e was howled at by the strictly pious, while he earned still deeper
opprobrium by daring to advocate religious toleration: In face of the
endless horrors inflicted by the Spanish Inquisition upon his native
land, he had the hardihood--although a determined Protestant himself--to
claim for Roman Catholics the right to exercise their religion in the
free States on equal terms with those of the reformed faith. "Anyone,"
said his enemies, "could smell what that meant who had not a wooden
nose." In brief, he was a liberal Christian, both in theory and practice,
and he nobly confronted in consequence the wrath of bigots on both sides.
At a later period the most zealous Calvinists called him Pope John, and
the opinions to which he was to owe such appellations had already been
formed in his mind.

After completing his very thorough legal studies, he had practised as an
advocate in Holland and Zeeland. An early defender of civil and religious
freedom, he had been brought at an early day into contact with William
the Silent, who recognized his ability. He had borne a snap-hance on his
shoulder as a volunteer in the memorable attempt to relieve Haarlem, and
was one of the few survivors of that bloody night. He had stood outside
the walls of Leyden in company of the Prince of Orange when that
magnificent destruction of the dykes had taken place by which the city
had been saved from the fate impending over it. At a still more recent
period we have seen him landing from the gun-boats upon the Kowenstyn, on
the fatal 26th May. These military adventures were, however, but brief
and accidental episodes in his career, which was that of a statesman and
diplomatist. As pensionary of Rotterdam, he was constantly a member of
the General Assembly, and had already begun to guide the policy of the
new commonwealth. His experience was considerable, and he was now in the
high noon of his vigour and his usefulness.

He was a man of noble and imposing presence, with thick hair pushed from
a broad forehead rising dome-like above a square and massive face; a
strong deeply-coloured physiognomy, with shaggy brow, a chill blue eye,
not winning but commanding, high cheek bones, a solid, somewhat scornful
nose, a firm mouth and chin, enveloped in a copious brown beard; the
whole head not unfitly framed in the stiff formal ruff of the period; and
the tall stately figure well draped in magisterial robes of velvet and
sable--such was John of Olden-Barneveld.