It would be a thankless and tedious task to wander through the wilderness of interrogatories and answers extending over three months of time, which stood in the place of a trial.  The defence of Barneveld was his own history, and that I have attempted to give in the preceding pages.  A great part of the accusation was deduced from his private and official correspondence, and it is for this reason that I have laid such copious extracts from it before the reader.  No man except the judges and the States-General had access to those letters, and it was easy therefore, if needful, to give them a false colouring.  It is only very recently that they have been seen at all, and they have never been published from that day to this.

Out of the confused mass of documents appertaining to the trial, a few generalizations can be made which show the nature of the attack upon him.  He was accused of having permitted Arminius to infuse new opinions into the University of Leyden, and of having subsequently defended the appointment of Vorstius to the same place.  He had opposed the National Synod.  He had made drafts of letters for the King of Great Britain to sign, recommending mutual toleration on the five disputed points regarding predestination.  He was the author of the famous Sharp Resolution.  He had recommended the enlistment by the provinces and towns of Waartgelders or mercenaries.  He had maintained that those mercenaries as well as the regular troops were bound in time of peace to be obedient and faithful, not only to the Generality and the stadholders, but to the magistrates of the cities and provinces where they were employed, and to the states by whom they were paid.  He had sent to Leyden, warning the authorities of the approach of the Prince.  He had encouraged all the proceedings at Utrecht, writing a letter to the secretary of that province advising a watch to be kept at the city gates as well as in the river, and ordering his letter when read to be burned.  He had received presents from foreign potentates.  He had attempted to damage the character of his Excellency the Prince by declaring on various occasions that he aspired to the sovereignty of the country.  He had held a ciphered correspondence on the subject with foreign ministers of the Republic.  He had given great offence to the King of Great Britain by soliciting from him other letters in the sense of those which his Majesty had written in 1613, advising moderation and mutual toleration.  He had not brought to condign punishment the author of ‘The Balance’, a pamphlet in which an oration of the English ambassador had been criticised, and aspersions made on the Order of the Garter.  He had opposed the formation of the West India Company.  He had said many years before to Nicolas van Berk that the Provinces had better return to the dominion of Spain.  And in general, all his proceedings had tended to put the Provinces into a “blood bath.”

There was however no accusation that he had received bribes from the enemy or held traitorous communication with him, or that he had committed any act of high-treason.