out lecturing or preaching. The question of jurisdiction was
saved. The independence of the civil authority over the extreme
pretensions of the clergy had been vindicated by the firmness of the
Advocate. James bad been treated with overflowing demonstrations of
respect, but his claim to expel a Dutch professor from his chair and
country by a royal fiat had been signally rebuked. Certainly if the
Provinces were dependent upon the British king in regard to such a
matter, it was the merest imbecility for them to affect independence.
Barneveld had carried his point and served his country strenuously and
well in this apparently small matter which human folly had dilated into a
great one. But deep was the wrath treasured against him in consequence in
clerical and royal minds.

Returning from Wesel after the negotiations, Sir Ralph Winwood had an
important interview at Arnheim with Prince Maurice, in which they
confidentially exchanged their opinions in regard to the Advocate, and
mutually confirmed their suspicions and their jealousies in regard to
that statesman.

The Ambassador earnestly thanked the Prince in the King's name for his
"careful and industrious endeavours for the maintenance of the truth of
religion, lively expressed in prosecuting the cause against Vorstius and
his adherents."

He then said:

"I am expressly commanded that his Majesty conferring the present
condition of affairs of this quarter of the world with those
advertisements he daily receives from his ministers abroad, together with
the nature and disposition of those men who have in their hands the
managing of all business in these foreign parts, can make no other
judgment than this.

"There is a general ligue and confederation complotted far the subversion
and ruin of religion upon the subsistence whereof his Majesty doth judge
the main welfare of your realms and of these Provinces solely to consist.

"Therefore his Majesty has given me charge out of the knowledge he has of
your great worth and sufficiency," continued Winwood, "and the confidence
he reposes in your faith and affection, freely to treat with you on these
points, and withal to pray you to deliver your opinion what way would be
the most compendious and the most assured to contrequarr these complots,
and to frustrate the malice of these mischievous designs."

The Prince replied by acknowledging the honour the King had vouchsafed to
do him in holding so gracious an opinion of him, w