Holland, he had been called at the comparatively early age of twenty-nine
to the important post of Chief Pensionary of Rotterdam. So long as
William the Silent lived, that great prince was all in all to his
country, and Barneveld was proud and happy to be among the most trusted
and assiduous of his counsellors.

When the assassination of William seemed for an instant to strike the
Republic with paralysis, Barneveld was foremost among the statesmen of
Holland to spring forward and help to inspire it with renewed energy.

The almost completed negotiations for conferring the sovereignty, not of
the Confederacy, but of the Province of Holland, upon the Prince had been
abruptly brought to an end by his death. To confer that sovereign
countship on his son Maurice, then a lad of eighteen and a student at
Leyden, would have seemed to many at so terrible a crisis an act of
madness, although Barneveld had been willing to suggest and promote the
scheme. The confederates under his guidance soon hastened however to lay
the sovereignty, and if not the sovereignty, the protectorship, of all
the provinces at the feet first of England and then of France.

Barneveld was at the head of the embassy, and indeed was the
indispensable head of all important, embassies to each of those two
countries throughout all this portion of his career. Both monarchs
refused, almost spurned, the offered crown in which was involved a war
with the greatest power in the world, with no compensating dignity or
benefit, as it was thought, beside.

Then Elizabeth, although declining the sovereignty, promised assistance
and sent the Earl of Leicester as governor-general at the head of a
contingent of English troops. Precisely to prevent the consolidation thus
threatened of the Provinces into one union, a measure which had been
attempted more than once in the Burgundian epoch, and always successfully
resisted by the spirit of provincial separatism, Barneveld now proposed
and carried the appointment of Maurice of Nassau to the stadholdership of
Holland. This was done against great opposition and amid fierce debate.
Soon afterwards Barneveld was vehemently urged by the nobles and regents
of the cities of Holland to accept the post of Advocate of that province.
After repeatedly declining the arduous and most responsible office, he
was at last induced to accept it. He did it under the remarkable
condition that in case any negotiation should be undertaken for the
pur