t into the pulpit from which a Remonstrant had
just been expelled. The women of the place turned out with their distaffs
and beat them from the field. The garrison was called out, and there was
a pitched battle in the streets between soldiers, police officers, and
women, not much to the edification certainly of the Sabbath-loving
community on either side, the victory remaining with the ladies.

In short it would be impossible to exaggerate the rancour felt between
the different politico-religious parties. All heed for the great war now
raging in the outside world between the hostile elements of Catholicism
and Protestantism, embattled over an enormous space, was lost in the din
of conflict among the respective supporters of conditional and
unconditional damnation within the pale of the Reformed Church. The
earthquake shaking Europe rolled unheeded, as it was of old said to have
done at Cannae, amid the fierce shock of mortal foes in that narrow
field.

The respect for authority which had so long been the distinguishing
characteristic of the Netherlanders seemed to have disappeared. It was
difficult--now that the time-honoured laws and privileges in defence of
which, and of liberty of worship included in them, the Provinces had made
war forty years long had been trampled upon by military force--for those
not warmed by the fire of Gomarus to feel their ancient respect for the
magistracy. The magistracy at that moment seemed to mean the sword.

The Spanish government was inevitably encouraged by the spectacle thus
presented. We have seen the strong hopes entertained by the council at
Madrid, two years before the crisis now existing had occurred. We have
witnessed the eagerness with which the King indulged the dream of
recovering the sovereignty which his father had lost, and the vast
schemes which he nourished towards that purpose, founded on the internal
divisions which were reducing the Republic to impotence. Subsequent
events had naturally made him more sanguine than ever. There was now a
web of intrigue stretching through the Provinces to bring them all back
under the sceptre of Spain. The imprisonment of the great stipendiary,
the great conspirator, the man who had sold himself and was on the point
of selling his country, had not terminated those plots. Where was the
supposed centre of that intrigue? In the council of state of the
Netherlands, ever fiercely opposed to Barneveld and stuffed full of his
mortal enemies