This preventive policy in regard to France was highly approved by Barneveld, who was willing to share in the blame profusely heaped upon such sincere patriots and devoted Protestants as Duplessis-Mornay and others, who saw small advantage to the great cause from a mutiny against established government, bad as it was, led by such intriguers as Conde and Bouillon.  Men who had recently been in the pay of Spain, and one of whom had been cognizant of Biron’s plot against the throne and life of Henry iv., to whom sedition was native atmosphere and daily bread, were not likely to establish a much more wholesome administration than that of Mary de’ Medici.  Prince Maurice sympathized with his relatives by marriage, who were leading the civil commotions in France and endeavouring to obtain funds in the Netherlands.  It is needless to say that Francis Aerssens was deep in their intrigues, and feeding full the grudge which the Stadholder already bore the Advocate for his policy on this occasion.

The Advocate thought it best to wait until the young king should himself rise in mutiny against his mother and her minions.  Perhaps the downfall of the Concini’s and their dowager and the escape of Lewis from thraldom might not be so distant as it seemed.  Meantime this was the legal government, bound to the States by treaties of friendship and alliance, and it would be a poor return for the many favours and the constant aid bestowed by Henry iv. on the Republic, and an imbecile mode of avenging his murder to help throw his kingdom into bloodshed and confusion before his son was able to act for himself.  At the same time he did his best to cultivate amicable relations with the princes, while scrupulously abstaining from any sympathy with their movements.  “If the Prince and the other gentlemen come to court,” he wrote to Langerac, “you will treat them with all possible caresses so far as can be done without disrespect to the government.”

While the British court was occupied with the foul details of the Overbury murder and its consequences, a crime of a more commonplace nature, but perhaps not entirely without influence on great political events, had startled the citizens of the Hague.  It was committed in the apartments of the Stadholder and almost under his very eyes.  A jeweller of Amsterdam, one John van Wely, had come to the court of Maurice to lay before him a choice collection of rare jewellery.  In his caskets were rubies and diamonds to the value of more than 100,000 florins, which would be the equivalent of perhaps ten times as much to-day.  In the Prince’s absence the merchant was received by a confidential groom of the chambers, John of Paris by name, and by him, with the aid of a third John, a soldier of his Excellency’s guard, called Jean de la Vigne, murdered on the spot.  The deed was done in the Prince’s private study.  The unfortunate jeweller was shot, and to make sure was strangled with the blue riband of the Order of the Garter recently conferred upon Maurice, and which happened to be lying conspicuously in the room.