The military interest, the ecclesiastical power, and the influence of foreign nations exerted through diplomatic intrigue, were rapidly arraying themselves in determined hostility to Barneveld and to what was deemed his tyrannous usurpation.  A little later the national spirit, as opposed to provincial and municipal patriotism, was to be aroused against him, and was likely to prove the most formidable of all the elements of antagonism.

It is not necessary to anticipate here what must be developed on a subsequent page.  This much, however, it is well to indicate for the correct understanding of passing events.  Barneveld did not consider himself the officer or servant of their High Mightinesses the States-General, while in reality often acting as their master, but the vassal and obedient functionary of their Great Mightinesses the States of Holland, whom he almost absolutely controlled.

His present most pressing business was to resist the encroachments of the sacerdotal power and to defend the magistracy.  The casuistical questions which were fast maddening the public mind seemed of importance to him only as enclosing within them a more vital and practical question of civil government.

But the anger of his opponents, secret and open, was rapidly increasing.  Envy, jealousy, political and clerical hate, above all, that deadliest and basest of malignant spirits which in partisan warfare is bred out of subserviency to rising and rival power, were swarming about him and stinging him at every step.  No parasite of Maurice could more effectively pay his court and more confidently hope for promotion or reward than by vilipending Barneveld.  It would be difficult to comprehend the infinite extent and power of slander without a study of the career of the Advocate of Holland.

“I thank you for your advices,” he wrote to Carom’ “and I wish from my heart that his Majesty, according to his royal wisdom and clemency towards the condition of this country, would listen only to My Lords the States or their ministers, and not to his own or other passionate persons who, through misunderstanding or malice, furnish him with information and so frequently flatter him.  I have tried these twenty years to deserve his Majesty’s confidence, and have many letters from him reaching through twelve or fifteen years, in which he does me honour and promises his royal favour.  I am the more chagrined that through false and passionate reports and information—­because I am resolved to remain good and true to My Lords the States, to the fatherland, and to the true Christian religion—­I and mine should now be so traduced.  I hope that God Almighty will second my upright conscience, and cause his Majesty soon to see the injustice done to me and mine.  To defend the resolutions of My Lords the States of Holland is my office, duty, and oath, and I assure you that those resolutions are taken with wider vision and scope than his Majesty can believe.  Let this serve for My Lords’ defence and my own against indecent calumny, for my duty allows me to pursue no other course.”