Uytenbogaert, conversing with Barneveld directly afterwards, advised him to accept the vote.  Yielding to the decision of the majority, it would be possible, so thought the clergyman, for the great statesman so to handle matters as to mould the Synod to his will, even as he had so long controlled the States-Provincial and the States-General.

“If you are willing to give away the rights of the land,” said the Advocate very sharply, “I am not.”

Probably the priest’s tactics might have proved more adroit than the stony opposition on which Barneveld was resolved.

But it was with the aged statesman a matter of principle, not of policy.  His character and his personal pride, the dignity of opinion and office, his respect for constitutional law, were all at stake.

Shallow observers considered the struggle now taking place as a personal one.  Lovers of personal government chose to look upon the Advocate’s party as a faction inspired with an envious resolve to clip the wings of the Stadholder, who was at last flying above their heads.

There could be no doubt of the bitter animosity between the two men.  There could be no doubt that jealousy was playing the part which that master passion will ever play in all the affairs of life.  But there could be no doubt either that a difference of principle as wide as the world separated the two antagonists.

Even so keen an observer as Dudley Carleton, while admitting the man’s intellectual power and unequalled services, could see nothing in the Advocate’s present course but prejudice, obstinacy, and the insanity of pride.  “He doth no whit spare himself in pains nor faint in his resolution,” said the Envoy, “wherein notwithstanding he will in all appearance succumb ere afore long, having the disadvantages of a weak body, a weak party, and a weak cause.”  But Carleton hated Barneveld, and considered it the chief object of his mission to destroy him, if he could.  In so doing he would best carry out the wishes of his sovereign.

The King of Britain had addressed a somewhat equivocal letter to the States-General on the subject of religion in the spring of 1617.  It certainly was far from being as satisfactory as, the epistles of 1613 prepared under the Advocate’s instructions, had been, while the exuberant commentary upon the royal text, delivered in full assembly by his ambassador soon after the reception of the letter, was more than usually didactic, offensive, and ignorant.  Sir Dudley never omitted an opportunity of imparting instruction to the States-General as to the nature of their constitution and the essential dogmas on which their Church was founded.  It is true that the great lawyers and the great theologians of the country were apt to hold very different opinions from his upon those important subjects, but this was so much the worse for the lawyers and theologians, as time perhaps might prove.