To the England of Elizabeth, of Walsingham, Raleigh, and the Cecils, had succeeded the Great Britain of James, with his Carrs and Carletons, Nauntons, Lakes, and Winwoods.  France, widowed of Henry and waiting for Richelieu, lay in the clutches of Concini’s, Epernons, and Bouillons, bound hand and foot to Spain.  Germany, falling from Rudolph to Matthias, saw Styrian Ferdinand in the background ready to shatter the fabric of a hundred years of attempted Reformation.  In the Republic of the Netherlands were the great soldier and the only remaining statesman of the age.  At a moment when the breathing space had been agreed upon before the conflict should be renewed; on a wider field than ever, between Spanish-Austrian world-empire and independence of the nations; between the ancient and only Church and the spirit of religious Equality; between popular Right and royal and sacerdotal Despotism; it would have been desirable that the soldier and the statesman should stand side by side, and that the fortunate Confederacy, gifted with two such champions and placed by its own achievements at the very head of the great party of resistance, should be true to herself.

These volumes contain a slight and rapid sketch of Barneveld’s career up to the point at which the Twelve Years’ Truce with Spain was signed in the year 1609.  In previous works the Author has attempted to assign the great Advocate’s place as part and parcel of history during the continuance of the War for Independence.  During the period of the Truce he will be found the central figure.  The history of Europe, especially of the Netherlands, Britain, France, and Germany, cannot be thoroughly appreciated without a knowledge of the designs, the labours, and the fate of Barneveld.

The materials for estimating his character and judging his judges lie in the national archives of the land of which he was so long the foremost citizen.  But they have not long been accessible.  The letters, state papers, and other documents remain unprinted, and have rarely been read.  M. van Deventer has published three most interesting volumes of the Advocate’s correspondence, but they reach only to the beginning of 1609.  He has suspended his labours exactly at the moment when these volumes begin.  I have carefully studied however nearly the whole of that correspondence, besides a mass of other papers.  The labour is not light, for the handwriting of the great Advocate is perhaps the worst that ever existed, and the papers, although kept in the admirable order which distinguishes the Archives of the Hague, have passed through many hands at former epochs before reaching their natural destination in the treasure-house of the nation.  Especially the documents connected with the famous trial were for a long time hidden from mortal view, for Barneveld’s judges had bound themselves by oath to bury the proceedings out of sight.  And the concealment lasted for centuries.  Very recently a small portion of those papers has been published by the Historical Society of Utrecht.  The “Verhooren,” or Interrogatories of the Judges, and the replies of Barneveld, have thus been laid before the reading public of Holland, while within the last two years the distinguished and learned historian, Professor Fruin, has edited the “Verhooren” of Hugo Grotius.