
+
+It has been recorded, and has been constantly repeated to this day, that
+the Stadholder, whose windows exactly faced the scaffold, looked out upon
+the execution with a spy-glass; saying as he did so:
+
+"See the old scoundrel, how he trembles!  He is afraid of the stroke."
+
+But this is calumny.  Colonel Hauterive declared that he was with Maurice
+in his cabinet during the whole period of the execution, that by order of
+the Prince all the windows and shutters were kept closed, that no person
+wearing his livery was allowed to be abroad, that he anxiously received
+messages as to the proceedings, and heard of the final catastrophe with
+sorrowful emotion.
+
+It must be admitted, however, that the letter which Maurice wrote on the
+same morning to his cousin William Lewis does not show much pathos.
+
+"After the judges," he said, "have been busy here with the sentence
+against the Advocate Barneveld for several days, at last it has been
+pronounced, and this morning, between nine o'clock and half past, carried
+into execution with the sword, in the Binnenhof before the great hall.
+
+"The reasons they had for this you will see from the sentence, which will
+doubtless be printed, and which I will send you.
+
+"The wife of the aforesaid Barneveld and also some of his sons and sons-
+in-law or other friends have never presented any supplication for his
+pardon, but till now have vehemently demanded that law and justice should
+be done to him, and have daily let the report run through the people that
+he would soon come out.  They also planted a may-pole before their house
+adorned with garlands and ribbands, and practised other jollities and
+impertinences, while they ought to have conducted themselves in a humble
+and lowly fashion.  This is no proper manner of behaving, and moreover
+not a practical one to move the judges to any favour even if they had
+been thereto inclined."
+
+The sentence was printed and sent to the separate provinces.  It was
+accompanied by a declaration of the States-General that they had received
+information from the judges of various points, not mentioned in the
+sentence, which had been laid to the charge of the late Advocate, and
+which gave much reason to doubt whether he had not perhaps turned his
+eyes toward the enemy.  They could not however legally give judgment to
+that effect without a sharper investigation, which on account of his
+great age and for other reasons it was thought best to spare him.
+
+A meaner or more malignant postscript to a state paper recounting the
+issue of a great trial it would be difficult to imagine.  The first
+statesman of the country had just been condemned and executed on a
+narrative, without indictment of any specified crime.  And now, by a kind
+of apologetic after-thought, six or eight individuals calling themselves
+the States-General insinuated that he had been looking towards the enemy,
+and that, had they not mercifully spared him the rack, which is all that
+could be meant by their sharper investigation, he would probably have
+confessed the charge.
+
+And thus the dead man's fame was blackened by those who had not hesitated
+to kill him, but had shrunk from enquiring into his alleged crime.
+
+Not entirely without semblance of truth did Grotius subsequently say that
+the men who had taken his life would hardly have abstained from torturing
+him if they had really hoped by so doing to extract from him a confession
+of treason.
+
+The sentence was sent likewise to France, accompanied with a statement
+that Barneveld had been guilty of unpardonable crimes which had not been
+set down in the act of condemnation.  Complaints were also made of the
+conduct of du Maurier in thrusting himself into the internal affairs of
+the States and taking sides so ostentatiously against the government.
+The King and his ministers were indignant with these rebukes, and
+sustained the Ambassador.  Jeannin and de Boississe expressed the opinion
+that he had died innocent of any crime, and only by reason of his strong
+political opposition to the Prince.
+
+The judges had been unanimous in finding him guilty of the acts recorded
+in their narrative, but three of them had held out for some time in
+favour of a sentence of perpetual imprisonment rather than decapitation.
+
+They withdrew at last their opposition to the death penalty for the
+wonderful reason that reports had been circulated of attempts likely to
+be made to assassinate Prince Maurice.  The Stadholder himself treated
+these rumours and the consequent admonition of the States-General that
+he would take more than usual precautions for his safety with perfect
+indifference, but they were conclusive with the judges of Barneveld.
+
+"Republica poscit exemplum," said Commissioner Junius, one of the three,
+as he sided with the death-warrant party.
+
+The same Doctor Junius a year afterwards happened to dine, in company of
+one of his fellow-commissioners, with Attorney-General Sylla at Utrecht,
+and took occasion to ask them why it was supposed that Barneveld had been
+hanging his head towards Spain, as not one word of that stood in the
+sentence.
+
+The question was ingenuous on the part of one learned judge to his
+colleagues in one of the most famous state trials of history, propounded
+as a bit of after-dinner casuistry, when the victim had been more than a
+year in his grave.
+
+But perhaps the answer was still more artless.  His brother lawyers
+replied that the charge was easily to be deduced from the sentence,
+because a man who breaks up the foundation of the State makes the country
+indefensible, and therefore invites the enemy to invade it.  And this
+Barneveld had done, who had turned the Union, religion, alliances, and
+finances upside down by his proceedings.
+
+Certainly if every constitutional minister, accused by the opposition
+party of turning things upside down by his proceedings, were assumed to
+be guilty of deliberately inviting a hostile invasion of his country,
+there would have been few from that day to this to escape hanging.
+
+Constructive treason could scarcely go farther than it was made to do in
+these attempts to prove, after his death, that the Advocate had, as it
+was euphuistically expressed, been looking towards the enemy.
+
+And no better demonstrations than these have ever been discovered.
+
+He died at the age of seventy-one years seven months and eighteen days.
+
+His body and head were huddled into the box upon which the soldiers had
+been shaking the dice, and was placed that night in the vault of the
+chapel in the Inner Court.
+
+It was subsequently granted as a boon to the widow and children that it
+might be taken thence and decently buried in the family vault at
+Amersfoort.
+
+On the day of the execution a formal entry was made in the register of
+the States of Holland.
+
+"Monday, 13th May 1619.  To-day was executed with the sword here in the
+Hague, on a scaffold thereto erected in the Binnenhof before the steps of
+the great hall, Mr. John of Barneveld, in his life Knight, Lord of
+Berkel, Rodenrys, &c., Advocate of Holland and West Friesland, for
+reasons expressed in the sentence and otherwise, with confiscation of his
+property, after he had served the State thirty-three years two months and
+five days since 8th March 1586.; a man of great activity, business,
+memory, and wisdom--yes, extraordinary in every respect.  He that stands
+let him see that he does not fall, and may God be merciful to his soul.
+Amen?"
+
+A year later-on application made by the widow and children of the
+deceased to compound for the confiscation of his property by payment of a
+certain sum, eighty florins or a similar trifle, according to an ancient
+privilege of the order of nobility--the question was raised whether he
+had been guilty of high-treason, as he had not been sentenced for such a
+crime, and as it was only in case of sentence for lese-majesty that this
+composition was disallowed.  It was deemed proper therefore to ask the
+court for what crime the prisoner had been condemned.  Certainly a more
+sarcastic question could not have been asked.  But the court had ceased
+to exist.  The commission had done its work and was dissolved.  Some of
+its members were dead.  Letters however were addressed by the States-
+General to the individual commissioners requesting them to assemble at
+the Hague for the purpose of stating whether it was because the prisoners
+had committed lese-majesty that their property had been confiscated.
+They never assembled.  Some of them were perhaps ignorant of the exact
+nature of that crime.  Several of them did not understand the words.
+Twelve of them, among whom were a few jurists, sent written answers to
+the questions proposed.  The question was, "Did you confiscate the
+property because the crime was lese-majesty?"  The reply was, "The crime
+was lese-majesty, although not so stated in the sentence, because we
+confiscated the property."  In one of these remarkable documents this was
+stated to be "the unanimous opinion of almost all the judges."
+
+The point was referred to the commissioners, some of whom attended the
+court of the Hague in person, while others sent written opinions.  All
+agreed that the criminal had committed high-treason because otherwise his
+property would not have been confiscated.
+
+A more wonderful example of the argument in a circle was never heard of.
+Moreover it is difficult to understand by what right the high commission,
+which had been dissolved a year before, after having completed its work,
+could be deemed competent to emit afterwards a judicial decision.  But
+the fact is curious as giving one more proof of the irregular,
+unphilosophical, and inequitable nature of these famous proceedings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+     Grotius urged to ask Forgiveness--Grotius shows great Weakness--
+     Hoogerbeets and Grotius imprisoned for Life--Grotius confined at
+     Loevestein--Grotius' early Attainments--Grotius' Deportment in
+     Prison--Escape of Grotius--Deventer's Rage at Grotius' Escape.
+
+Two days after the execution of the Advocate, judgment was pronounced
+upon Gillis van Ledenberg.  It would have been difficult to try him, or
+to extort a confession of high-treason from him by the rack or otherwise,
+as the unfortunate gentleman had been dead for more than seven months.
+
+Not often has a court of justice pronounced a man, without trial, to be
+guilty of a capital offence.  Not often has a dead man been condemned and
+executed.  But this was the lot of Secretary Ledenberg.  He was sentenced
+to be hanged, his property declared confiscated.
+
+His unburied corpse, reduced to the condition of a mummy, was brought out
+of its lurking-place, thrust into a coffin, dragged on a hurdle to the
+Golgotha outside the Hague, on the road to Ryswyk, and there hung on a
+gibbet in company of the bodies of other malefactors swinging there in
+chains.
+
+His prudent scheme to save his property for his children by committing
+suicide in prison was thus thwarted.
+
+The reading of the sentence of Ledenberg, as had been previously the case
+with that of Barneveld, had been heard by Grotius through the open window
+of his prison, as he lay on his bed.  The scaffold on which the Advocate
+had suffered was left standing, three executioners were still in the
+town, and there was every reason for both Grotius and Hoogerbeets to
+expect a similar doom.  Great efforts were made to induce the friends of
+the distinguished prisoners to sue for their pardon.  But even as in the
+case of the Barneveld family these attempts were fruitless.  The austere
+stoicism both on the part of the sufferers and their relatives excites
+something like wonder.
+
+Three of the judges went in person to the prison chamber of Hoogerbeets,
+urging him to ask forgiveness himself or to allow his friends to demand
+it for him.
+
+"If my wife and children do ask," he said, "I will protest against it.
+I need no pardon.  Let justice take its course.  Think not, gentlemen,
+that I mean by asking for pardon to justify your proceedings."
+
+He stoutly refused to do either.  The judges, astonished, took their
+departure, saying:
+
+"Then you will fare as Barneveld.  The scaffold is still standing."
+
+He expected consequently nothing but death, and said many years
+afterwards that he knew from personal experience how a man feels who
+goes out of prison to be beheaded.
+
+The wife of Grotius sternly replied to urgent intimations from a high
+source that she should ask pardon for her husband, "I shall not do it.
+If he has deserved it, let them strike off his head."
+
+Yet no woman could be more devoted to her husband than was Maria van
+Reigersbergen to Hugo de Groot, as time was to prove.  The Prince
+subsequently told her at a personal interview that "one of two roads
+must be taken, that of the law or that of pardon."
+
+Soon after the arrest it was rumoured that Grotius was ready to make
+important revelations if he could first be assured of the Prince's
+protection.
+
+His friends were indignant at the statement.  His wife stoutly denied its
+truth, but, to make sure, wrote to her husband on the subject.
+
+"One thing amazes me," she said; "some people here pretend to say that
+you have stated to one gentleman in private that you have something to
+disclose greatly important to the country, but that you desired
+beforehand to be taken under the protection of his Excellency.  I have
+not chosen to believe this, nor do I, for I hold that to be certain which
+you have already told me--that you know no secrets.  I see no reason
+therefore why you should require the protection of any man.  And there is
+no one to believe this, but I thought best to write to you of it.  Let
+me, in order that I may contradict the story with more authority, have by
+the bearer of this a simple Yes or No.  Study quietly, take care of your
+health, have some days' patience, for the Advocate has not yet been
+heard."
+
+The answer has not been preserved, but there is an allusion to the
+subject in an unpublished memorandum of Grotius written while he was in
+prison.
+
+It must be confessed that the heart of the great theologian and jurist
+seems to have somewhat failed him after his arrest, and although he was
+incapable of treachery--even if he had been possessed of any secrets,
+which certainly was not the case--he did not show the same Spartan
+firmness as his wife, and was very far from possessing the heroic calm of
+Barneveld.  He was much disposed to extricate himself from his unhappy
+plight by making humble, if not abject, submission to Maurice.  He
+differed from his wife in thinking that he had no need of the Prince's
+protection.  "I begged the Chamberlain, Matthew de Cors," he said, a few
+days after his arrest, "that I might be allowed to speak with his
+Excellency of certain things which I would not willingly trust to the
+pen.  My meaning was to leave all public employment and to offer my
+service to his Excellency in his domestic affairs.  Thus I hoped that the
+motives for my imprisonment would cease.  This was afterwards
+misinterpreted as if I had had wonderful things to reveal."
+
+But Grotius towards the end of his trial showed still greater weakness.
+After repeated refusals, he had at last obtained permission of the judges
+to draw up in writing the heads of his defence.  To do this he was
+allowed a single sheet of paper, and four hours of time, the trial having
+lasted several months.  And in the document thus prepared he showed
+faltering in his faith as to his great friend's innocence, and admitted,
+without any reason whatever, the possibility of there being truth in some
+of the vile and anonymous calumnies against him.
+
+"The friendship of the Advocate of Holland I had always highly prized,"
+he said, "hoping from the conversation of so wise and experienced a
+person to learn much that was good .  .  .  .  I firmly believed that his
+Excellency, notwithstanding occasional differences as to the conduct of
+public affairs, considered him a true and upright servant of the land
+.  .  .  I have been therefore surprised to understand, during my
+imprisonment, that the gentlemen had proofs in hand not alone of his
+correspondence with the enemy, but also of his having received money from
+them.
+
+"He being thus accused, I have indicated by word of mouth and afterwards
+resumed in writing all matters which I thought--the above-mentioned
+proofs being made good--might be thereto indirectly referred, in order to
+show that for me no friendships were so dear as the preservation of the
+freedom of the land.  I wish that he may give explanation of all to the
+contentment of the judges, and that therefore his actions--which,
+supposing the said correspondence to be true, are subject to a bad
+interpretation--may be taken in another sense."
+
+Alas! could the Advocate--among whose first words after hearing of his
+own condemnation to death were, "And must my Grotius die too?" adding,
+with a sigh of relief when assured of the contrary, "I should deeply
+grieve for that; he is so young and may live to do the State much service
+"could he have read those faltering and ungenerous words from one he so
+held in his heart, he would have felt them like the stab of Brutus.
+
+Grotius lived to know that there were no such proofs, that the judges did
+not dare even allude to the charge in their sentence, and long years
+afterwards he drew a picture of the martyred patriot such as one might
+have expected from his pen.
+
+But these written words of doubt must have haunted him to his grave.
+
+On the 18th May 1619--on the fifty-first anniversary, as Grotius
+remarked, of the condemnation of Egmont and Hoorn by the Blood Tribunal
+of Alva--the two remaining victims were summoned to receive their doom.
+The Fiscal Sylla, entering de Groot's chamber early in the morning to
+conduct him before the judges, informed him that he was not instructed to
+communicate the nature of the sentence.  "But," he said, maliciously,
+"you are aware of what has befallen the Advocate."
+
+"I have heard with my own ears," answered Grotius, "the judgment
+pronounced upon Barneveld and upon Ledenberg.  Whatever may be my fate, I
+have patience to bear it."
+
+The sentence, read in the same place and in the same manner as had been
+that upon the Advocate, condemned both Hoogerbeets and Grotius to
+perpetual imprisonment.
+
+The course of the trial and the enumeration of the offences were nearly
+identical with the leading process which has been elaborately described.
+
+Grotius made no remark whatever in the court-room.  On returning to his
+chamber he observed that his admissions of facts had been tortured into
+confessions of guilt, that he had been tried and sentenced against all
+principles and forms of law, and that he had been deprived of what the
+humblest criminal could claim, the right of defence and the examination
+of testimony.  In regard to the penalty against him, he said, there was
+no such thing as perpetual imprisonment except in hell.  Alluding to the
+leading cause of all these troubles, he observed that it was with the
+Stadholder and the Advocate as Cato had said of Caesar and Pompey.  The
+great misery had come not from their being enemies, but from their having
+once been friends.
+
+On the night of 5th June the prisoners were taken from their prison in
+the Hague and conveyed to the castle of Loevestein.
+
+This fortress, destined thenceforth to be famous in history and--from
+its frequent use in after-times as a state-prison for men of similar
+constitutional views to those of Grotius and the Advocate--to give its
+name to a political party, was a place of extraordinary strength.  Nature
+and art had made it, according to military ideas of that age, almost
+impregnable.  As a prison it seemed the very castle of despair.
+"Abandon all hope ye who enter" seemed engraven over its portal.
+
+Situate in the very narrow, acute angle where the broad, deep, and turbid
+Waal--the chief of the three branches into which the Rhine divides itself
+on entering the Netherlands--mingles its current with the silver Meuse
+whose name it adopts as the united rivers roll to the sea, it was guarded
+on many sides by these deep and dangerous streams.  On the land-side it
+was surrounded by high walls and a double foss, which protected it
+against any hostile invasion from Brabant.  As the Twelve Years' Truce
+was running to its close, it was certain that pains would be taken to
+strengthen the walls and deepen the ditches, that the place might be
+proof against all marauders and land-robbers likely to swarm over from
+the territory of the Archdukes.  The town of Gorcum was exactly opposite
+on the northern side of the Waal, while Worcum was about a league's
+distance from the castle on the southern side, but separated from it by
+the Meuse.
+
+The prisoners, after crossing the drawbridge, were led through thirteen
+separate doors, each one secured by iron bolts and heavy locks, until
+they reached their separate apartments.
+
+They were never to see or have any communication with each other.  It had
+been accorded by the States-General however that the wives of the two
+gentlemen were to have access to their prison, were to cook for them in
+the castle kitchen, and, if they chose to inhabit the fortress, might
+cross to the neighbouring town of Gorcum from time to time to make
+purchases, and even make visits to the Hague.  Twenty-four stuivers, or
+two shillings, a day were allowed by the States-General for the support
+of each prisoner and his family.  As the family property of Grotius was
+at once sequestered, with a view to its ultimate confiscation, it was
+clear that abject indigence as well as imprisonment was to be the
+lifelong lot of this illustrious person, who had hitherto lived in modest
+affluence, occupying the most considerable of social positions.
+
+The commandant of the fortress was inspired from the outset with a desire
+to render the prisoner's situation as hateful as it was in his power to
+make it.  And much was in his power.  He resolved that the family should
+really live upon their daily pittance.  Yet Madame de Groot, before the
+final confiscation of her own and her husband's estates, had been able to
+effect considerable loans, both to carry on process against government
+for what the prisoners contended was an unjust confiscation, and for
+providing for the household on a decent scale and somewhat in accordance
+with the requirements of the prisoner's health.  Thus there was a
+wearisome and ignoble altercation, revived from day to day, between the
+Commandant and Madame de Groot.  It might have been thought enough of
+torture for this virtuous and accomplished lady, but twenty-nine years of
+age and belonging to one of the eminent families of the country, to see
+her husband, for his genius and accomplishments the wonder of Europe,
+thus cut off in the flower of his age and doomed to a living grave.
+She was nevertheless to be subjected to the perpetual inquisition of the
+market-basket, which she was not ashamed with her maid to take to and
+from Gorcum, and to petty wrangles about the kitchen fire where she was
+proud to superintend the cooking of the scanty fare for her husband and
+her five children.
+
+There was a reason for the spite of the military jailer.  Lieutenant
+Prouninx, called Deventer, commandant of Loevestein, was son of the
+notorious Gerard Prouninx, formerly burgomaster of Utrecht, one of the
+ringleaders of the Leicester faction in the days when the Earl made his
+famous attempts upon the four cities.  He had sworn revenge upon all
+those concerned in his father's downfall, and it was a delight therefore
+to wreak a personal vengeance on one who had since become so illustrious
+a member of that party by which the former burgomaster had been deposed,
+although Grotius at the time of Leicester's government had scarcely left
+his cradle.
+
+Thus these ladies were to work in the kitchen and go to market from time
+to time, performing this menial drudgery under the personal inspection of
+the warrior who governed the garrison and fortress, but who in vain
+attempted to make Maria van Reigersbergen tremble at his frown.
+
+Hugo de Groot, when thus for life immured, after having already undergone
+a preliminary imprisonment of nine months, was just thirty-six years of
+age.  Although comparatively so young, he had been long regarded as one
+of the great luminaries of Europe for learning and genius.  Of an ancient
+and knightly race, his immediate ancestors had been as famous for
+literature, science, and municipal abilities as their more distant
+progenitors for deeds of arms in the feudal struggles of Holland in the
+middle ages.
+
+His father and grandfather had alike been eminent for Hebrew, Greek, and
+Latin scholarship, and both had occupied high positions in the University
+of Leyden from its beginning.  Hugo, born and nurtured under such
+quickening influences, had been a scholar and poet almost from his
+cradle.  He wrote respectable Latin verses at the age of seven, he was
+matriculated at Leyden at the age of eleven.  That school, founded amid
+the storms and darkness of terrible war, was not lightly to be entered.
+It was already illustrated by a galaxy of shining lights in science and
+letters, which radiated over Christendom.  His professors were Joseph
+Scaliger, Francis Junius, Paulus Merula, and a host of others.  His
+fellow-students were men like Scriverius, Vossius, Baudius, Daniel
+Heinsius.  The famous soldier and poet Douza, who had commanded the
+forces of Leyden during the immortal siege, addressed him on his
+admission to the university as "Magne peer magni dignissime cura
+parentis," in a copy of eloquent verses.
+
+When fourteen years old, he took his bachelor's degree, after a
+rigorous examination not only in the classics but astronomy, mathematics,
+jurisprudence, and theology, at an age when most youths would have been
+accounted brilliant if able to enter that high school with credit.
+
+On leaving the University he was attached to the embassy of Barneveld and
+Justinus van Nassau to the court of Henry IV.  Here he attracted the
+attention of that monarch, who pointed him out to his courtiers as the
+"miracle of Holland," presented him with a gold chain with his miniature
+attached to it, and proposed to confer on him the dignity of knighthood,
+which the boy from motives of family pride appears to have refused.
+While in France he received from the University of Orleans, before the
+age of fifteen, the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws in a very
+eulogistic diploma.  On his return to Holland he published an edition of
+the poet Johannes Capella with valuable annotations, besides giving to
+the public other learned and classical works and several tragedies of
+more or less merit.  At the age of seventeen he was already an advocate
+in full practice before the supreme tribunals of the Hague, and when
+twenty-three years old he was selected by Prince Maurice from a list of
+three candidates for the important post of Fiscal or Attorney-General of
+Holland.  Other civic dignities, embassies, and offices of various kinds,
+had been thrust upon him one after another, in all of which he had
+acquitted himself with dignity and brilliancy.  He was but twenty-six
+when he published his argument for the liberty of the sea, the famous
+Mare Liberum, and a little later appeared his work on the Antiquity of
+the Batavian Republic, which procured for him in Spain the title of "Hugo
+Grotius, auctor damnatus."  At the age of twenty-nine he had completed
+his Latin history of the Netherlands from the period immediately
+preceding the war of independence down to the conclusion of the Truce,
+1550-1609--a work which has been a classic ever since its appearance,
+although not published until after his death.  A chief magistrate of
+Rotterdam, member of the States of Holland and the States-General,
+jurist, advocate, attorney-general, poet, scholar, historian, editor of
+the Greek and Latin classics, writer of tragedies, of law treatises, of
+theological disquisitions, he stood foremost among a crowd of famous
+contemporaries.  His genius, eloquence, and learning were esteemed among
+the treasures not only of his own country but of Europe.  He had been
+part and parcel of his country's history from his earliest manhood, and
+although a child in years compared to Barneveld, it was upon him that the
+great statesman had mainly relied ever since the youth's first appearance
+in public affairs.  Impressible, emotional, and susceptive, he had been
+accused from time to time, perhaps not entirely without reason, of
+infirmity of purpose, or at least of vacillation in opinion; but his
+worst enemies had never assailed the purity of his heart or integrity of
+his character.  He had not yet written the great work on the 'Rights of
+War and Peace', which was to make an epoch in the history of civilization
+and to be the foundation of a new science, but the materials lay already
+in the ample storehouse of his memory and his brain.
+
+Possessed of singular personal beauty--which the masterly portraits of
+Miereveld attest to the present day--tall, brown-haired; straight-
+featured, with a delicate aquiline nose and piercing dark blue eyes, he
+was also athletic of frame and a proficient in manly exercises.  This was
+the statesman and the scholar, of whom it is difficult to speak but in
+terms of affectionate but not exaggerated eulogy, and for whom the
+Republic of the Netherlands could now find no better use than to shut him
+up in the grim fortress of Loevestein for the remainder of his days.  A
+commonwealth must have deemed itself rich in men which, after cutting off
+the head of Barneveld, could afford to bury alive Hugo Grotius.
+
+His deportment in prison was a magnificent moral lesson.  Shut up in a
+kind of cage consisting of a bedroom and a study, he was debarred from
+physical exercise, so necessary for his mental and bodily health.  Not
+choosing for the gratification of Lieutenant Deventer to indulge in weak
+complaints, he procured a huge top, which he employed himself in whipping
+several hours a day; while for intellectual employment he plunged once
+more into those classical, juridical, and theological studies which had
+always employed his leisure hours from childhood upwards.
+
+It had been forbidden by the States-General to sell his likeness in the
+shops.  The copper plates on which they had been engraved had as far as
+possible been destroyed.
+
+The wish of the government, especially of his judges, was that his name
+and memory should die at once and for ever.  They were not destined to be
+successful, for it would be equally difficult to-day to find an educated
+man in Christendom ignorant of the name of Hugo Grotius, or acquainted
+with that of a single one of his judges.
+
+And his friends had not forgotten him as he lay there living in his tomb.
+Especially the learned Scriverius, Vossius, and other professors, were
+permitted to correspond with him at intervals on literary subjects, the
+letters being subjected to preliminary inspection.  Scriverius sent him
+many books from his well-stocked library, de Groot's own books and papers
+having been confiscated by the government.  At a somewhat later period
+the celebrated Orientalist Erpenius sent him from time to time a large
+chest of books, the precious freight being occasionally renewed and the
+chest passing to and from Loevestein by way of Gorcum.  At this town
+lived a sister of Erpenius, married to one Daatselaer, a considerable
+dealer in thread and ribbons, which he exported to England.  The house of
+Daatselaer became a place of constant resort for Madame de Groot as well
+as the wife of Hoogerbeets, both dames going every few days from the
+castle across the Waal to Gorcum, to make their various purchases for the
+use of their forlorn little households in the prison.  Madame Daatselaer
+therefore received and forwarded into Loevestein or into Holland many
+parcels and boxes, besides attending to the periodical transmission of
+the mighty chest of books.
+
+Professor Vossius was then publishing a new edition of the tragedies of
+Seneca, and at his request Grotius enriched that work, from his prison,
+with valuable notes.  He employed himself also in translating the moral
+sentences extracted by Stobaeus from the Greek tragedies; drawing
+consolation from the ethics and philosophy of the ancient dramatists,
+whom he had always admired, especially the tragedies of Euripides; he
+formed a complete moral anthology from that poet and from the works of
+Sophocles, Menander, and others, which he translated into fluent Dutch
+verse.  Becoming more and more interested in the subject, he executed a
+masterly rhymed translation of the 'Theban Brothers' of Euripides, thus
+seeking distraction from his own tragic doom in the portraiture of
+antique, distant, and heroic sorrow.
+
+Turning again to legal science, he completed an Introduction to the
+Jurisprudence of Holland, a work which as soon as published became
+thenceforward a text-book and an oracle in the law courts and the high
+schools of the country.  Not forgetting theology, he composed for the use
+of the humbler classes, especially for sailors, in whose lot, so exposed
+to danger and temptation, be ever took deep interest, a work on the
+proofs of Christianity in easy and familiar rhyme--a book of gold, as it
+was called at once, which became rapidly popular with those for whom it
+was designed.
+
+At a somewhat later period Professor Erpenius, publishing a new edition
+of the New Testament in Greek, with translations in Arabic, Syriac, and
+Ethiopian, solicited his friend's help both in translations and in the
+Latin commentaries and expositions with which he proposed to accompany
+the work.  The prisoner began with a modest disclaimer, saying that after
+the labours of Erasmus and Beza, Maldonatus and Jasenius, there was
+little for him to glean.  Becoming more enthusiastic as he went on, he
+completed a masterly commentary on the Four Evangelists, a work for which
+the learned and religious world has ever recognized a kind of debt of
+gratitude to the castle of Loevestein, and hailed in him the founder of a
+school of manly Biblical criticism.
+
+And thus nearly two years wore away.  Spinning his great top for
+exercise; soothing his active and prolific brain with Greek tragedy,
+with Flemish verse, with jurisprudence, history, theology; creating,
+expounding, adorning, by the warmth of his vivid intellect; moving the
+world, and doing good to his race from the depths of his stony sepulchre;
+Hugo Grotius rose superior to his doom and took captivity captive.  The
+man is not to be envied who is not moved by so noble an example of great
+calamity manfully endured.
+
+The wife of Hoogerbeets, already advanced in years, sickened during the
+imprisonment and died at Loevestein after a lingering illness, leaving
+six children to the care of her unfortunate husband.  Madame de Groot had
+not been permitted by the prison authorities to minister to her in
+sickness, nor to her children after her death.
+
+Early in the year 1621 Francis Aerssens, Lord of Sommelsdyk, the arch
+enemy of Barneveld and of Grotius, was appointed special ambassador to
+Paris.  The intelligence--although hardly unexpected, for the stratagems
+of Aerssens had been completely successful--moved the prisoner deeply.
+He felt that this mortal enemy, not glutted with vengeance by the
+beheading of the Advocate and the perpetual imprisonment of his friend,
+would do his best at the French court to defame and to blacken him.  He
+did what he could to obviate this danger by urgent letters to friends on
+whom he could rely.
+
+At about the same time Muis van Holy, one of the twenty-four
+commissioners, not yet satisfied with the misery he had helped to
+inflict, informed the States-General that Madame de Groot had been buying
+ropes at Gorcum.  On his motion a committee was sent to investigate the
+matter at Castle Loevestein, where it was believed that the ropes had
+been concealed for the purpose of enabling Grotius to make his escape
+from prison.
+
+Lieutenant Deventer had heard nothing of the story.  He was in high
+spirits at the rumour however, and conducted the committee very eagerly
+over the castle, causing minute search to be made in the apartment of
+Grotius for the ropes which, as they were assured by him and his wife,
+had never existed save in the imagination of Judge Muis.  They succeeded
+at least in inflicting much superfluous annoyance on their victims, and
+in satisfying themselves that it would be as easy for the prisoner to fly
+out of the fortress on wings as to make his escape with ropes, even if he
+had them.
+
+Grotius soon afterwards addressed a letter to the States-General
+denouncing the statement of Muis as a fable, and these persistent
+attempts to injure him as cowardly and wicked.
+
+A few months later Madame de Groot happened to be in the house of
+Daatselaer on one of her periodical visits to Gorcum.  Conversation
+turning on these rumours March of attempts at escape, she asked Madame
+Daatselaer if she would not be much embarrassed, should Grotius suddenly
+make his appearance there.
+
+"Oh no," said the good woman with a laugh; "only let him come.  We will
+take excellent care of him."
+
+At another visit one Saturday, 20th March, (1621) Madame de Groot asked
+her friend why all the bells of Gorcum march were ringing.
+
+"Because to-morrow begins our yearly fair," replied Dame Daatselaer.
+
+"Well, I suppose that all exiles and outlaws may come to Gorcum on this
+occasion," said Madame de Groot.
+
+"Such is the law, they say," answered her friend.
+
+"And my husband might come too?"
+
+"No doubt," said Madame Daatselaer with a merry laugh, rejoiced at
+finding the wife of Grotius able to speak so cheerfully of her husband in
+his perpetual and hopeless captivity.  "Send him hither.  He shall have,
+a warm welcome."
+
+"What a good woman you are!" said Madame de Groot with a sigh as she rose
+to take leave.  "But you know very well that if he were a bird he could
+never get out of the castle, so closely, he is caged there."
+
+Next morning a wild equinoctial storm was howling around the battlements
+of the castle.  Of a sudden Cornelia, daughter of the de Groots, nine
+years of age, said to her mother without any reason whatever,
+
+"To-morrow Papa must be off to Gorcum, whatever the weather may be."
+
+De Groot, as well as his wife, was aghast at the child's remark, and took
+it as a direct indication from Heaven.
+
+For while Madame Daatselaer had considered the recent observations of her
+visitor from Loevestein as idle jests, and perhaps wondered that Madame
+de Groot could be frivolous and apparently lighthearted on so dismal a
+topic, there had been really a hidden meaning in her words.
+
+For several weeks past the prisoner had been brooding over a means of
+escape.  His wife, whose every thought was devoted to him, had often cast
+her eyes on the great chest or trunk in which the books of Erpenius had
+been conveyed between Loevestein and Gorcum for the use of the prisoner.
+At first the trunk had been carefully opened and its contents examined
+every time it entered or left the castle.  As nothing had ever been found
+in it save Hebrew, Greek, and Latin folios, uninviting enough to the
+Commandant, that warrior had gradually ceased to inspect the chest very
+closely, and had at last discontinued the practice altogether.
+
+It had been kept for some weeks past in the prisoner's study.  His wife
+thought--although it was two finger breadths less than four feet in
+length, and not very broad or deep in proportion--that it might be
+possible for him to get into it.  He was considerably above middle
+height, but found that by curling himself up very closely he could just
+manage to lie in it with the cover closed.  Very secretly they had many
+times rehearsed the scheme which had now taken possession of their minds,
+but had not breathed a word of it to any one.  He had lain in the chest
+with the lid fastened, and with his wife sitting upon the top of it, two
+hours at a time by the hour-glass.  They had decided at last that the
+plan, though fraught with danger, was not absolutely impossible, and they
+were only waiting now for a favourable opportunity.  The chance remark of
+the child Cornelia settled the time for hazarding the adventure.  By a
+strange coincidence, too, the commandant of the fortress, Lieutenant
+Deventer, had just been promoted to a captaincy, and was to go to Heusden
+to receive his company.  He left the castle for a brief absence that very
+Sunday evening.  As a precautionary measure, the trunk filled with books
+had been sent to Gorcum and returned after the usual interval only a few
+days before.
+
+The maid-servant of the de Groots, a young girl of twenty, Elsje van
+Houwening by name, quick, intelligent, devoted, and courageous, was now
+taken into their confidence.  The scheme was explained to her, and she
+was asked if she were willing to take the chest under her charge with her
+master in it, instead of the usual freight of books, and accompany it to
+Gorcum.
+
+She naturally asked what punishment could be inflicted upon her in case
+the plot were discovered.
+
+"None legally," answered her master; "but I too am innocent of any crime,
+and you see to what sufferings I have been condemned."
+
+"Whatever come of it," said Elsje stoutly; "I will take the risk and
+accompany my master."
+
+Every detail was then secretly arranged, and it was provided beforehand,
+as well as possible, what should be said or done in the many
+contingencies that might arise.
+
+On Sunday evening Madame de Groot then went to the wife of the
+Commandant, with whom she had always been on more friendly terms than
+with her malicious husband.  She had also recently propitiated her
+affections by means of venison and other dainties brought from Gorcum.
+She expressed the hope that, notwithstanding the absence of Captain
+Deventer, she might be permitted to send the trunk full of books next day
+from the castle.
+
+"My husband is wearing himself out," she said, "with his perpetual
+studies.  I shall be glad for a little time to be rid of some of these
+folios."
+
+The Commandant's wife made no objection to this slight request.
+
+On Monday morning the gale continued to beat with unabated violence on
+the turrets.  The turbid Waal, swollen by the tempest, rolled darkly and
+dangerously along the castle walls.
+
+But the die was cast.  Grotius rose betimes, fell on his knees, and
+prayed fervently an hour long.  Dressed only in linen underclothes with a
+pair of silk stockings, he got into the chest with the help of his wife.
+The big Testament of Erpenius, with some bunches of thread placed upon
+it, served him as a pillow.  A few books and papers were placed in the
+interstices left by the curves of his body, and as much pains as possible
+taken to prevent his being seriously injured or incommoded during the
+hazardous journey he was contemplating.  His wife then took solemn
+farewell of him, fastened the lock, which she kissed, and gave the key to
+Elsje.
+
+The usual garments worn by the prisoner were thrown on a chair by the
+bedside and his slippers placed before it.  Madame de Groot then returned
+to her bed, drew the curtains close, and rang the bell.
+
+It was answered by the servant who usually waited on the prisoner, and
+who was now informed by the lady that it had been her intention to go
+herself to Gorcum, taking charge of the books which were valuable.  As
+the weather was so tempestuous however, and as she was somewhat
+indisposed, it had been decided that Elsje should accompany the trunk.
+
+She requested that some soldiers might be sent as usual to take it down
+to the vessel.  Two or three of the garrison came accordingly, and seeing
+the clothes and slippers of Grotius lying about, and the bed-curtains
+closed, felt no suspicion.
+
+On lifting the chest, however, one of them said, half in jest:
+
+"The Arminian must be in it himself, it seems so heavy,"
+
+"Not the Arminian," replied Madame de Groot, in a careless voice, from
+the bed; "only heavy Arminian books."
+
+Partly lifting, partly dragging the ponderous box, the soldiers managed
+to get it down the stairs and through the thirteen barred and bolted
+doors.  Four several times one or other of the soldiers expressed the
+opinion that Grotius himself must be locked within it, but they never
+spoke quite seriously, and Elsje was ever ready to turn aside the remark
+with a jest.  A soldier's wife, just as the box was approaching the
+wharf, told a story of a malefactor who had once been carried out of the
+castle in a chest.
+
+"And if a malefactor, why not a lawyer?" she added.  A soldier said he
+would get a gimlet and bore a hole into the Arminian.  "Then you must get
+a gimlet that will reach to the top of the castle, where the Arminian
+lies abed and asleep," said Elsje.
+
+Not much heed was given to this careless talk, the soldiers, before
+leaving the chamber of Grotius, having satisfied themselves that there
+were no apertures in the chest save the keyhole, and that it would be
+impossible by that means alone for sufficient air to penetrate to keep a
+man enclosed in it from smothering.
+
+Madame Deventer was asked if she chose to inspect the contents of the
+trunk, and she enquired whether the Commandant had been wont so to do.
+When told that such search had been for a long time discontinued, as
+nothing had ever been found there but books, she observed that there was
+no reason why she should be more strict than her husband, and ordered the
+soldiers to take their heavy load to the vessel.
+
+Elsje insisted that the boatmen should place a doubly thick plank for
+sliding the box on board, as it seemed probable, she said, that the usual
+one would break in two, and then the valuable books borrowed of Professor
+Erpenius would be damaged or destroyed.  The request caused much further
+grumbling, but was complied with at last and the chest deposited on the
+deck.  The wind still continued to blow with great fury, and as soon as
+the sails were set the vessel heeled over so much, that Elsje implored
+the skipper to cause the box to be securely lashed, as it seemed in
+imminent danger, at the first lurch of the vessel, of sliding into the
+sea.
+
+This done, Elsje sat herself down and threw her white handkerchief over
+her head, letting it flutter in the wind.  One of the crew asked her why
+she did so, and she replied that the servant in the castle had been
+tormenting her, saying that she would never dare to sail to Gorcum in
+such tempestuous weather, and she was now signalling him that she had
+been as good as her word.  Whereupon she continued to wave the
+handkerchief.
+
+In reality the signal was for her mistress, who was now straining her
+eyes from the barred window which looked out upon the Waal, and with whom
+the maid had agreed that if all went prosperously she would give this
+token of success.  Otherwise she would sit with her head in her hands.
+
+During the voyage an officer of the garrison, who happened to be on
+board, threw himself upon the chest as a convenient seat, and began
+drumming and pounding with his heels upon it.  The ever watchful Elsje,
+feeling the dreadful inconvenience to the prisoner of these proceedings,
+who perhaps was already smothering and would struggle for air if not
+relieved, politely addressed the gentleman and induced him to remove to
+another seat by telling him that, besides the books, there was some
+valuable porcelain in the chest which might easily be broken.
+
+No further incident occurred.  The wind, although violent, was
+favourable, and Gorcum in due time was reached.  Elsje insisted upon
+having her own precious freight carried first into the town, although the
+skipper for some time was obstinately bent on leaving it to the very
+last, while all the other merchandise in the vessel should be previously
+unshipped.
+
+At last on promise of payment of ten stuivers, which was considered an
+exorbitant sum, the skipper and son agreed to transport the chest between
+them on a hand-barrow.  While they were trudging with it to the town, the
+son remarked to his father that there was some living thing in the box.
+For the prisoner in the anguish of his confinement had not been able to
+restrain a slight movement.
+
+"Do you hear what my son says?" cried the skipper to Elsje.  "He says you
+have got something alive in your trunk."
+
+"Yes, yes," replied the cheerful maid-servant; "Arminian books are always
+alive, always full of motion and spirit."
+
+They arrived at Daatselaer's house, moving with difficulty through the
+crowd which, notwithstanding the boisterous weather, had been collected
+by the annual fair.  Many people were assembled in front of the building,
+which was a warehouse of great resort, while next door was a book-
+seller's shop thronged with professors, clergymen, and other literary
+persons.  The carriers accordingly entered by the backway, and Elsje,
+deliberately paying them their ten stuivers, and seeing them depart, left
+the box lying in a room at the rear and hastened to the shop in front.
+
+Here she found the thread and ribbon dealer and his wife, busy with their
+customers, unpacking and exhibiting their wares.  She instantly whispered
+in Madame Daatselaer's ear, "I have got my master here in your back
+parlour."
+
+The dame turned white as a sheet, and was near fainting on the spot.  It
+was the first imprudence Elsje had committed.  The good woman recovered
+somewhat of her composure by a strong effort however, and instantly went
+with Elsje to the rear of the house.
+
+"Master! master!" cried Elsje, rapping on the chest.
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"My God! my God!" shrieked the poor maid-servant.  "My poor master is
+dead."
+
+"Ah!" said Madame Daatselaer, "your mistress has made a bad business of
+it.  Yesterday she had a living husband.  Now she has a dead one."
+
+But soon there was a vigorous rap on the inside of the lid, and a cry
+from the prisoner:
+
+"Open the chest!  I am not dead, but did not at first recognize your
+voice."
+
+The lock was instantly unfastened, the lid thrown open, and Grotius arose
+in his linen clothing, like a dead man from his coffin.
+
+The dame instantly accompanied the two through a trapdoor into an upper
+room.
+
+Grotius asked her if she was always so deadly pale.
+
+"No," she replied, "but I am frightened to see you here.  My lord is no
+common person.  The whole world is talking of you.  I fear this will
+cause the loss of all my property and perhaps bring my husband into
+prison in your place."
+
+Grotius rejoined: "I made my prayers to God before as much as this had
+been gained, and I have just been uttering fervent thanks to Him for my
+deliverance so far as it has been effected.  But if the consequences are
+to be as you fear, I am ready at once to get into the chest again and be
+carried back to prison."
+
+But she answered, "No; whatever comes of it, we have you here and will do
+all that we can to help you on."
+
+Grotius being faint from his sufferings, the lady brought him a glass of
+Spanish wine, but was too much flustered to find even a cloak or shawl to
+throw over him.  Leaving him sitting there in his very thin attire, just
+as he had got out of the chest, she went to the front warehouse to call
+her husband.  But he prudently declined to go to his unexpected guest.
+It would be better in the examination sure to follow, he said, for him to
+say with truth that he had not seen him and knew nothing of the escape,
+from first to last.
+
+Grotius entirely approved of the answer when told to him.  Meantime
+Madame Daatselaer had gone to her brother-in-law van der Veen, a clothier
+by trade, whom she found in his shop talking with an officer of the
+Loevestein garrison.  She whispered in the clothier's ear, and he, making
+an excuse to the officer, followed her home at once.  They found Grotius
+sitting where he had been left.  Van der Veen gave him his hand, saying:
+
+"Sir, you are the man of whom the whole country is talking?"
+
+"Yes, here I am," was the reply, "and I put myself in your hands--"
+
+"There isn't a moment to lose," replied the clothier.  "We must help you
+away at once."
+
+He went immediately in search of one John Lambertsen, a man in whom he
+knew he could confide, a Lutheran in religion, a master-mason by
+occupation.  He found him on a scaffold against the gable-end of a house,
+working at his trade.
+
+He told him that there was a good deed to be done which he could do
+better than any man, that his conscience would never reproach him for it,
+and that he would at the same time earn no trifling reward.
+
+He begged the mason to procure a complete dress as for a journeyman, and
+to follow him to the house of his brother-in-law Daatselaer.
+
+Lambertsen soon made his appearance with the doublet, trunk-hose, and
+shoes of a bricklayer, together with trowel and measuring-rod.  He was
+informed who his new journeyman was to be, and Grotius at once put on the
+disguise.
+
+The doublet did not reach to the waistband of the trunkhose, while those
+nether garments stopped short of his knees; the whole attire belonging to
+a smaller man than the unfortunate statesman.  His delicate white hands,
+much exposed by the shortness of the sleeves, looked very unlike those of
+a day-labourer, and altogether the new mason presented a somewhat
+incongruous and wobegone aspect.  Grotius was fearful too lest some of
+the preachers and professors frequenting the book-shop next door would
+recognize him through his disguise.  Madame Daatselaer smeared his face
+and hands with chalk and plaster however and whispered encouragement, and
+so with a felt hat slouched over his forehead and a yardstick in his
+hand, he walked calmly forth into the thronged marketplace and through
+the town to the ferry, accompanied by the friendly Lambertsen.  It had
+been agreed that van der Veen should leave the house in another direction
+and meet them at the landing-place.
+
+When they got to the ferry, they found the weather as boisterous as ever.
+The boatmen absolutely refused to make the dangerous crossing of the
+Merwede over which their course lay to the land of Altona, and so into
+the Spanish Netherlands, for two such insignificant personages as this
+mason and his scarecrow journeyman.
+
+Lambertsen assured them that it was of the utmost importance that he
+should cross the water at once.  He had a large contract for purchasing
+stone at Altona for a public building on which he was engaged.  Van der
+Veen coming up added his entreaties, protesting that he too was
+interested in this great stone purchase, and so by means of offering a
+larger price than they at first dared to propose, they were able to
+effect their passage.
+
+After landing, Lambertsen and Grotius walked to Waalwyk, van der Veen
+returning the same evening to Gorcum.  It was four o'clock in the
+afternoon when they reached Waalwyk, where a carriage was hired to convey
+the fugitive to Antwerp.  The friendly mason here took leave of his
+illustrious journeyman, having first told the driver that his companion
+was a disguised bankrupt fleeing from Holland into foreign territory to
+avoid pursuit by his creditors.  This would explain his slightly
+concealing his face in passing through a crowd in any village.
+
+Grotius proved so ignorant of the value of different coins in making
+small payments on the road, that the honest waggoner, on being
+occasionally asked who the odd-looking stranger was, answered that he was
+a bankrupt, and no wonder, for he did not know one piece of money from
+another.  For, his part he thought him little better than a fool.
+
+Such was the depreciatory opinion formed by the Waalwyk coachman as to
+the "rising light of the world" and the "miracle of Holland."  They
+travelled all night and, arriving on the morning of the 21st within a few
+leagues of Antwerp, met a patrol of soldiers, who asked Grotius for his
+passport.  He enquired in whose service they were, and was told in that
+of "Red Rod," as the chief bailiff of Antwerp was called.  That
+functionary happened to be near, and the traveller approaching him said
+that his passport was on his feet, and forthwith told him his name and
+story.
+
+Red Rod treated him at once with perfect courtesy, offered him a horse
+for himself with a mounted escort, and so furthered his immediate
+entrance to Antwerp.  Grotius rode straight to the house of a banished
+friend of his, the preacher Grevinkhoven.  He was told by the daughter of
+that clergyman that her father was upstairs ministering at the bedside of
+his sick wife.  But so soon as the traveller had sent up his name, both
+the preacher and the invalid came rushing downstairs to fall upon the
+neck of one who seemed as if risen from the dead.
+
+The news spread, and Episcopius and other exiled friends soon thronged to
+the house of Grevinkhoven, where they all dined together in great glee,
+Grotius, still in his journeyman's clothes, narrating the particulars of
+his wonderful escape.
+
+He had no intention of tarrying in his resting-place at Antwerp longer
+than was absolutely necessary.  Intimations were covertly made to him
+that a brilliant destiny might be in store for him should he consent to
+enter the service of the Archdukes, nor were there waning rumours,
+circulated as a matter of course by his host of enemies, that he was
+about to become a renegade to country and religion.  There was as much
+truth in the slanders as in the rest of the calumnies of which he had
+been the victim during his career.  He placed on record a proof of his
+loyal devotion to his country in the letters which he wrote from Antwerp
+within a week of his arrival there.  With his subsequent history, his
+appearance and long residence at the French court as ambassador of
+Sweden, his memorable labours in history, diplomacy, poetry, theology,
+the present narrative is not concerned.  Driven from the service of his
+Fatherland, of which his name to all time is one of the proudest
+garlands, he continued to be a benefactor not only to her but to all
+mankind.  If refutation is sought of the charge that republics are
+ungrateful, it will certainly not be found in the history of Hugo Grotius
+or John of Barneveld.
+
+Nor is there need to portray the wrath of Captain Deventer when he
+returned to Castle Loevestein.
+
+"Here is the cage, but your bird is flown," said corpulent Maria Grotius
+with a placid smile.  The Commandant solaced himself by uttering
+imprecations on her, on her husband, and on Elsje van Houwening.  But
+these curses could not bring back the fugitive.  He flew to Gorcum to
+browbeat the Daatselaers and to search the famous trunk.  He found in it
+the big New Testament and some skeins of thread, together with an octavo
+or two of theology and of Greek tragedies; but the Arminian was not in
+it, and was gone from the custody of the valiant Deventer for ever.
+
+After a brief period Madame de Groot was released and rejoined her
+husband.  Elsje van Houwening, true heroine of the adventure, was
+subsequently married to the faithful servant of Grotius, who during the
+two years' imprisonment had been taught Latin and the rudiments of law by
+his master, so that he subsequently rose to be a thriving and respectable
+advocate at the tribunals of Holland.
+
+The Stadholder, when informed of the escape of the prisoner, observed,
+"I always thought the black pig was deceiving me," making not very
+complimentary allusion to the complexion and size of the lady who had
+thus aided the escape of her husband.
+
+He is also reported as saying that it "is no wonder they could not keep
+Grotius in prison, as he has more wit than all his judges put together."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+     Barneveld's Sons plot against Maurice--The Conspiracy betrayed to
+     Maurice--Escape of Stoutenburg--Groeneveld is arrested--Mary of
+     Barneveld appeals to the Stadholder--Groeneveld condemned to Death--
+     Execution of Groeneveld.
+
+The widow of Barneveld had remained, since the last scene of the fatal
+tragedy on the Binnenhof, in hopeless desolation.  The wife of the man
+who during a whole generation of mankind had stood foremost among the
+foremost of the world, and had been one of those chief actors and
+directors in human affairs to whom men's eyes turned instinctively from
+near and from afar, had led a life of unbroken prosperity.  An heiress in
+her own right, Maria van Utrecht had laid the foundation of her husband's
+wealth by her union with the rising young lawyer and statesman.  Her two
+sons and two daughters had grown up around her, all four being married
+into the leading families of the land, and with apparently long lives of
+prosperity and usefulness before them.  And now the headsman's sword had
+shivered all this grandeur and happiness at a blow.  The name of the
+dead statesman had become a word of scoffing and reproach; vagabond
+mountebanks enacted ribald scenes to his dishonour in the public squares
+and streets; ballad-mongers yelled blasphemous libels upon him in the
+very ears of his widow and children.  For party hatred was not yet
+glutted with the blood it had drunk.
+
+It would be idle to paint the misery of this brokenhearted woman.
+
+The great painters of the epoch have preserved her face to posterity; the
+grief-stricken face of a hard-featured but commanding and not uncomely
+woman, the fountains of whose tears seem exhausted; a face of austere and
+noble despair.  A decorous veil should be thrown over the form of that
+aged matron, for whose long life and prosperity Fate took such merciless
+vengeance at last.
+
+For the woes of Maria of Barneveld had scarcely begun.  Desolation had
+become her portion, but dishonour had not yet crossed her threshold.
+There were sterner strokes in store for her than that which smote her
+husband on the scaffold.
+
+She had two sons, both in the prime of life.  The eldest, Reinier, Lord
+of Groeneveld, who had married a widow of rank and wealth, Madame de
+Brandwyk, was living since the death of his father in comparative ease,
+but entire obscurity.  An easy-tempered, genial, kindly gentleman, he had
+been always much beloved by his friends and, until the great family
+catastrophe, was popular with the public, but of an infirm and
+vacillating character, easily impressed by others, and apt to be led by
+stronger natures than his own.  He had held the lucrative office of head
+forester of Delfland of which he had now been deprived.
+
+The younger son William, called, from an estate conferred on him by his
+father, Lord of Stoutenburg, was of a far different mould.  We have seen
+him at an earlier period of this narrative attached to the embassy of
+Francis Aerssens in Paris, bearing then from another estate the unmusical
+title of Craimgepolder, and giving his subtle and dangerous chief great
+cause of complaint by his irregular, expensive habits.  He had been
+however rather a favourite with Henry IV., who had so profound a respect
+for the father as to consult him, and him only of all foreign statesmen,
+in the gravest affairs of his reign, and he had even held an office of
+honour and emolument at his court.  Subsequently he had embraced the
+military career, and was esteemed a soldier of courage and promise.  As
+captain of cavalry and governor of the fortress of Bergen op Zoom, he
+occupied a distinguished and lucrative position, and was likely, so soon
+as the Truce ran to its close, to make a name for himself in that
+gigantic political and religious war which had already opened in Bohemia,
+and in which it was evident the Republic would soon be desperately
+involved.  His wife, Walburg de Marnix, was daughter to one of the
+noblest characters in the history of the Netherlands, or of any history,
+the illustrious Sainte-Aldegonde.  Two thousand florins a year from his
+father's estate had been settled on him at his marriage, which, in
+addition to his official and military income, placed him in a position of
+affluence.
+
+After the death of his father the family estates were confiscated, and he
+was likewise deprived of his captaincy and his governorship.  He was
+reduced at a blow from luxury and high station to beggary and obscurity.
+At the renewal of the war he found himself, for no fault of his own,
+excluded from the service of his country.  Yet the Advocate almost in his
+last breath had recommended his sons to the Stadholder, and Maurice had
+sent a message in response that so long as the sons conducted themselves
+well they might rely upon his support.
+
+Hitherto they had not conducted themselves otherwise than well.
+Stoutenburg, who now dwelt in his house with his mother, was of a dark,
+revengeful, turbulent disposition.  In the career of arms he had a right
+to look forward to success, but thus condemned to brood in idleness on
+the cruel wrongs to himself and his house it was not improbable that he
+might become dangerous.
+
+Years long he fed on projects of vengeance as his daily bread.  He was
+convinced that his personal grievances were closely entwined with the
+welfare of the Commonwealth, and he had sworn to avenge the death of his
+father, the misery of his mother, and the wrongs which he was himself
+suffering, upon the Stadholder, whom he considered the author of all
+their woe.  To effect a revolution in the government, and to bring back
+to power all the municipal regents whom Maurice had displaced so
+summarily, in order, as the son believed, to effect the downfall of the
+hated Advocate, this was the determination of Stoutenburg.
+
+He did not pause to reflect whether the arm which had been strong enough
+to smite to nothingness the venerable statesman in the plenitude of his
+power would be too weak to repel the attack of an obscure and disarmed
+partisan.  He saw only a hated tyrant, murderer, and oppressor, as he
+considered him, and he meant to have his life.
+
+He had around him a set of daring and desperate men to whom he had from
+time to time half confided his designs.  A certain unfrocked preacher of
+the Remonstrant persuasion, who, according to the fashion of the learned
+of that day, had translated his name out of Hendrik Sleet into Henricus
+Slatius, was one of his most unscrupulous instruments.  Slatius, a big,
+swarthy, shag-eared, beetle-browed Hollander, possessed learning of no
+ordinary degree, a tempestuous kind of eloquence, and a habit of dealing
+with men; especially those of the humbler classes.  He was passionate,
+greedy, overbearing, violent, and loose of life.  He had sworn vengeance
+upon the Remonstrants in consequence of a private quarrel, but this did
+not prevent him from breathing fire and fury against the Contra-
+Remonstrants also, and especially against the Stadholder, whom he
+affected to consider the arch-enemy of the whole Commonwealth.
+
+Another twelvemonth went by.  The Advocate had been nearly four years in
+his grave.  The terrible German war was in full blaze.  The Twelve Years'
+Truce had expired, the Republic was once more at war, and Stoutenburg,
+forbidden at the head of his troop to campaign with the Stadholder
+against the Archdukes, nourished more fiercely than ever his plan against
+the Stadholder's life.
+
+Besides the ferocious Slatius he had other associates.  There was his
+cousin by marriage, van der Dussen, a Catholic gentleman, who had married
+a daughter of Elias Barneveld, and who shared all Stoutenburg's feelings
+of resentment towards Maurice.  There was Korenwinder, another Catholic,
+formerly occupying an official position of responsibility as secretary of
+the town of Berkel, a man of immense corpulence, but none the less an
+active and dangerous conspirator.
+
+There was van Dyk, a secretary of Bleiswyk, equally active and dangerous,
+and as lean and hungry as Korenwinder was fat.  Stoutenburg, besides
+other rewards, had promised him a cornetcy of cavalry, should their plans
+be successful.  And there was the brother-in-law of Slatius, one Cornelis
+Gerritaen, a joiner by trade, living at Rotterdam, who made himself very
+useful in all the details of the conspiracy.
+
+For the plot was now arranged, the men just mentioned being its active
+agents and in constant communication with Stoutenburg.
+
+Korenwinder and van Dyk in the last days of December 1622 drew up a
+scheme on paper, which was submitted to their chief and met with his
+approval.  The document began with a violent invective against the crimes
+and tyranny of the Stadholder, demonstrated the necessity of a general
+change in the government, and of getting rid of Maurice as an
+indispensable preliminary, and laid down the means and method
+of doing this deed.
+
+The Prince was in the daily habit of driving, unattended by his body-
+guard, to Ryswyk, about two miles from the Hague.  It would not be
+difficult for a determined band of men divided into two parties to set
+upon him between the stables and his coach, either when alighting from or
+about to enter it--the one party to kill him while the other protected
+the retreat of the assassins, and beat down such defence as the few
+lackeys of the Stadholder could offer.
+
+The scheme, thus mapped out, was submitted to Stoutenburg, who gave it
+his approval after suggesting a few amendments.  The document was then
+burnt.  It was estimated that twenty men would be needed for the job, and
+that to pay them handsomely would require about 6000 guilders.
+
+The expenses and other details of the infamous plot were discussed as
+calmly as if it had been an industrial or commercial speculation.  But
+6000 guilders was an immense sum to raise, and the Seigneur de
+Stoutenburg was a beggar.  His associates were as forlorn as himself, but
+his brother-in-law, the ex-Ambassador van der Myle, was living at
+Beverwyk under the supervision of the police, his property not having
+been confiscated.  Stoutenburg paid him a visit, accompanied by the
+Reverend Slatius, in hopes of getting funds from him, but at the first
+obscure hint of the infamous design van der Myle faced them with such
+looks, gestures, and words of disgust and indignation that the murderous
+couple recoiled, the son of Barneveld saying to the expreacher: "Let us
+be off, Slaet,'tis a mere cur.  Nothing is to be made of him."
+
+The other son of Barneveld, the Seigneur de Groeneveld, had means and
+credit.  His brother had darkly hinted to him the necessity of getting
+rid of Maurice, and tried to draw him into the plot.  Groeneveld, more
+unstable than water, neither repelled nor encouraged these advances.  He
+joined in many conversations with Stoutenburg, van Dyk, and Korenwinder,
+but always weakly affected not to know what they were driving at.  "When
+we talk of business," said van Dyk to him one day, "you are always
+turning off from us and from the subject.  You had better remain."
+Many anonymous letters were sent to him, calling on him to strike for
+vengeance on the murderer of his father, and for the redemption of his
+native land and the Remonstrant religion from foul oppression.
+
+At last yielding to the persuasions and threats of his fierce younger
+brother, who assured him that the plot would succeed, the government be
+revolutionized, and that then all property would be at the mercy of the
+victors, he agreed to endorse certain bills which Korenwinder undertook
+to negotiate.  Nothing could be meaner, more cowardly, and more murderous
+than the proceedings of the Seigneur de Groeneveld.  He seems to have
+felt no intense desire of vengeance upon Maurice, which certainly would
+not have been unnatural, but he was willing to supply money for his
+assassination.  At the same time he was careful to insist that this
+pecuniary advance was by no means a free gift, but only a loan to be
+repaid by his more bloodthirsty brother upon demand with interest.
+With a businesslike caution, in ghastly contrast with the foulness of the
+contract, he exacted a note of hand from Stoutenburg covering the whole
+amount of his disbursements.  There might come a time, he thought, when
+his brother's paper would be more negotiable than it was at that moment.
+
+Korenwinder found no difficulty in discounting Groeneveld's bills, and
+the necessary capital was thus raised for the vile enterprise.  Van Dyk,
+the lean and hungry conspirator, now occupied himself vigorously in
+engaging the assassins, while his corpulent colleague remained as
+treasurer of the company.  Two brothers Blansaerts, woollen manufacturers
+at Leyden--one of whom had been a student of theology in the Remonstrant
+Church and had occasionally preached--and a certain William Party, a
+Walloon by birth, but likewise a woollen worker at Leyden, agreed to the
+secretary's propositions.  He had at first told, them that their services
+would be merely required for the forcible liberation of two Remonstrant
+clergymen, Niellius and Poppius, from the prison at Haarlem.
+Entertaining his new companions at dinner, however, towards the end of
+January, van Dyk, getting very drunk, informed them that the object of
+the enterprise was to kill the Stadholder; that arrangements had been
+made for effecting an immediate change in the magistracies in all the
+chief cities of Holland so soon as the deed was done; that all the
+recently deposed regents would enter the Hague at once, supported by a
+train of armed peasants from the country; and that better times for the
+oppressed religion, for the Fatherland, and especially for everyone
+engaged in the great undertaking, would begin with the death of the
+tyrant.  Each man taking direct part in the assassination would receive
+at least 300 guilders, besides being advanced to offices of honour and
+profit according to his capacity.
+
+The Blansaerts assured their superior that entire reliance might be
+placed on their fidelity, and that they knew of three or four other men
+in Leyden "as firm as trees and fierce as lions," whom they would engage
+--a fustian worker, a tailor, a chimney-sweeper, and one or two other
+mechanics.  The looseness and utter recklessness with which this hideous
+conspiracy was arranged excites amazement.  Van Dyk gave the two brothers
+100 pistoles in gold--a coin about equal to a guinea--for their immediate
+reward as well as for that of the comrades to be engaged.  Yet it seems
+almost certain from subsequent revelations that they were intending all
+the time to deceive him, to take as much money as they could get from
+him, "to milk, the cow as long as she would give milk," as William Party
+expressed it, and then to turn round upon and betray him.  It was a
+dangerous game however, which might not prove entirely successful.
+
+Van Dyk duly communicated with Stoutenburg, who grew more and more
+feverish with hatred and impatience as the time for gratifying those
+passions drew nigh, and frequently said that he would like to tear the
+Stadholder to pieces with his own hands.  He preferred however to act
+as controlling director over the band of murderers now enrolled.
+
+For in addition to the Leyden party, the Reverend Slatius, supplied with
+funds by van Dyk, had engaged at Rotterdam his brother-in-law Gerritsen,
+a joiner, living in that city, together with three sailors named
+respectively Dirk, John, and Herman.
+
+The ex-clergyman's house was also the arsenal of the conspiracy, and here
+were stored away a stock of pistols, snaphances, and sledge-hammers--
+together with that other death-dealing machinery, the whole edition of
+the 'Clearshining Torch', an inflammatory, pamphlet by Slatius--all to
+be used on the fatal day fast approaching.
+
+On the 1st February van Dyk visited Slatius at Rotterdam.  He found
+Gerritsen hard at work.
+
+There in a dark back kitchen, by the lurid light of the fire in a dim
+wintry afternoon, stood the burly Slatius, with his swarthy face and
+heavy eyebrows, accompanied by his brother-in-law the joiner, both in
+workman's dress, melting lead, running bullets, drying powder, and
+burnishing and arranging the fire-arms and other tools to be used in the
+great crime now so rapidly maturing.  The lean, busy, restless van Dyk,
+with his adust and sinister visage, came peering in upon the couple thus
+engaged, and observed their preparations with warm approval.
+
+He recommended that in addition to Dirk, John, and Herman, a few more
+hardy seafaring men should be engaged, and Slatius accordingly secured
+next day the services of one Jerome Ewouts and three other sailors.  They
+were not informed of the exact nature of the enterprise, but were told
+that it was a dangerous although not a desperate one, and sure to be of
+great service to the Fatherland.  They received, as all the rest had
+done, between 200 and 300 guilders in gold, that they would all be
+promoted to be captains and first mates.
+
+It was agreed that all the conspirators should assemble four days later
+at the Hague on Sunday, the 5th February, at the inn of the "Golden
+Helmet."  The next day, Monday the 6th, had been fixed by Stoutenburg for
+doing the deed.  Van Dyk, who had great confidence in the eloquence of
+William Party, the Walloon wool manufacturer, had arranged that he should
+make a discourse to them all in a solitary place in the downs between
+that city and the sea-shore, taking for his theme or brief the
+Clearshining Torch of Slatius.
+
+On Saturday that eminent divine entertained his sister and her husband
+Gerritsen, Jerome Ewouts, who was at dinner but half informed as to the
+scope of the great enterprise, and several other friends who were
+entirely ignorant of it.  Slatius was in high spirits, although his
+sister, who had at last become acquainted with the vile plot, had done
+nothing but weep all day long.  They had better be worms, with a promise
+of further reward and an intimation she said, and eat dirt for their
+food, than crawl in so base a business.  Her brother comforted her with
+assurances that the project was sure to result in a triumph for religion
+and Fatherland, and drank many healths at his table to the success of all
+engaged in it.  That evening he sent off a great chest filled with arms
+and ammunition to the "Golden Helmet" at the Hague under the charge of
+Jerome Ewouts and his three mates.  Van Dyk had already written a letter
+to the landlord of that hostelry engaging a room there, and saying that
+the chest contained valuable books and documents to be used in a lawsuit,
+in which he was soon to be engaged, before the supreme tribunal.
+
+On the Sunday this bustling conspirator had John Blansaert and William
+Party to dine with him at the "Golden Helmet" in the Hague, and produced
+seven packages neatly folded, each containing gold pieces to the amount
+of twenty pounds sterling.  These were for themselves and the others whom
+they had reported as engaged by them in Leyden.  Getting drunk as usual,
+he began to bluster of the great political revolution impending, and
+after dinner examined the carbines of his guests.  He asked if those
+weapons were to be relied upon.  "We can blow a hair to pieces with them
+at twenty paces," they replied.  "Ah!  would that I too could be of the
+party," said van Dyk, seizing one of the carbines.  "No, no," said John
+Blansaert, "we can do the deed better without you than with you.  You
+must look out for the defence."
+
+Van Dyk then informed them that they, with one of the Rotterdam sailors,
+were to attack Maurice as he got out of his coach at Ryswyk, pin him
+between the stables and the coach, and then and there do him to death.
+"You are not to leave him," he cried, "till his soul has left his body."
+
+The two expressed their hearty concurrence with this arrangement, and
+took leave of their host for the night, going, they said, to distribute
+the seven packages of blood-money.  They found Adam Blansaert waiting for
+them in the downs, and immediately divided the whole amount between
+themselves and him--the chimney-sweeper, tailor, and fustian worker,
+"firm as trees and fierce as lions," having never had any existence
+save in their fertile imaginations.
+
+On Monday, 6th February, van Dyk had a closing interview with Stoutenburg
+and his brother at the house of Groeneveld, and informed them that the
+execution of the plot had been deferred to the following day.
+Stoutenburg expressed disgust and impatience at the delay.  "I should
+like to tear the Stadholder to pieces with my own hands!" he cried.  He
+was pacified on hearing that the arrangements had been securely made for
+the morrow, and turning to his brother observed, "Remember that you can
+never retract.  You are in our power and all your estates at our mercy."
+He then explained the manner in which the magistracies of Leyden, Gouda,
+Rotterdam, and other cities were to be instantly remodelled after the
+death of Maurice, the ex-regents of the Hague at the head of a band of
+armed peasants being ready at a moment's warning to take possession of
+the political capital.
+
+Prince Frederic Henry moreover, he hinted darkly and falsely, but in a
+manner not to be mistaken, was favourable to the movement, and would
+after the murder of Maurice take the government into his hands.
+
+Stoutenburg then went quietly home to pass the day and sleep at his
+mother's house awaiting the eventful morning of Tuesday.
+
+Van Dyk went back to his room at the "Golden Helmet" and began inspecting
+the contents of the arms and ammunition chest which Jerome Ewouts and his
+three mates had brought the night before from Rotterdam.  He had been
+somewhat unquiet at having seen nothing of those mariners during the day;
+when looking out of window, he saw one of them in conference with some
+soldiers.  A minute afterwards he heard a bustle in the rooms below, and
+found that the house was occupied by a guard, and that Gerritsen, with
+the three first engaged sailors Dirk, Peter, and Herman, had been
+arrested at the Zotje.  He tried in vain to throw the arms back into the
+chest and conceal it under the bed, but it was too late.  Seizing his hat
+and wrapping himself in his cloak, with his sword by his side, he walked
+calmly down the stairs looking carelessly at the group of soldiers and
+prisoners who filled the passages.  A waiter informed the provost-marshal
+in command that the gentleman was a respectable boarder at the tavern,
+well known to him for many years.  The conspirator passed unchallenged
+and went straight to inform Stoutenburg.
+
+The four mariners, last engaged by Slatius at Rotterdam, had signally
+exemplified the danger of half confidences.  Surprised that they should
+have been so mysteriously entrusted with the execution of an enterprise
+the particulars of which were concealed from them, and suspecting that
+crime alone could command such very high prices as had been paid and
+promised by the ex-clergyman, they had gone straight to the residence of
+the Stadholder, after depositing the chest at the "Golden Helmet."
+
+Finding that he had driven as usual to Ryswyk, they followed him thither,
+and by dint of much importunity obtained an audience.  If the enterprise
+was a patriotic one, they reasoned, he would probably know of it and
+approve it.  If it were criminal, it would be useful for them to reveal
+and dangerous to conceal it.
+
+They told the story so far as they knew it to the Prince and showed him
+the money, 300 florins apiece, which they had already received from
+Slatius.  Maurice hesitated not an instant.  It was evident that a dark
+conspiracy was afoot.  He ordered the sailors to return to the Hague by
+another and circuitous road through Voorburg, while he lost not a moment
+himself in hurrying back as fast as his horses would carry him.
+Summoning the president and several councillors of the chief tribunal,
+he took instant measures to take possession of the two taverns, and
+arrest all the strangers found in them.
+
+Meantime van Dyk came into the house of the widow Barneveld and found
+Stoutenburg in the stable-yard.  He told him the plot was discovered, the
+chest of arms at the "Golden Helmet" found.  "Are there any private
+letters or papers in the bog?" asked Stoutenburg.  "None relating to the
+affair," was the answer.
+
+"Take yourself off as fast as possible," said Stoutenburg.  Van Dyk
+needed no urging.  He escaped through the stables and across the fields
+in the direction of Leyden.  After skulking about for a week however and
+making very little progress, he was arrested at Hazerswoude, having
+broken through the ice while attempting to skate across the inundated and
+frozen pastures in that region.
+
+Proclamations were at once made, denouncing the foul conspiracy in
+which the sons of the late Advocate Barneveld, the Remonstrant clergyman
+Slatius, and others, were the ringleaders, and offering 4000 florins each
+for their apprehension.  A public thanksgiving for the deliverance was
+made in all the churches on the 8th February.
+
+On the 12th February the States-General sent letters to all their
+ambassadors and foreign agents, informing them of this execrable plot to
+overthrow the Commonwealth and take the life of the Stadholder, set on
+foot by certain Arminian preachers and others of that faction, and this
+too in winter, when the ice and snow made hostile invasion practicable,
+and when the enemy was encamped in so many places in the neighbourhood.
+"The Arminians," said the despatch, "are so filled with bitterness that
+they would rather the Republic should be lost than that their pretended
+grievances should go unredressed."  Almost every pulpit shook with
+Contra-Remonstrant thunder against the whole society of Remonstrants, who
+were held up to the world as rebels and prince-murderers; the criminal
+conspiracy being charged upon them as a body.  Hardly a man of that
+persuasion dared venture into the streets and public places, for fear of
+being put to death by the rabble.  The Chevalier William of Nassau,
+natural son of the Stadholder, was very loud and violent in all the
+taverns and tap-rooms, drinking mighty draughts to the damnation of the
+Arminians.
+
+Many of the timid in consequence shrank away from the society and
+joined the Contra-Remonstrant Church, while the more courageous members,
+together with the leaders of that now abhorred communion, published long
+and stirring appeals to the universal sense of justice, which was
+outraged by the spectacle of a whole sect being punished for a crime
+committed by a few individuals, who had once been unworthy members of it.
+
+Meantime hue and cry was made after the fugitive conspirators.  The
+Blansaerts and William Party having set off from Leyden towards the Hague
+on Monday night, in order, as they said, to betray their employers, whose
+money they had taken, and whose criminal orders they had agreed to
+execute, attempted to escape, but were arrested within ten days.  They
+were exhibited at their prison at Amsterdam to an immense concourse at a
+shilling a peep, the sums thus collected being distributed to the poor.
+Slatius made his way disguised as a boor into Friesland, and after
+various adventures attempted to cross the Bourtange Moors to Lingen.
+Stopping to refresh himself at a tavern near Koevorden, he found himself
+in the tap-room in presence of Quartermaster Blau and a company of
+soldiers from the garrison.  The dark scowling boor, travel-stained and
+weary, with felt hat slouched over his forbidding visage, fierce and
+timorous at once like a hunted wild beast, excited their suspicion.
+Seeing himself watched, he got up, paid his scot, and departed,
+leaving his can of beer untasted.  This decided the quartermaster, who
+accordingly followed the peasant out of the house, and arrested him as a
+Spanish spy on the watch for the train of specie which the soldiers were
+then conveying into Koevorden Castle.
+
+Slatius protested his innocence of any such design, and vehemently
+besought the officer to release him, telling him as a reason for his
+urgency and an explanation of his unprepossessing aspect--that he was
+an oculist from Amsterdam, John Hermansen by name, that he had just
+committed a homicide in that place, and was fleeing from justice.
+
+The honest quartermaster saw no reason why a suspected spy should go
+free because he proclaimed himself a murderer, nor why an oculist should
+escape the penalties of homicide.  "The more reason," he said, "why thou
+shouldst be my prisoner."  The ex-preacher was arrested and shut up in
+the state prison at the Hague.
+
+The famous engraver Visser executed a likeness on copper-plate of the
+grim malefactor as he appeared in his boor's disguise.  The portrait,
+accompanied by a fiercely written broadsheet attacking the Remonstrant
+Church, had a great circulation, and deepened the animosity against the
+sect upon which the unfrocked preacher had sworn vengeance.  His evil
+face and fame thus became familiar to the public, while the term Hendrik
+Slaet became a proverb at pot-houses, being held equivalent among
+tipplers to shirking the bottle.
+
+Korenwinder, the treasurer of the association, coming to visit
+Stoutenburg soon after van Dyk had left him, was informed of the
+discovery of the plot and did his best to escape, but was arrested
+within a fortnight's time.
+
+Stoutenburg himself acted with his usual promptness and coolness.  Having
+gone straightway to his brother to notify him of the discovery and to
+urge him to instant flight, he contrived to disappear.  A few days later
+a chest of merchandise was brought to the house of a certain citizen of
+Rotterdam, who had once been a fiddler, but was now a man of considerable
+property.  The chest, when opened, was found to contain the Seigneur de
+Stoutenburg, who in past times had laid the fiddler under obligations,
+and in whose house he now lay concealed for many days, and until the
+strictness with which all roads and ferries in the neighbourhood were
+watched at first had somewhat given way.  Meantime his cousin van der
+Dussen had also effected his escape, and had joined him in Rotterdam.
+The faithful fiddler then, for a thousand florins, chartered a trading
+vessel commanded by one Jacob Beltje to take a cargo of Dutch cheese to
+Wesel on the Rhine.  By this means, after a few adventures, they effected
+their escape, and, arriving not long afterwards at Brussels, were
+formally taken under the protection of the Archduchess Isabella.
+
+Stoutenburg afterwards travelled in France and Italy, and returned to
+Brussels.  His wife, loathing his crime and spurning all further
+communication with him, abandoned him to his fate.  The daughter of
+Marnix of Sainte-Aldegonde had endured poverty, obscurity, and unmerited
+obloquy, which had become the lot of the great statesman's family after
+his tragic end, but she came of a race that would not brook dishonour.
+The conspirator and suborner of murder and treason, the hirer and
+companion of assassins, was no mate for her.
+
+Stoutenburg hesitated for years as to his future career, strangely
+enough keeping up a hope of being allowed to return to his country.
+
+Subsequently he embraced the cause of his country's enemies, converted
+himself to the Roman Church, and obtained a captaincy of horse in the
+Spanish service.  He was seen one day, to the disgust of many spectators,
+to enter Antwerp in black foreign uniform, at the head of his troopers,
+waving a standard with a death's-head embroidered upon it, and wearing,
+like his soldiers, a sable scarf and plume.  History disdains to follow
+further the career of the renegade, traitor, end assassin.
+
+When the Seigneur de Groeneveld learned from his younger brother, on the
+eventful 6th of February, that the plot had been discovered, he gave
+himself up for lost.  Remorse and despair, fastening upon his naturally
+feeble character, seemed to render him powerless.  His wife, of more
+hopeful disposition than himself and of less heroic mould than Walburg de
+Marnix, encouraged him to fly.  He fled accordingly, through the desolate
+sandy downs which roll between the Hague and the sea, to Scheveningen,
+then an obscure fishing village on the coast, at a league's distance from
+the capital.  Here a fisherman, devoted to him and his family, received
+him in his hut, disguised him in boatman's attire, and went with him to
+the strand, proposing to launch his pinkie, put out at once to sea, and
+to land him on the English coast, the French coast, in Hamburg--where he
+would.
+
+The sight of that long, sandy beach stretching for more than seventy
+miles in an unbroken, melancholy line, without cove, curve, or
+indentation to break its cruel monotony, and with the wild waves of the
+German Ocean, lashed by a wintry storm, breaking into white foam as far
+as the eye could reach, appalled the fugitive criminal.  With the
+certainty of an ignominious death behind him, he shrank abjectly from
+the terrors of the sea, and, despite the honest fisherman's entreaties,
+refused to enter the boat and face the storm.  He wandered feebly along
+the coast, still accompanied by his humble friend, to another little
+village, where the fisherman procured a waggon, which took them as far as
+Sandvoort.  Thence he made his way through Egmond and Petten and across
+the Marsdiep to Tegel, where not deeming himself safe he had himself
+ferried over to the neighbouring island of Vlieland.  Here amongst the
+quicksands, whirlpools, and shallows which mark the last verge of
+habitable Holland, the unhappy fugitive stood at bay.
+
+Meantime information had come to the authorities that a suspicious
+stranger had been seen at Scheveningen.  The fisherman's wife was
+arrested.  Threatened with torture she at last confessed with whom her
+husband had fled and whither.  Information was sent to the bailiff of
+Vlieland, who with a party of followers made a strict search through his
+narrow precincts.  A group of seamen seated on the sands was soon
+discovered, among whom, dressed in shaggy pea jacket with long
+fisherman's boots, was the Seigneur de Groeneveld, who, easily recognized
+through his disguise, submitted to his captors without a struggle.  The
+Scheveningen fisherman, who had been so faithful to him, making a sudden
+spring, eluded his pursuers and disappeared; thus escaping the gibbet
+which would probably have been his doom instead of the reward of 4000
+golden guilders which he might have had for betraying him.  Thus a
+sum more than double the amount originally furnished by Groeneveld,
+as the capital of the assassination company, had been rejected by the
+Rotterdam boatman who saved Stoutenburg, and by the Scheveningen
+fisherman who was ready to save Groeneveld.  On the 19th February, within
+less than a fortnight from the explosion of the conspiracy, the eldest
+son of Barneveld was lodged in the Gevangen Poort or state prison of the
+Hague.
+
+The awful news of the 6th February had struck the widow of Barneveld as
+with a thunderbolt.  Both her sons were proclaimed as murderers and
+suborners of assassins, and a price put upon their heads.  She remained
+for days neither speaking nor weeping; scarcely eating, drinking, or
+sleeping.  She seemed frozen to stone.  Her daughters and friends could
+not tell whether she were dying or had lost her reason.  At length the
+escape of Stoutenburg and the capture of Groeneveld seemed to rouse her
+from her trance.  She then stooped to do what she had sternly refused to
+do when her husband was in the hands of the authorities.  Accompanied by
+the wife and infant son of Groeneveld she obtained an audience of the
+stern Stadholder, fell on her knees before him, and implored mercy and
+pardon for her son.
+
+Maurice received her calmly and not discourteously, but held out no hopes
+of pardon.  The criminal was in the hands of justice, he said, and he had
+no power to interfere.  But there can scarcely be a doubt that he had
+power after the sentence to forgive or to commute, and it will be
+remembered that when Barneveld himself was about to suffer, the Prince
+had asked the clergyman Walaeus with much anxiety whether the prisoner
+in his message had said nothing of pardon.
+
+Referring to the bitter past, Maurice asked Madame de Barneveld why she
+not asked mercy for her son, having refused to do so for her husband.
+
+Her answer was simple and noble:
+
+"My husband was innocent of crime," she said; "my son is guilty."
+
+The idea of pardon in this case was of course preposterous.  Certainly if
+Groeneveld had been forgiven, it would have been impossible to punish the
+thirteen less guilty conspirators, already in the hands of justice, whom
+he had hired to commit the assassination.  The spectacle of the two
+cowardly ringleaders going free while the meaner criminals were gibbeted
+would have been a shock to the most rudimentary ideas of justice.  It
+would have been an equal outrage to pardon the younger Barnevelds for
+intended murder, in which they had almost succeeded, when their great
+father had already suffered for a constructive lese-majesty, the guilt of
+which had been stoutly denied.  Yet such is the dreary chain of cause and
+effect that it is certain, had pardon been nobly offered to the
+statesman, whose views of constitutional law varied from those of the
+dominant party, the later crime would never have been committed.  But
+Francis Aerssens--considering his own and other partisans lives at stake
+if the States' right party did not fall--had been able to bear down all
+thoughts of mercy.  He was successful, was called to the house of nobles,
+and regained the embassy of Paris, while the house of Barneveld was
+trodden into the dust of dishonour and ruin.  Rarely has an offended
+politician's revenge been more thorough than his.  Never did the mocking
+fiend betray his victims into the hands of the avenger more sardonically
+than was done in this sombre tragedy.
+
+The trials of the prisoners were rapidly conducted.  Van Dyk, cruelly
+tortured, confessed on the rack all the details of the conspiracy as they
+were afterwards embodied in the sentences and have been stated in the
+preceding narrative.  Groeneveld was not tortured.  His answers to the
+interrogatories were so vague as to excite amazement at his general
+ignorance of the foul transaction or at the feebleness of his memory,
+while there was no attempt on his part to exculpate himself from the
+damning charge.  That it was he who had furnished funds for the proposed
+murder and mutiny, knowing the purpose to which they were to be applied,
+was proved beyond all cavil and fully avowed by him.
+
+On the 28th May, he, Korenwinder, and van Dyk were notified that they
+were to appear next day in the courthouse to hear their sentence, which
+would immediately afterwards be executed.
+
+That night his mother, wife, and son paid him a long visit of farewell
+in his prison.  The Gevangen Poort of the Hague, an antique but mean
+building of brown brick and commonplace aspect, still stands in one of
+the most public parts of the city.  A gloomy archway, surmounted by
+windows grimly guarded by iron lattice-work, forms the general
+thoroughfare from the aristocratic Plaats and Kneuterdyk and Vyverberg
+to the inner court of the ancient palace.  The cells within are dark,
+noisome, and dimly lighted, and even to this day the very instruments of
+torture, used in the trials of these and other prisoners, may be seen by
+the curious.  Half a century later the brothers de Witt were dragged from
+this prison to be literally torn to pieces by an infuriated mob.
+
+The misery of that midnight interview between the widow of Barneveld, her
+daughter-in-law, and the condemned son and husband need not be described.
+As the morning approached, the gaoler warned the matrons to take their
+departure that the prisoner might sleep.
+
+"What a woful widow you will be," said Groeneveld to his wife, as she
+sank choking with tears upon the ground.  The words suddenly aroused in
+her the sense of respect for their name.
+
+"At least for all this misery endured," she said firmly, "do me enough
+honour to die like a gentleman."  He promised it.  The mother then took
+leave of the son, and History drops a decorous veil henceforth over the
+grief-stricken form of Mary of Barneveld.
+
+Next morning the life-guards of the Stadholder and other troops were
+drawn up in battle-array in the outer and inner courtyard of the supreme
+tribunal and palace.  At ten o'clock Groeneveld came forth from the
+prison.  The Stadholder had granted as a boon to the family that he might
+be neither fettered nor guarded as he walked to the tribunal.  The
+prisoner did not forget his parting promise to his wife.  He appeared
+full-dressed in velvet cloak and plumed hat, with rapier by his side,
+walking calmly through the inner courtyard to the great hall.  Observing
+the windows of the Stadholder's apartments crowded with spectators, among
+whom he seemed to recognize the Prince's face, he took off his hat and
+made a graceful and dignified salute.  He greeted with courtesy many
+acquaintances among the crowd through which he passed.  He entered the
+hall and listened in silence to the sentence condemning him to be
+immediately executed with the sword.  Van Dyk and Korenwinder shared the
+same doom, but were provisionally taken back to prison.
+
+Groeneveld then walked calmly and gracefully as before from the hall to
+the scaffold, attended by his own valet, and preceded by the provost-
+marshal and assistants.  He was to suffer, not where his father had been
+beheaded, but on the "Green Sod."  This public place of execution for
+ordinary criminals was singularly enough in the most elegant and
+frequented quarter of the Hague.  A few rods from the Gevangen Poort,
+at the western end of the Vyverberg, on the edge of the cheerful triangle
+called the Plaats, and looking directly down the broad and stately
+Kneuterdyk, at the end of which stood Aremberg House, lately the
+residence of the great Advocate, was the mean and sordid scaffold.
+
+Groeneveld ascended it with perfect composure.  The man who had been
+browbeaten into crime by an overbearing and ferocious brother, who had
+quailed before the angry waves of the North Sea, which would have borne
+him to a place of entire security, now faced his fate with a smile upon
+his lips.  He took off his hat, cloak, and sword, and handed them to his
+valet.  He calmly undid his ruff and wristbands of pointlace, and tossed
+them on the ground.  With his own hands and the assistance of his servant
+he unbuttoned his doublet, laying breast and neck open without suffering
+the headsman's hands to approach him.
+
+He then walked to the heap of sand and spoke a very few words to the vast
+throng of spectators.
+
+"Desire of vengeance and evil counsel," he said, "have brought me here.
+If I have wronged any man among you, I beg him for Christ's sake to
+forgive me."
+
+Kneeling on the sand with his face turned towards his father's house at
+the end of the Kneuterdyk, he said his prayers.  Then putting a red
+velvet cap over his eyes, he was heard to mutter:
+
+"O God!  what a man I was once, and what am I now?"
+
+Calmly folding his hands, he said, "Patience."
+
+The executioner then struck off his head at a blow.  His body, wrapped in
+a black cloak, was sent to his house and buried in his father's tomb.
+
+Van Dyk and Korenwinder were executed immediately afterwards.  They were
+quartered and their heads exposed on stakes.  The joiner Gerritsen and
+the three sailors had already been beheaded.  The Blansaerts and William
+Party, together with the grim Slatius, who was savage and turbulent to
+the last, had suffered on the 5th of May.
+
+Fourteen in all were executed for this crime, including an unfortunate
+tailor and two other mechanics of Leyden, who had heard something
+whispered about the conspiracy, had nothing whatever to do with it, but
+from ignorance, apathy, or timidity did not denounce it.  The ringleader
+and the equally guilty van der Dussen had, as has been seen, effected
+their escape.
+
+Thus ended the long tragedy of the Barnevelds.  The result of this foul
+conspiracy and its failure to effect the crime proposed strengthened
+immensely the power, popularity, and influence of the Stadholder, made
+the orthodox church triumphant, and nearly ruined the sect of the
+Remonstrants, the Arminians--most unjustly in reality, although with a
+pitiful show of reason--being held guilty of the crime of Stoutenburg
+and Slatius.
+
+The Republic--that magnificent commonwealth which in its infancy had
+confronted, single-handed, the greatest empire of the earth, and had
+wrested its independence from the ancient despot after a forty years'
+struggle--had now been rent in twain, although in very unequal portions,
+by the fiend of political and religious hatred.  Thus crippled, she was
+to go forth and take her share in that awful conflict now in full blaze,
+and of which after-ages were to speak with a shudder as the Thirty Years'
+War.
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Argument in a circle
+He that stands let him see that he does not fall
+If he has deserved it, let them strike off his head
+Misery had come not from their being enemies
+O God! what does man come to!
+Party hatred was not yet glutted with the blood it had drunk
+Rose superior to his doom and took captivity captive
+This, then, is the reward of forty years' service to the State
+To milk, the cow as long as she would give milk
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF JOHN OF BARNEVELD, 1619-23 ***
+
+************This file should be named 4897.txt or 4897.zip ************
+
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