chairmen to David Dazelaer’s, a friend of Grotius, and brother-in-law to Erpenius, having married his sister[112].  When every body was gone, the maid opened the chest.  Grotius had felt no inconvenience in it, though its length was not above three feet and a half.  He got out, dressed himself like a mason, with a rule and a trowel, and went by Dazelaer’s back-door, through the market-place to the gate that leads to the river, and stept into a boat which carried him to Valvic in Brabant.  At this place he made himself known to some Arminians; and hired a carriage to Antwerp, taking the necessary precautions not to be known by the way:  it was not the Spaniards he feared, for there was then a truce between them and the United Provinces.  He alighted at Antwerp at the house of Nicholas Grevincovius, who had been formerly a Minister at Amsterdam; and made himself known to no body but him.  It was on the 22d of March, 1621, that Grotius thus recovered his liberty.

In the mean time it was believed at Louvestein that he was ill; and to give him time to get off, his wife gave out that his illness was dangerous; but as soon as she learnt by the maid’s return that he was in Brabant, and consequently in safety, she told the guards, the bird was flown.  They informed the Commandant, by this time returned from Heusden, who hastened to Grotius’s wife, and asked her where she had hid her husband?  She answered he might search for him:  but being much pressed and even threatened, she confessed that she had caused him to be carried to Gorcum in the book chest:  and that she had done no more than kept her word to him, to take the first opportunity of setting her husband at liberty.  The Commandant in a rage went immediately to Gorcum, and acquainting the Magistrate with his prisoner’s escape, both came to Dazelaer’s, where they found the empty chest.  On his return to Louvestein the Commandant confined Grotius’s wife more closely:  but presenting a petition to the States-General, April 5, 1621, praying that she might be discharged, and Prince Maurice, to whom it was communicated, making no opposition, the majority were for setting her at liberty.  Some indeed voted for detaining her a prisoner; but they were looked on as very barbarous, to want to punish a woman for an heroic action.  Two days after presenting the petition, she was discharged, and suffered to carry away every thing that belonged to her in Louvestein.  Grotius continued some time at Antwerp.  March 30, he wrote to the States-General that in procuring his liberty he had employed neither violence nor corruption with his keepers; that he had nothing to reproach himself with in what he had done; that he gave those counsels which he thought best for appeasing the troubles that had arisen before he was concerned in public business; that he only obeyed the Magistrates of Rotterdam his masters, and the States of Holland his sovereigns; and that the persecution he had suffered would never diminish his love to his Country, for whose prosperity he heartily prayed.