property which he had purchased of the Counts of Arenberg, and which carried with it the hereditary dignity of Great Equerry of the Counts of Holland.  As the Counts of Holland had ceased to exist, although their sovereignty had nearly been revived and conferred upon William the Silent, the office of their chief of the stables might be deemed a sinecure.  But the jealousy of Maurice was easily awakened, especially by any movement made or favoured by the Advocate.  He believed that in the election of Frederic Henry as a member of the College of Knights a plan lay concealed to thrust him into power and to push this elder brother from his place.  The scheme, if scheme it were, was never accomplished, but the Prince’s rancour remained.

He now informed the nobles that they must receive into their body Francis Aerssens, who had lately purchased the barony of Sommelsdyk, and Daniel de Hartaing, Seignior of Marquette.  With the presence of this deadly enemy of Barneveld and another gentleman equally devoted to the Stadholder’s interest it seemed probable that the refractory majority of the board of nobles would be overcome.  But there were grave objections to the admission of these new candidates.  They were not eligible.  The constitution of the States and of the college of nobles prescribed that Hollanders only of ancient and noble race and possessing estates in the province could sit in that body.  Neither Aerssens nor Hartaing was born in Holland or possessed of the other needful qualifications.  Nevertheless, the Prince, who had just remodelled all the municipalities throughout the Union which offered resistance to his authority, was not to be checked by so trifling an impediment as the statutes of the House of Nobles.  He employed very much the same arguments which he had used to “good papa” Hooft.  “This time it must be so.”  Another time it might not be necessary.  So after a controversy which ended as controversies are apt to do when one party has a sword in his hand and the other is seated at a green-baize-covered table, Sommelsdyk and Marquette took their seats among the knights.  Of course there was a spirited protest.  Nothing was easier for the Stadholder than to concede the principle while trampling it with his boot-heels in practice.

“Whereas it is not competent for the said two gentlemen to be admitted to our board,” said the nobles in brief, “as not being constitutionally eligible, nevertheless, considering the strong desire of his Excellency the Prince of Orange, we, the nobles and knights of Holland, admit them with the firm promise to each other by noble and knightly faith ever in future for ourselves and descendants to maintain the privileges of our order now violated and never again to let them be directly or indirectly infringed.”

And so Aerssens, the unscrupulous plotter, and dire foe of the Advocate and all his house, burning with bitter revenge for all the favours he had received from him during many years, and the author of the venomous pamphlets and diatribes which had done so much of late to blacken the character of the great statesman before the public, now associated himself officially with his other enemies, while the preliminary proceedings for the state trials went forward.