Du Maurier says, that he had been told by the ambassador his father, that Maurice having proposed to the pensionary Barneveldt, to concur in giving him the supreme power, this zealous republican showed him the danger and injustice of the proposal, and _from that time Barneveldt’s ruin was resolved upon_. This however is certain, that the Stadtholder endeavoured to increase his authority by means of the Gomarists, and Barneveldt to check it by means of the Arminians: that several towns levied soldiers who were called _Expectants_, because they expected orders from the magistrate, but would take none from the Stadtholder: that there were insurrections in some cities, and that Prince Maurice vigorously persecuted the opposite party. At length he convened a calvinistical council at Dordrecht, composed of all the reformed churches in Europe, except that of France, the deputies from which were not permitted by the King of France to attend. The fathers of this synod who had exclaimed so loudly against the fathers of various councils, and against their authority, condemned the Arminians, just as they themselves had been condemned by the council of Trent. Above a hundred Arminian ministers were banished from the United Provinces. Prince Maurice chose twenty-six commissioners from the nobility and the magistrates, to try the grand pensionary Barneveldt, the celebrated Grotius, and some others of the Arminian party. They had been kept six months in confinement, previous to their trial. One of the chief motives of the revolt of the Seven Provinces, and of the house of Orange, against Spain, was the Duke of Alva’s severity, in suffering the accused to languish for a long period in confinement, without bringing them to trial, and in appointing commissioners to condemn them. The same grievances which had caused such complaints under the Spanish monarchy, were revived in the bosom of liberty. Barneveldt was beheaded at the Hague, more unjustly than Count Egmont, and Count Horn at Brussels. He was an old man of _seventy_, who had served the Republic _forty_ years in the cabinet, with as much success as Maurice and his brothers had served her in the field. The sentence imported, “_That he had done all he could to vex the Church of God_.” A charming anecdote is related of the admirable conduct of the widow of Barneveldt. After he had perished on the scaffold, his sons, René and William, entered into a conspiracy to revenge his death, in which they were discovered. William fled, but René was taken and condemned to die. His mother solicited his pardon of Prince Maurice, who replied, “It appears strange that you do that for your son, which you refused to do for your husband;” to which she nobly replied, “I did not ask pardon for my husband, because he was innocent; I ask it for my son, because he is guilty.”