cially interested in its welfare, and
there was an old and intimate friendship between Utrecht and Holland. It
would have been painful to him to see that splendid city in the control
of an ignorant mob, making use of religious problems, which they did not
comprehend, to plunder the property and take the lives of peaceful
citizens more comfortably housed than themselves.

He had neither suggested nor controlled the proceedings at Utrecht. On
the contrary, at an interview with the Prince and Count William on the
13th July, and in the presence of nearly thirty members of the general
assembly, he had submitted a plan for cashiering the enlisted soldiery
and substituting for them other troops, native-born, who should be sworn
in the usual form to obey the laws of the Union. The deputation from
Holland to Utrecht, according to his personal knowledge, had received no
instructions personal or oral to authorize active steps by the troops of
the Holland quota, but to abstain from them and to request the Prince
that they should not be used against the will and commands of the States
of Utrecht, whom they were bound by oath to obey so long as they were in
garrison there.

No man knew better than he whether the military oath which was called
new-fangled were a novelty or not, for he had himself, he said, drawn it
up thirty years before at command of the States-General by whom it was
then ordained. From that day to this he had never heard a pretence that
it justified anything not expressly sanctioned by the Articles of Union,
and neither the States of Holland nor those of Utrecht had made any
change in the oath. The States of Utrecht were sovereign within their own
territory, and in the time of peace neither the Prince of Orange without
their order nor the States-General had the right to command the troops in
their territory. The governor of a province was sworn to obey the laws of
the province and conform to the Articles of the General Union.

He was asked why he wrote the warning letter to Ledenberg, and why he was
so anxious that the letter should be burned; as if that were a deadly
offence.

He said that he could not comprehend why it should be imputed to him as a
crime that he wished in such turbulent times to warn so important a city
as Utrecht, the capital of his native province, against tumults,
disorders, and sudden assaults such as had often happened to her in times
past. As for the postscript requesting that the letter