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 by his Majesty, told them that to have Vorstius as successor to
Arminius was to fall out of the frying-pan into the fire, and handed them
a "catalogue" prepared by the King of the blasphemies, heresies, and
atheisms of the Professor. "Notwithstanding that the man in full assembly
of the States of Holland," said the Ambassador with headlong and confused
rhetoric, "had found the means to palliate and plaster the dung of his
heresies, and thus to dazzle the eyes of good people," yet it was
necessary to protest most vigorously against such an appointment, and to
advise that "his works should be publicly burned in the open places of
all the cities."

The Professor never was admitted to perform his functions of theology,
but he remained at Leyden, so Wi