“From my chamber of arrest, last of August, anno 1618.

“Your dear husband, father, father-in-law, and grand father,

“Johnof Barneveld.”

On the margin was written: 

“From the first I have requested and have at last obtained materials for writing.”

A fortnight before the arrest, but while great troubles were known to be impending, the French ambassador extraordinary, de Boississe, had audience before the Assembly of the States-General.  He entreated them to maintain the cause of unity and peace as the foundation of their state; “that state,” he said, “which lifts its head so high that it equals or surpasses the mightiest republics that ever existed, and which could not have risen to such a height of honour and grandeur in so short a time, but through harmony and union of all the provinces, through the valour of his Excellency, and through your own wise counsels, both sustained by our great king, whose aid is continued by his son.”—­“The King my master,” he continued, “knows not the cause of your disturbances.  You have not communicated them to him, but their most apparent cause is a difference of opinion, born in the schools, thence brought before the public, upon a point of theology.  That point has long been deemed by many to be so hard and so high that the best advice to give about it is to follow what God’s Word teaches touching God’s secrets; to wit, that one should use moderation and modesty therein and should not rashly press too far into that which he wishes to be covered with the veil of reverence and wonder.  That is a wise ignorance to keep one’s eyes from that which God chooses to conceal.  He calls us not to eternal life through subtle and perplexing questions.”

And further exhorting them to conciliation and compromise, he enlarged on the effect of their internal dissensions on their exterior relations.  “What joy, what rapture you are preparing for your neighbours by your quarrels!  How they will scorn you!  How they will laugh!  What a hope do you give them of revenging themselves upon you without danger to themselves!  Let me implore you to baffle their malice, to turn their joy into mourning, to unite yourselves to confound them.”

He spoke much more in the same vein, expressing wise and moderate sentiments.  He might as well have gone down to the neighbouring beach when a south-west gale was blowing and talked of moderation to the waves of the German Ocean.  The tempest of passion and prejudice had risen in its might and was sweeping all before it.  Yet the speech, like other speeches and intercessions made at this epoch by de Boississe and by the regular French ambassador, du Maurier, was statesmanlike and reasonable.  It is superfluous to say that it was in unison with the opinions of Barneveld, for Barneveld had probably furnished the text of the oration.  Even as he had a few years before supplied the letters which King James had signed