Some days after these imprisonments, the Prince of Orange and the Deputies of the States-General made a tour through the towns of Holland.  They had the power in their hands, and the Arminians were in the greatest consternation.  The Prince met with no opposition to his designs:  he deposed such magistrates as were relations or friends of the three illustrious prisoners, putting in their place others that were wholly devoted to him; and obliged some towns to receive a garrison, particularly Rotterdam.  The Arminians had hitherto been the more powerful party there[85], and had excluded the Contra-Remonstrants from preaching in the great Church:  but the Prince took that church from them, and gave it, with all the rest, to the Gomarists, leaving only two to the Arminians.  He placed a garrison of an hundred men in the town and turned out and banished the Ministers who had distinguished themselves by their zeal for Arminianism, such as Vorstius, Utengobard, and Episcopius.  Ledenberg, Secretary of Utrecht, hearing of these violences, was so terrified, that he made away with himself in prison.

FOOTNOTES: 

[83] Du Maurier says the three prisoners were arrested the 22d of August; others assure us it was the 24th.  La Neuville, Le Clerc.  But it is evident from what Grotius says himself, Ep. 104, that it was the 29th.

[84] Le Clerc.

[85] Mercure Francois, an. 1617.

X. The warmest opposers of a National Synod being disabled from giving any further obstruction, the States-General proceeded to the holding of it.  The States of Holland, who in May, 1618, had renewed their protest against the convocation of a National Synod, frightened by the violences exercised against the three illustrious prisoners, at last gave their consent; and it met at Dort.

It was opened on the fifteenth of November, 1618, in the name of the States-General, who assisted at it by their Deputies; and was composed of about seventy Contra-Remonstrants, with only fourteen Arminians.  John Bogerman, Minister of Leewarden in Friesland, was chosen President, and had with him four assessors; all five declared enemies of the Arminians.  On the tenth of December the Remonstrants brought in a long Writing, containing their reasons for not acknowledging the Synod, as being an illegal assembly where the parties made themselves Judges, contrary to the laws of equity and the Canons of the Church.  They further shewed, that most of those who composed the pretended synod were guilty of the schism complained of; that it was publickly notorious they were their declared enemies, and consequently incompetent judges.  They afterwards proposed twelve conditions, without which they could not acknowledge the authority of the Synod, nor submit to any of its decisions.  This paper put the Synod into a very ill humour.  Next day the Arminians giving in a protest, it was censured, and a decree of the Deputies of the States-General ordered that the Synod should proceed, without regarding the protest.