icestrian projects, "Leycestrana consilia"--for the Earl's plots to
gain possession of Leyden and Utrecht had never been forgotten--while the
Prince and those who acted with him asserted distinctly that it was the
purpose of Barneveld to pave the way for restoring the Spanish
sovereignty and the Popish religion so soon as the Truce had reached its
end?
Spain and Orange. Nothing for a faction fight could be neater. Moreover
the two words rhyme in Netherlandish, which is the case in no other
language, "Spanje-Oranje." The sword was drawn and the banner unfurled.
The "Mud Beggars" of the Hague, tired of tramping to Ryswyk of a Sunday
to listen to Henry Rosaeus, determined on a private conventicle in the
capital. The first barn selected was sealed up by the authorities, but
Epoch Much, book-keeper of Prince Maurice, then lent them his house. The
Prince declared that sooner than they should want a place of assembling
he would give them his own. But he meant that they should have a public
church to themselves, and that very soon. King James thoroughly approved
of all these proceedings. At that very instant such of his own subjects
as had seceded from the Established Church to hold conventicles in barns
and breweries and backshops in London were hunted by him with bishops'
pursuivants and other beagles like vilest criminals, thrown into prison
to rot, or suffered to escape from their Fatherland into the
trans-Atlantic wilderness, there to battle with wild beasts and savages,
and to die without knowing themselves the fathers of a more powerful
United States than the Dutch Republic, where they were fain to seek in
passing a temporary shelter. He none the less instructed his envoy at the
Hague to preach the selfsame doctrines for which the New England Puritans
were persecuted, and importunately and dictatorially to plead the cause
of those Hollanders who, like Bradford and Robinson, Winthrop and Cotton,
maintained the independence of the Church over the State.
Logic is rarely the quality on which kings pride themselves, and
Puritanism in the Netherlands, although under temporary disadvantage at
the Hague, was evidently the party destined to triumph throughout the
country. James could safely sympathize therefore in Holland with what he
most loathed in England, and could at the same time feed fat the grudge
he owed the Advocate. The calculations of Barneveld as to the respective
political forces of the Commonwealth seem to have
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