Concurrently with the political trials the National Synod had been pursuing its labours at Dordrecht.  On November 13 rather more than one hundred delegates assembled under the presidency of Johannes Bogerman of Leeuwarden.  Fifty-eight of the delegates were preachers, professors and elders elected by the provincial synods, fifteen were commissioners appointed by the States-General, twenty-eight were members of foreign Reformed churches.  English and Scottish representatives took an active part in the proceedings.  The Synod decided to summon the Remonstrants to send a deputation to make their defence.  On December 6 accordingly, a body of twelve leading Remonstrants with Simon Episcopius at their head took their seats at a table facing the assembly.  Episcopius made a long harangue in Latin occupying nine sessions.  His eloquence was, however, wasted on a court that had already prejudged the cause for which he pleaded.  After much wrangling and many recriminations Bogerman ordered the Remonstrants to withdraw.  They did so only to meet in an “anti-synod” at Rotterdam at which the authority of the Dordrecht assembly to pronounce decisions on matters of faith was denied.  Meanwhile the Contra-Remonstrant divines at Dordrecht during many weary sessions proceeded to draw up a series of canons defining the true Reformed doctrine and condemning utterly, as false and heretical, the five points set forth in the Remonstrance.  On May 1 the Netherland confession and the Heidelberg catechism were unanimously adopted, as being in conformity with Holy Scripture, and as fixing the standard of orthodox teaching.  The Synod was dissolved eight days later.  The final session was the 154th; and this great assembly of delegates from many lands, the nearest approach to a general council of the Protestant churches that has ever been held, came to a close amidst much festivity and no small congratulation.  No time was lost in taking action by the dominant party against their opponents.  Two hundred Remonstrant preachers were driven into exile; and the congregations were treated with the same spirit of intolerance as had hitherto been the lot of the Catholics, and were forbidden the exercise of public worship.

After the Advocate’s death, except for the persecution directed against the Remonstrant party, the course of public affairs went on smoothly.  Maurice, who by the death of his brother, Philip William, had in February, 1618, become Prince of Orange, was virtually sovereign in the United Provinces.  His name appeared in treaties with eastern potentates and in diplomatic despatches, just as if he were a reigning monarch; and the people of the Netherlands were even at times spoken of as his subjects.  But Maurice never cared to trouble himself about the details of politics, and he now left the management of affairs in the hands of a few men that he could trust, notably in those of Francis van Aerssens (henceforth generally known as lord of Sommelsdijk) and Reinier Pauw, the influential burgomaster of Amsterdam.  Aerssens had shown himself spiteful and vindictive in his conduct towards his earlier patron, Oldenbarneveldt, but being a clever diplomatist and gifted with considerable powers of statesmanship, he became henceforth for many years the trusted adviser and confidant not only of Maurice, but of his successor Frederick Henry.