only heir I was and with that of others to whom I was co-heir, many burthens as well.  I have bought property with encumbrances, and I have dyked and bettered several estates with borrowed money.  Now should it please your Lordships to institute a census and valuation of the property of your subjects, I for one should be very well pleased.  For I know full well that those who in the estimates of capital in the year 1599 rated themselves at 50,000 or 60,000 florins now may boast of having twice as much property as I have.  Yet in that year out of patriotism I placed myself on the list of those liable for the very highest contributions, being assessed on a property of 200,000 florins.”

The Advocate alluded with haughty contempt to the notorious lies circulated by his libellers in regard to his lineage, as if the vast services and unquestioned abilities of such a statesman would not have illustrated the obscurest origin.  But as he happened to be of ancient and honourable descent, he chose to vindicate his position in that regard.

“I was born in the city of Amersfoort,” he said, “by the father’s side an Oldenbarneveld; an old and noble race, from generation to generation steadfast and true; who have been duly summoned for many hundred years to the assembly of the nobles of their province as they are to this day.  By my mother’s side I am sprung from the ancient and knightly family of Amersfoort, which for three or four hundred years has been known as foremost among the nobles of Utrecht in all state affairs and as landed proprietors.”

It is only for the sake of opening these domestic and private lights upon an historical character whose life was so pre-eminently and almost exclusively a public one that we have drawn some attention to this stately defence made by the Advocate of his birth, life, and services to the State.  The public portions of the state paper belong exclusively to history, and have already been sufficiently detailed.

The letter to Prince Maurice was delivered into his hands by Cornelis van der Myle, son-in-law of Barneveld.

No reply to it was ever sent, but several days afterwards the Stadholder called from his open window to van der Myle, who happened to be passing by.  He then informed him that he neither admitted the premises nor the conclusion of the Advocate’s letter, saying that many things set down in it were false.  He furthermore told him a story of a certain old man who, having in his youth invented many things and told them often for truth, believed them when he came to old age to be actually true and was ever ready to stake his salvation upon them.  Whereupon he shut the window and left van der Myle to make such application of the parable as he thought proper, vouchsafing no further answer to Barneveld’s communication.

Dudley Carleton related the anecdote to his government with much glee, but it may be doubted whether this bold way of giving the lie to a venerable statesman through his son-in-law would have been accounted as triumphant argumentation anywhere out of a barrack.