He reminded the Prince that all attempts to accommodate these fearful quarrels had been frustrated, and that on his departure the previous year to Utrecht on account of his health he had again offered to resign all his offices and to leave Holland altogether rather than find himself in perpetual opposition to his Excellency.

“I begged you in such case,” he said, “to lend your hand to the procuring for me an honourable discharge from My Lords the States, but your Excellency declared that you could in no wise approve such a step and gave me hope that some means of accommodating the dissensions would yet be proposed.”

“I went then to Vianen, being much indisposed; thence I repaired to Utrecht to consult my old friend Doctor Saulo Saul, in whose hands I remained six weeks, not being able, as I hoped, to pass my seventieth birthday on the 24th September last in my birthplace, the city of Amersfoort.  All this time I heard not one single word or proposal of accommodation.  On the contrary it was determined that by a majority vote, a thing never heard of before, it was intended against the solemn resolves of the States of Holland, of Utrecht, and of Overyssel to bring these religious differences before the Assembly of My Lords the States-General, a proceeding directly in the teeth of the Act of Union and other treaties, and before a Synod which people called National, and that meantime every effort was making to discredit all those who stood up for the laws of these Provinces and to make them odious and despicable in the eyes of the common people.

“Especially it was I that was thus made the object of hatred and contempt in their eyes.  Hundreds of lies and calumnies, circulated in the form of libels, seditious pamphlets, and lampoons, compelled me to return from Utrecht to the Hague.  Since that time I have repeatedly offered my services to your Excellency for the promotion of mutual accommodation and reconciliation of differences, but without success.”

He then alluded to the publication with which the country was ringing, ‘The Necessary and Living Discourse of a Spanish Counsellor’, and which was attributed to his former confidential friend, now become his deadliest foe, ex-Ambassador Francis Aerssens, and warned the Prince that if he chose, which God forbid, to follow the advice of that seditious libel, nothing but ruin to the beloved Fatherland and its lovers, to the princely house of Orange-Nassau and to the Christian religion could be the issue.  “The Spanish government could desire no better counsel,” he said, “than this which these fellows give you; to encourage distrust and estrangement between your Excellency and the nobles, the cities, and the magistrates of the land and to propose high and haughty imaginings which are easy enough to write, but most difficult to practise, and which can only enure to the advantage of Spain.  Therefore most respectfully I beg your Excellency not to believe these fellows, but to reject their counsels . . .