The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, 1619-23 | Page 5

executed. But this was the lot of Secretary Ledenberg. He was
sentenced to be hanged, his property declared confiscated.
His unburied corpse, reduced to the condition of a mummy, was
brought out of its lurking-place, thrust into a coffin, dragged on a
hurdle to the Golgotha outside the Hague, on the road to Ryswyk, and
there hung on a gibbet in company of the bodies of other malefactors
swinging there in chains.
His prudent scheme to save his property for his children by committing
suicide in prison was thus thwarted.
The reading of the sentence of Ledenberg, as had been previously the
case with that of Barneveld, had been heard by Grotius through the
open window of his prison, as he lay on his bed. The scaffold on which
the Advocate had suffered was left standing, three executioners were
still in the town, and there was every reason for both Grotius and
Hoogerbeets to expect a similar doom. Great efforts were made to
induce the friends of the distinguished prisoners to sue for their pardon.
But even as in the case of the Barneveld family these attempts were
fruitless. The austere stoicism both on the part of the sufferers and their
relatives excites something like wonder.
Three of the judges went in person to the prison chamber of
Hoogerbeets, urging him to ask forgiveness himself or to allow his
friends to demand it for him.
"If my wife and children do ask," he said, "I will protest against it. I
need no pardon. Let justice take its course. Think not, gentlemen, that I
mean by asking for pardon to justify your proceedings."

He stoutly refused to do either. The judges, astonished, took their
departure, saying:
"Then you will fare as Barneveld. The scaffold is still standing."
He expected consequently nothing but death, and said many years
afterwards that he knew from personal experience how a man feels who
goes out of prison to be beheaded.
The wife of Grotius sternly replied to urgent intimations from a high
source that she should ask pardon for her husband, "I shall not do it. If
he has deserved it, let them strike off his head."
Yet no woman could be more devoted to her husband than was Maria
van Reigersbergen to Hugo de Groot, as time was to prove. The Prince
subsequently told her at a personal interview that "one of two roads
must be taken, that of the law or that of pardon."
Soon after the arrest it was rumoured that Grotius was ready to make
important revelations if he could first be assured of the Prince's
protection.
His friends were indignant at the statement. His wife stoutly denied its
truth, but, to make sure, wrote to her husband on the subject.
"One thing amazes me," she said; "some people here pretend to say that
you have stated to one gentleman in private that you have something to
disclose greatly important to the country, but that you desired
beforehand to be taken under the protection of his Excellency. I have
not chosen to believe this, nor do I, for I hold that to be certain which
you have already told me--that you know no secrets. I see no reason
therefore why you should require the protection of any man. And there
is no one to believe this, but I thought best to write to you of it. Let me,
in order that I may contradict the story with more authority, have by the
bearer of this a simple Yes or No. Study quietly, take care of your
health, have some days' patience, for the Advocate has not yet been
heard."
The answer has not been preserved, but there is an allusion to the
subject in an unpublished memorandum of Grotius written while he
was in prison.
It must be confessed that the heart of the great theologian and jurist
seems to have somewhat failed him after his arrest, and although he
was incapable of treachery--even if he had been possessed of any
secrets, which certainly was not the case--he did not show the same

Spartan firmness as his wife, and was very far from possessing the
heroic calm of Barneveld. He was much disposed to extricate himself
from his unhappy plight by making humble, if not abject, submission to
Maurice. He differed from his wife in thinking that he had no need of
the Prince's protection. "I begged the Chamberlain, Matthew de Cors,"
he said, a few days after his arrest, "that I might be allowed to speak
with his Excellency of certain things which I would not willingly trust
to the pen. My meaning was to leave all public employment and to
offer my service to his Excellency in his domestic affairs. Thus I hoped
that the motives for my imprisonment would cease.