Meantime the war of words continued.  A proclamation with penalties was issued by the States against the epidemic plague of pamphlets or “blue-books,” as those publications were called in Holland, but with little result.  It was not deemed consistent with liberty by those republicans to put chains on the press because its utterances might occasionally be distasteful to magistrates.  The writers, printers, and sellers of the “blue-books” remained unpunished and snapped their fingers at the placard.

We have seen the strenuous exertions of the Nassaus and their adherents by public appeals and private conversation to defeat all schemes of truce.  The people were stirred by the eloquence of the two stadholders.  They were stung to fury against Spain and against Barneveld by the waspish effusions of the daily press.  The magistrates remained calm, and took part by considerable majorities with Barneveld.  That statesman, while exercising almost autocratic influence in the estates, became more and more odious to the humbler classes, to the Nassaus, and especially to the Calvinist clergy.  He was denounced, as a papist, an atheist, a traitor, because striving for an honourable peace with the foe, and because admitting the possibility of more than one road to the kingdom of Heaven.  To doubt the infallibility of Calvin was as heinous a crime, in the eyes of his accusers, as to kneel to the host.  Peter Titelmann, half a century earlier, dripping with the blood of a thousand martyrs, seemed hardly a more loathsome object to all Netherlanders than the Advocate now appeared to his political enemies, thus daring to preach religious toleration, and boasting of, humble ignorance as the safest creed.  Alas! we must always have something to persecute, and individual man is never so convinced of his own wisdom as when dealing with subjects beyond human comprehension.

Unfortunately, however, while the great Advocate was clear in his conscience he had scarcely clean hands.  He had very recently accepted a present of twenty thousand florins from the King of France.  That this was a bribe by which his services were to be purchased for a cause not in harmony with his own convictions it would be unjust to say.  We of a later generation, who have had the advantage of looking through the portfolio of President Jeannin, and of learning the secret intentions of that diplomatist and of his master, can fully understand however that there was more than sufficient cause at the time for suspecting the purity of the great Advocate’s conduct.  We are perfectly aware that the secret instructions of Henry gave his plenipotentiaries almost unlimited power to buy up as many influential personages in the Netherlands as could be purchased.  So they would assist in making the king master of the United Provinces at the proper moment there was scarcely any price that he was not willing to pay.

Especially Prince Maurice, his cousin, and the Advocate of Holland, were to be secured by life pensions, property, offices, and dignities, all which Jeannin might offer to an almost unlimited amount, if by such means those great personages could possibly be induced to perform the king’s work.