With an effrontery which did not lack ingenuity, Barneveld’s defence was called by the commissioners his confession, and was formally registered as such in the process and the sentence; while the fact that he had not been stretched upon the rack during his trial, nor kept in chains for the eight months of his imprisonment, were complacently mentioned as proofs of exceptionable indulgence.

“Whereas the prisoner John of Barneveld,” said the sentence, “without being put to the torture and without fetters of iron, has confessed . . . . to having perturbed religion, greatly afflicted the Church of God, and carried into practice exorbitant and pernicious maxims of State . . . . inculcating by himself and accomplices that each province had the right to regulate religious affairs within its own territory, and that other provinces were not to concern themselves therewith”—­therefore and for many other reasons he merited punishment.

He had instigated a protest by vote of three provinces against the National Synod.  He had despised the salutary advice of many princes and notable personages.  He had obtained from the King of Great Britain certain letters furthering his own opinions, the drafts of which he had himself suggested, and corrected and sent over to the States’ ambassador in London, and when written out, signed, and addressed by the King to the States-General, had delivered them without stating how they had been procured.

Afterwards he had attempted to get other letters of a similar nature from the King, and not succeeding had defamed his Majesty as being a cause of the troubles in the Provinces.  He had permitted unsound theologians to be appointed to church offices, and had employed such functionaries in political affairs as were most likely to be the instruments of his own purposes.  He had not prevented vigorous decrees from being enforced in several places against those of the true religion.  He had made them odious by calling them Puritans, foreigners, and “Flanderizers,” although the United Provinces had solemnly pledged to each other their lives, fortunes, and blood by various conventions, to some of which the prisoner was himself a party, to maintain the Reformed, Evangelical, religion only, and to, suffer no change in it to be made for evermore.

In order to carry out his design and perturb the political state of the Provinces he had drawn up and caused to be enacted the Sharp Resolution of 4th August 1617.  He had thus nullified the ordinary course of justice.  He had stimulated the magistrates to disobedience, and advised them to strengthen themselves with freshly enlisted military companies.  He had suggested new-fangled oaths for the soldiers, authorizing them to refuse obedience to the States-General and his Excellency.  He had especially stimulated the proceedings at Utrecht.  When it was understood that the Prince was to pass through Utrecht, the States of that province not without the prisoner’s