The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, 1619-23 | Page 3

the same morning to his cousin William Lewis does not show much
pathos.
"After the judges," he said, "have been busy here with the sentence
against the Advocate Barneveld for several days, at last it has been
pronounced, and this morning, between nine o'clock and half past,
carried into execution with the sword, in the Binnenhof before the great
hall.
"The reasons they had for this you will see from the sentence, which
will doubtless be printed, and which I will send you.
"The wife of the aforesaid Barneveld and also some of his sons and
sons- in-law or other friends have never presented any supplication for
his pardon, but till now have vehemently demanded that law and justice
should be done to him, and have daily let the report run through the
people that he would soon come out. They also planted a may-pole
before their house adorned with garlands and ribbands, and practised
other jollities and impertinences, while they ought to have conducted
themselves in a humble and lowly fashion. This is no proper manner of
behaving, and moreover not a practical one to move the judges to any
favour even if they had been thereto inclined."
The sentence was printed and sent to the separate provinces. It was
accompanied by a declaration of the States-General that they had
received information from the judges of various points, not mentioned
in the sentence, which had been laid to the charge of the late Advocate,
and which gave much reason to doubt whether he had not perhaps
turned his eyes toward the enemy. They could not however legally give
judgment to that effect without a sharper investigation, which on
account of his great age and for other reasons it was thought best to
spare him.
A meaner or more malignant postscript to a state paper recounting the
issue of a great trial it would be difficult to imagine. The first statesman
of the country had just been condemned and executed on a narrative,
without indictment of any specified crime. And now, by a kind of
apologetic after-thought, six or eight individuals calling themselves the
States-General insinuated that he had been looking towards the enemy,
and that, had they not mercifully spared him the rack, which is all that

could be meant by their sharper investigation, he would probably have
confessed the charge.
And thus the dead man's fame was blackened by those who had not
hesitated to kill him, but had shrunk from enquiring into his alleged
crime.
Not entirely without semblance of truth did Grotius subsequently say
that the men who had taken his life would hardly have abstained from
torturing him if they had really hoped by so doing to extract from him a
confession of treason.
The sentence was sent likewise to France, accompanied with a
statement that Barneveld had been guilty of unpardonable crimes which
had not been set down in the act of condemnation. Complaints were
also made of the conduct of du Maurier in thrusting himself into the
internal affairs of the States and taking sides so ostentatiously against
the government. The King and his ministers were indignant with these
rebukes, and sustained the Ambassador. Jeannin and de Boississe
expressed the opinion that he had died innocent of any crime, and only
by reason of his strong political opposition to the Prince.
The judges had been unanimous in finding him guilty of the acts
recorded in their narrative, but three of them had held out for some time
in favour of a sentence of perpetual imprisonment rather than
decapitation.
They withdrew at last their opposition to the death penalty for the
wonderful reason that reports had been circulated of attempts likely to
be made to assassinate Prince Maurice. The Stadholder himself treated
these rumours and the consequent admonition of the States-General
that he would take more than usual precautions for his safety with
perfect indifference, but they were conclusive with the judges of
Barneveld.
"Republica poscit exemplum," said Commissioner Junius, one of the
three, as he sided with the death-warrant party.
The same Doctor Junius a year afterwards happened to dine, in
company of one of his fellow-commissioners, with Attorney-General
Sylla at Utrecht, and took occasion to ask them why it was supposed
that Barneveld had been hanging his head towards Spain, as not one
word of that stood in the sentence.
The question was ingenuous on the part of one learned judge to his

colleagues in one of the most famous state trials of history, propounded
as a bit of after-dinner casuistry, when the victim had been more than a
year in his grave.
But perhaps the answer was still more artless. His brother lawyers
replied that the charge was easily to be deduced from the sentence,
because a man who breaks up the foundation