.

"The reasons they had for this you will see from the sentence, which will
doubtless be printed, and which I will send you.

"The wife of the aforesaid Barneveld and also some of his sons and
sons-in-law or other friends have never presented any supplication for
his pardon, but till now have vehemently demanded that law and justice
should be done to him, and have daily let the report run through the
people that he would soon come out. They also planted a may-pole before
their house adorned with garlands and ribbands, and practised other
jollities and impertinences, while they ought to have conducted
themselves in a humble and lowly fashion. This is no proper manner of
behaving, and moreover not a practical one to move the judges to any
favour even if they had been thereto inclined."

The sentence was printed and sent to the separate provinces. It was
accompanied by a declaration of the States-General that they had received
information from the judges of various points, not mentioned in the
sentence, which had been laid to the charge of the late Advocate, and
which gave much reason to doubt whether he had not perhaps turned his
eyes toward the enemy. They could not however legally give judgment to
that effect without a sharper investigation, which on account of his
great age and for other reasons it was thought best to spare him.

A meaner or more malignant postscript to a state paper recounting the
issue of a great trial it would be difficult to imagine. The first
statesman of the country had just been condemned and executed on a
narrative, without indictment of any specified crime. And now, by a kind
of apologetic after-thought, six or eight individuals calling themselves
the States-General insinuated that he had been looking towards the enemy,
and that, had they not mercifully spared him the rack, which is all that
could be meant by their sharper investigation, he would probably have
confessed the charge.

And thus the dead man's fame was blackened by those who had not hesitated
to kill him, but had shrunk from enquiring into his alleged crime.

Not entirely without semblance of truth did Grotius subsequently say that
the men who had taken his life would hardly have abstained from torturing
him if they had really hoped by so doing to extract from him a confession
of treason.

The sentence was sent likewise to France, accompanied with a statement
that Barneveld had been guilty of unpardonable crimes which had