On the 23rd of July that functionary accordingly arrived.  He came before Prince Maurice and fifty deputies of the States-General, and exhibited the document.  At the same time he urged them, now that the long-desired ratification had been produced, to fulfil at once their promise, and to recal their fleet from the coast of Spain.

Verreyken was requested to withdraw while the instrument was examined.  When recalled, he was informed that the States had the most staight-forward intention to negotiate, but that the royal document did not at all answer their expectation.  As few of the delegates could read Spanish, it would first of all be necessary to cause it to be translated.

When that was done they would be able to express their opinion concerning it and come to a decision in regard to the recal of the fleet.  This ended the proceedings on that occasion.

Next day Prince Maurice invited Verreyken and others to dine.  After dinner the stadholder informed him that the answer of the States might soon be expected; at the same time expressing his regret that the king should have sent such an instrument.  It was very necessary, said the prince, to have plain speaking, and he, for one, had never believed that the king would send a proper ratification.  The one exhibited was not at all to the purpose.  The king was expected to express himself as clearly as the archdukes had done in their instrument.  He must agree to treat with the States-General as with people entirely free, over whom he claimed no authority.  If the king should refuse to make this public declaration, the States would at once break off all negotiations.

Three days afterwards, seven deputies conferred with Verreyken.  Barneveld, as spokesman, declared that, so far as the provinces were concerned, the path was plain and open to an honest, ingenuous, lasting peace, but that the manner of dealing on the other side was artificial and provocative of suspicion.  A most important line, which had been placed by the States at the very beginning of the form suggested by them, was wanting in the ratification now received.  This hardly seemed an accidental omission.  The whole document was constrained and defective.  It was necessary to deal with Netherlanders in clear and simple language.  The basis of any possible negotiation was that the provinces were to be treated with as and called entirely free.  Unless this was done negotiations were impossible.  The States-General were not so unskilled in affairs as to be ignorant that the king and the archdukes were quite capable, at a future day, of declaring themselves untrammelled by any conditions.  They would boast that conventions with rebels and pledges to heretics were alike invalid.  If Verreyken had brought no better document than the one presented, he had better go at once.  His stay in the provinces was superfluous.

At a subsequent interview Barneveld informed Verreyken that the king’s confirmation had been unanimously rejected by the States-General as deficient both in form and substance.  He added that the people of the provinces were growing very lukewarm in regard to peace, that Prince Maurice opposed it, that many persons regretted the length to which the negotiations had already gone.  Difficult as it seemed to be to recede, the archdukes might be certain that a complete rupture was imminent.