The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, 1610-12 | Page 7

were both tending towards Spain through
a stupidity on the part of their rulers such as the gods are said to
contend against in vain. Barneveld was not a god nor a hero, but a
courageous and wide-seeing statesman, and he did his best. Obliged by
his position to affect admiration, or at least respect, where no emotion
but contempt was possible, his daily bread was bitter enough. It was
absolutely necessary to humour those whom knew to be traversing his

policy and desiring his ruin, for there was no other way to serve his
country and save it from impending danger. So long as he was
faithfully served by his subordinates, and not betrayed by those to
whom he gave his heart, he could confront external enemies and mould
the policy of wavering allies.
Few things in history are more pitiable than the position of James in
regard to Spain. For seven long years he was as one entranced, the
slave to one idea, a Spanish marriage for his son. It was in vain that his
counsellors argued, Parliament protested, allies implored. Parliament
was told that a royal family matter regarded himself alone, and that
interference on their part was an impertinence. Parliament's duty was a
simple one, to give him advice if he asked it, and money when he
required it, without asking for reasons. It was already a great
concession that he should ask for it in person. They had nothing to do
with his affairs nor with general politics. The mystery of government
was a science beyond their reach, and with which they were not to
meddle. "Ne sutor ultra crepidam," said the pedant.
Upon that one point his policy was made to turn. Spain held him in the
hollow of her hand. The Infanta, with two million crowns in dowry,
was promised, withheld, brought forward again like a puppet to please
or irritate a froward child. Gondemar, the Spanish ambassador, held
him spellbound. Did he falter in his opposition to the States--did he
cease to goad them for their policy in the duchies--did he express
sympathy with Bohemian Protestantism, or, as time went on, did he
dare to lift a finger or touch his pocket in behalf of his daughter and the
unlucky Elector-Palatine; did he, in short, move a step in the road
which England had ever trod and was bound to tread--the road of
determined resistance to Spanish ambition--instantaneously the Infanta
withheld, and James was on his knees again. A few years later, when
the great Raleigh returned from his trans-Alantic expedition, Gondemar
fiercely denounced him to the King as the worst enemy of Spain. The
usual threat was made, the wand was waved, and the noblest head in
England fell upon the block, in pursuance of an obsolete sentence
fourteen years old.
It is necessary to hold fast this single clue to the crooked and amazing
entanglements of the policy of James. The insolence, the meanness, and
the prevarications of this royal toad-eater are only thus explained.

Yet Philip III. declared on his death-bed that he had never had a serious
intention of bestowing his daughter on the Prince.
The vanity and the hatreds of theology furnished the chief additional
material in the policy of James towards the Provinces. The diplomacy
of his reign so far as the Republic was concerned is often a mere mass
of controversial divinity, and gloomy enough of its kind. Exactly at this
moment Conrad Vorstius had been called by the University of Leyden
to the professorship vacant by the death of Arminius, and the wrath of
Peter Plancius and the whole orthodox party knew no bounds. Born in
Cologne, Vorstius had been a lecturer in Geneva, and beloved by Beza.
He had written a book against the Jesuit Belarmino, which he had
dedicated to the States-General. But he was now accused of
Arminianism, Socianism, Pelagianism, Atheism--one knew not what.
He defended himself in writing against these various charges, and
declared himself a believer in the Trinity, in the Divinity of Christ, in
the Atonement. But he had written a book on the Nature of God, and
the wrath of Gomarus and Plancius and Bogerman was as nothing to
the ire of James when that treatise was one day handed to him on
returning from hunting. He had scarcely looked into it before he was
horror-struck, and instantly wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood, his
ambassador at the Hague, ordering him to insist that this blasphemous
monster should at once be removed from the country. Who but James
knew anything of the Nature of God, for had he not written a work in
Latin explaining it all, so that humbler beings might read and be
instructed.
Sir Ralph accordingly delivered a long sermon to the States on the brief
supplied