, bound to the States by treaties of friendship and alliance,
and it would be a poor return for the many favours and the constant aid
bestowed by Henry IV. on the Republic, and an imbecile mode of avenging
his murder to help throw his kingdom into bloodshed and confusion before
his son was able to act for himself. At the same time he did his best to
cultivate amicable relations with the princes, while scrupulously
abstaining from any sympathy with their movements. "If the Prince and the
other gentlemen come to court," he wrote to Langerac, "you will treat
them with all possible caresses so far as can be done without disrespect
to the government."

While the British court was occupied with the foul details of the
Overbury murder and its consequences, a crime of a more commonplace
nature, but perhaps not entirely without influence on great political
events, had startled the citizens of the Hague. It was committed in the
apartments of the Stadholder and almost under his very eyes. A jeweller
of Amsterdam, one John van Wely, had come to the court of Maurice to lay
before him a choice collection of rare jewellery. In his caskets were
rubies and diamonds to the value of more than 100,000 florins, which
would be the equivalent of perhaps ten times as much to-day. In the
Prince's absence the merchant was received by a confidential groom of the
chambers, John of Paris by name, and by him, with the aid of a third
John, a soldier of his Excellency's guard, called Jean de la Vigne,
murdered on the spot. The deed was done in the Prince's private study.
The unfortunate jeweller was shot, and to make sure was strangled with
the blue riband of the Order of the Garter recently conferred upon
Maurice, and which happened to be lying conspicuously in the room.

The ruffians had barely time to take possession of the booty, to thrust
the body behind the tapestry of the chamber, and to remove the more
startling evidences of the crime, when the Prince arrived. He supped soon
afterwards in the same room, the murdered jeweller still lying behind the
arras. In the night the valet and soldier carried the corpse away from
the room, down the stairs, and through the great courtyard, where,
strange to say, no sentinels were on duty, and threw it into an ashpit.

A deed so bloody, audacious, and stupid was of course soon discovered and
the murderers arrested and executed. Nothing would remove the incident
from the catalogue of vulgar crimes, or even e