[65] The compass of a note is too confined for an account of this great negociator and general, who fell by the jealousy of the Prince of Orange the 13th March 1619. He was born at Amersfort, in the province of Utrecht, was five times employed as ambassador to England and France, and had long the command of the armies of the United Provinces. De Thou says, “que c’étoit un homme très accrédité par les charges qu’il avoit remplies, et par sa grande expérience dans les affaires:”—And Moreri concludes an account of his character, and his death, which he met with an undaunted spirit, in the following words: “Barneveldt, ayant été pris, eut la tête tranchée à l’age de 72 ans, sous prétexte d’avoir voulu livrer le pays aux Espagnols, quoiqu’il le niat constamment, et qu’en effet on n’en ait trouvé aucune preuve dans ses papiers. Son crime étoit d’avoir refusé d’entrer dans le complot, à la faveur du quel le prince Maurice vouloit a ce qu’on dit se rendre maître des Pays Bas, et d’avoir défendu la liberté de sa patrie avec trop de zèle.” Tom. ii. p. 78. [66] No minister ever exerted his power with less tyranny and more benignity than the favourite of Philip the Third: he fell “from his high estate” by the intrigues of his son, and an ungrateful monk whom he had raised to be confessor to the king, and who abandoned the friend that had elevated him as soon as the smiles of sovereignty were transferred to another. On the 4th of October 1618, he retired to his paternal estate from the capricious favour of the court, where he passed the remainder of his days in peace and privacy. [67] William Burton is said, by Antony à Wood, to have been a _pretender_ to astronomy, of which he published an Ephemeris in 1655.—Edmund Gunter, a mathematician of greater eminence, was astronomical professor of Gresham College, and eminent for his skill in the sciences: his publications were popular in his day. He died in Gresham College, 1626. [68] Thomas Hariot, styled by Camden “Mathematicus Insignis,” was a pensioner and companion of sir Walter Raleigh in his voyage to Virginia (1584), of which upon his return he published an account. He was held in high estimation by the earl of Northumberland, sir Thomas Aylesbury, and others, for his mathematical knowledge, but, like his patron, Raleigh, was a deist in religion.—Ob. 1621. See Wood’s Athenæ, vol. i. p. 460. ed. 1721. [69] Of this popular song, which is reprinted from “Deuteromelia,” 1609, in Hawkins’s History of Music, and in Ritson’s Antient Songs, the following is the introductory stanza: “As it fell upon a holyday And upon a holy-tide-a, John Dory brought him an ambling nag To Paris for to ride-a.”