hains for the
eight months of his imprisonment, were complacently mentioned as proofs
of exceptionable indulgence.

"Whereas the prisoner John of Barneveld," said the sentence, "without
being put to the torture and without fetters of iron, has confessed . . .
to having perturbed religion, greatly afflicted the Church of God, and
carried into practice exorbitant and pernicious maxims of State . . .
inculcating by himself and accomplices that each province had the right
to regulate religious affairs within its own territory, and that other
provinces were not to concern themselves therewith"--therefore and for
many other reasons he merited punishment.

He had instigated a protest by vote of three provinces against the
National Synod. He had despised the salutary advice of many princes and
notable personages. He had obtained from the King of Great Britain
certain letters furthering his own opinions, the drafts of which he had
himself suggested, and corrected and sent over to the States' ambassador
in London, and when written out, signed, and addressed by the King to the
States-General, had delivered them without stating how they had been
procured.

Afterwards he had attempted to get other letters of a similar nature from
the King, and not succeeding had defamed his Majesty as being a cause of
the troubles in the Provinces. He had permitted unsound theologians to be
appointed to church offices, and had employed such functionaries in
political affairs as were most likely to be the instruments of his own
purposes. He had not prevented vigorous decrees from being enforced in
several places against those of the true religion. He had made them
odious by calling them Puritans, foreigners, and "Flanderizers," although
the United Provinces had solemnly pledged to each other their lives,
fortunes, and blood by various conventions, to some of which the prisoner
was himself a party, to maintain the Reformed, Evangelical, religion
only, and to, suffer no change in it to be made for evermore.

In order to carry out his design and perturb the political state of the
Provinces he had drawn up and caused to be enacted the Sharp Resolution
of 4th August 1617. He had thus nullified the ordinary course of justice.
He had stimulated the magistrates to disobedience, and advised them to
strengthen themselves with freshly enlisted military companies. He had
suggested new-fangled oaths for the soldiers, authorizing them to refuse
obedience to th