Cornelius De Witt was induced, with great difficulty, to sign the revocation of the Edict. Soon after, he was accused of being concerned in a plot to murder the Prince of Orange. The informer and only witness, one Tichelaer, was a person of infamous character: yet on his evidence this brave and well-deserving citizen was thrown into prison at the Hague, and cruelly tortured to extort confession of a plot, the very existence of which, without that confession, could not be proved. He bore the trial with unshaken constancy, protesting that if they cut him to pieces, they should not make him confess a thing which he had never thought of. Without it, he could not be convicted: but he was stripped of his employments and banished from Holland; and such was the madness of the time, that even this iniquitous decree gave great offence, by its leniency, to the people, who were fully persuaded of Cornelius De Witt’s guilt. John De Witt meanwhile had recovered from his wounds; and finding that in the existing state of public feeling his continuance at the head of affairs was both undesirable for himself and unpleasing to the country, he resigned his office. After the promulgation of his brother’s sentence, he went to receive him upon his delivery from prison; and probably to do him more honour, and testify his own sense of the malice of the charge, and the unworthiness of the treatment which he had received, repaired to the Hague in his coach and four, a sort of display which he was not wont to affect. This bravado proved still more unfortunate than ill-judged. The people, collected by the unusual spectacle, began to murmur at the presumption of one suspected traitor coming in state to insult the laws, and triumph in the escape of a traitor-brother from a deserved death. De Witt went to the prison, to convey his brother to his own house; but Cornelius replied, that having suffered so much, being innocent, he would not leave the prison as a culprit, but remain, and appeal against the sentence; a resolution which John De Witt strove in vain to shake. Meanwhile Tichelaer, the informer, was busily engaged in stirring up the populace to riot. Apprehending some disturbance, the States of Holland, which were then sitting at the Hague, requested the Prince of Orange to repair thither with a military force. Meanwhile the tumult spread from the lowest people to the burghers, and a furious mob collected round the gates of the prison where the brothers still remained. The military force which had been sent for did not arrive, and that which was in the city was drawn off, by written order from one or more of the magistrates, upon a false report, that a body of peasants was advancing to pillage the Hague. Actuated by fear, or some worse motive, the gaoler opened the gates, the leaders of the mob rushed in, the brothers were violently dragged from their chamber, and massacred as soon as they reached the street, with