Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland : with a view of the primary causes and movements of the Thirty Years' War, 1617 — John Shaqi
Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland : with a view of the primary causes and movements of the Thirty Years' War, 1617Motley, John Lothrop
History
Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland : with a view of the primary causes and movements of the Thirty Years' War, 1617
Motley, John Lothrop
Oldenbarnevelt, Johan van, 1547-1619; Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648
The train passed by Barneveld's house and entered the cloister. More
than four thousand persons were present at the service or crowded around
the doors vainly attempting to gain admission into the overflowing
aisles; while the Great Church was left comparatively empty, a few
hundred only worshipping there. The Cloister Church was thenceforth
called the Prince's Church, and a great revolution was beginning even
in the Hague.
The Advocate was wroth as he saw the procession graced by the two
stadholders and their military attendants. He knew that he was now to
bow his head to the Church thus championed by the chief personage and
captain-general of the state, to renounce his dreams of religious
toleration, to sink from his post of supreme civic ruler, or to accept an
unequal struggle in which he might utterly succumb. But his iron nature
would break sooner than bend. In the first transports of his indignation
he is said to have vowed vengeance against the immediate instruments by
which the Cloister Church had, as he conceived, been surreptitiously and
feloniously seized. He meant to strike a blow which should startle the
whole population of the Hague, send a thrill of horror through the
country, and teach men to beware how they trifled with the sovereign
states of Holland, whose authority had so long been undisputed, and with
him their chief functionary.
He resolved--so ran the tale of the preacher Trigland, who told it to
Prince Maurice, and has preserved it in his chronicle--to cause to be
seized at midnight from their beds four men whom he considered the
ringleaders in this mutiny, to have them taken to the place of execution
on the square in the midst of the city, to have their heads cut off at
once by warrant from the chief tribunal without any previous warning, and
then to summon all the citizens at dawn of day, by ringing of bells and
firing of cannon, to gaze on the ghastly spectacle, and teach them to
what fate this pestilential schism and revolt against authority had
brought its humble tools. The victims were to be Enoch Much, the
Prince's book-keeper, and three others, an attorney, an engraver, and an
apothecary, all of course of the Contra-Remonstrant persuasion. It was
necessary, said the Advocate, to make once for all an example, and show
that there was a government in the land.
He had reckoned on a ready adhesion to this measure and a sentence from
the tribunal through the influence of his son-in-law, the Seignior van
Veenhuyzen, who was president of the chief court. His attempt was foiled
however by the stern opposition of two Zealand members of the court, who
managed to bring up from a bed of sickness, where he had long been lying,
a Holland councillor whom they knew to be likewise opposed to the fierce
measure, and thus defeated it by a majority of one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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