In order to carry out his design and perturb the political state of the Provinces he had drawn up and caused to be enacted the Sharp Resolution of 4th August 1617.  He had thus nullified the ordinary course of justice.  He had stimulated the magistrates to disobedience, and advised them to strengthen themselves with freshly enlisted military companies.  He had suggested new-fangled oaths for the soldiers, authorizing them to refuse obedience to the States-General and his Excellency.  He had especially stimulated the proceedings at Utrecht.  When it was understood that the Prince was to pass through Utrecht, the States of that province not without the prisoner’s knowledge had addressed a letter to his Excellency, requesting him not to pass through their city.  He had written a letter to Ledenberg suggesting that good watch should be held at the town gates and up and down the river Lek.  He had desired that Ledenberg having read that letter should burn it.  He had interfered with the cashiering of the mercenaries at Utrecht.  He had said that such cashiering without the consent of the States of that province was an act of force which would justify resistance by force.

Although those States had sent commissioners to concert measures with the Prince for that purpose, he had advised them to conceal their instructions until his own plan for the disbandment could be carried out.  At a secret meeting in the house of Tresel, clerk of the States-General, between Grotius, Hoogerbeets, and other accomplices, it was decided that this advice should be taken.  Report accordingly was made to the prisoner.  He had advised them to continue in their opposition to the National Synod.

He had sought to calumniate and blacken his Excellency by saying that he aspired to the sovereignty of the Provinces.  He had received intelligence on that subject from abroad in ciphered letters.

He had of his own accord rejected a certain proposed, notable alliance of the utmost importance to this Republic.

   [This refers, I think without doubt, to the conversation between
   King James and Caron at the end of the year 1815.]

He had received from foreign potentates various large sums of money and other presents.

All “these proceedings tended to put the city of Utrecht into a blood-bath, and likewise to bring the whole country, and the person of his Excellency into the uttermost danger.”

This is the substance of the sentence, amplified by repetitions and exasperating tautology into thirty or forty pages.

It will have been perceived by our analysis of Barneveld’s answers to the commissioners that all the graver charges which he was now said to have confessed had been indignantly denied by him or triumphantly justified.

It will also be observed that he was condemned for no categorical crime—­lese-majesty, treason, or rebellion.  The commissioners never ventured to assert that the States-General were sovereign, or that the central government had a right to prescribe a religious formulary for all the United Provinces.  They never dared to say that the prisoner had been in communication with the enemy or had received bribes from him.