The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, 1618-19 | Page 3

Hanmaker has
sworn. The States of Overyssel will likewise give their hand to this
because they say they will be the first to feel the shock of the war. Thus

we shall very easily carry out our design, and as we shall concede to the
Zealanders their demands in regard to the navigation they at least will
place themselves under the dominion of his Majesty as will be the case
with Friesland as well as Overyssel."
It will be observed that in this secret arrangement for selling the
Republic to its ancient master it was precisely the Provinces and the
politicians most steadily opposed to Barneveld that took the lead.
Zealand, Friesland, Overyssel were in the plot, but not a word was said
of Utrecht. As for Holland itself, hopes were founded on the places
where hatred to the Advocate was fiercest.
"Between ourselves," continued the agent, "we are ten here in the
government of Holland to support the plan, but we must not discover
ourselves for fear of suffering what has happened to Barneveld."
He added that the time for action had not yet come, and that if
movements were made before the Synod had finished its labours, "The
Gomarists would say that they were all sold." He implored the
government at Madrid to keep the whole matter for the present
profoundly secret because "Prince Maurice and the Gomarists had the
forces of the country at their disposition." In case the plot was sprung
too suddenly therefore, he feared that with the assistance of England
Maurice might, at the head of the Gomarists and the army, make
himself sovereign of Holland and Duke of Cleve, while he and the rest
of the Spanish partisans might be in prison with Barneveld for trying to
accomplish what Barneveld had been trying to prevent.
The opinions and utterances of such a man as James I. would be of
little worth to our history had he not happened to occupy the place he
did. But he was a leading actor in the mournful drama which filled up
the whole period of the Twelve Years' Truce. His words had a direct
influence on great events. He was a man of unquestionable erudition, of
powers of mind above the average, while the absolute deformity of his
moral constitution made him incapable of thinking, feeling, or acting
rightly on any vital subject, by any accident or on any occasion. If there
were one thing that he thoroughly hated in the world, it was the
Reformed religion. If in his thought there were one term of reproach
more loathsome than another to be applied to a human creature, it was
the word Puritan. In the word was subversion of all established
authority in Church and State--revolution, republicanism, anarchy.

"There are degrees in Heaven," he was wont to say, "there are degrees
in Hell, there must be degrees on earth."
He forbade the Calvinist Churches of Scotland to hold their customary
Synod in 1610, passionately reviling them and their belief, and
declaring "their aim to be nothing else than to deprive kings and princes
of their sovereignty, and to reduce the whole world to a popular form of
government where everybody would be master."
When the Prince of Neuburg embraced Catholicism, thus complicating
matters in the duchies and strengthening the hand of Spain and the
Emperor in the debateable land, he seized the occasion to assure the
agent of the Archduke in London, Councillor Boissetot, of his warm
Catholic sympathies. "They say that I am the greatest heretic in the
world!" he exclaimed; "but I will never deny that the true religion is
that of Rome even if corrupted." He expressed his belief in the real
presence, and his surprise that the Roman Catholics did not take the
chalice for the blood of Christ. The English bishops, he averred, drew
their consecration through the bishops in Mary Tudor's time from the
Pope.
As Philip II., and Ferdinand II. echoing the sentiments of his illustrious
uncle, had both sworn they would rather reign in a wilderness than
tolerate a single heretic in their dominions, so James had said "he
would rather be a hermit in a forest than a king over such people as the
pack of Puritans were who overruled the lower house."
For the Netherlanders he had an especial hatred, both as rebels and
Puritans. Soon after coming to the English throne he declared that their
revolt, which had been going on all his lifetime and of which he never
expected to see the end, had begun by petition for matters of religion.
"His mother and he from their cradles," he said, "had been haunted with
a Puritan devil, which he feared would not leave him to his grave. And
he would hazard his crown but he would suppress