s, who were at open war with the party called the
Contra-Remonstrants. The ostensible subjects were religious doctrines, but
the concealed one was a struggle between Pensionary Barnevelt, aided by
the French interest, and the Prince of Orange, supported by the English;
even to our own days the same opposite interests existed, and betrayed the
Republic, although religious doctrines had ceased to be the pretext.[B]

[Footnote A: I have more largely entered into the history of the party who
attempted to subvert the government in the reign of Elizabeth, and who
published their works under the assumed name of Martin Mar-prelate, than
had hitherto been done. In our domestic annals that event and those
personages are of some importance and curiosity; but were imperfectly
known to the popular writers of our history.--See "Quarrels of Authors,"
p. 296, _et seq_.]

[Footnote B: Pensionary Barnevelt, in his seventy-second year, was at
length brought to the block. Diodati, a divine of Geneva, made a miserable
pun the occasion; he said that "the _Canons_ of the Synod of Dort had
taken off the head of the advocate of Holland." This pun, says Brandt in
his curious "History of the Reformation," is very injurious to the Synod,
since it intimates that the Church loves blood. It never entered into the
mind of these divines that Barnevelt fell, not by the Synod, but by the
Orange and English party prevailing against the French. Lord Hardwicke, a
statesman and a man of letters, deeply conversant with secret and public
history, is a more able judge than the ecclesiastical historian or the
Swiss divine, who could see nothing in the Synod of Dort but what appeared
in it. It is in Lord Hardwicke's preface to Sir Dudley Carleton's
"Letters" that his lordship has made this important discovery.]

What was passing between the Dutch Prince and the Dutch Pensionary, was
much like what was taking place between the King of England and his own
subjects. James I. had to touch with a balancing hand the Catholics and
the Nonconformists,[A]--to play them one against another; but there was a
distinct end in their views. "James I.," says Barnet, "continued always
writing and talking against Popery, but acting for it." The King and the
bishops were probably more tolerant to monarchists and prelatists, than to
republicans and presbyters. When James got nothing but gunpowder and
Jesuits from Rome, he was willing enough to banish, or suppress, but the
Catholic f