functionaries and church officials in equal numbers. Thus should the
interests of religion and of education be maintained.

The compromise was successful enough during the war. External pressure
kept down theological passion, and there were as yet few symptoms of
schism in the dominant church. But there was to come a time when the
struggle between church and government was to break forth with an
intensity and to rage to an extent which no man at that moment could
imagine.

Towards the end of the century Henry IV. made peace with Spain. It was a
trying moment for the Provinces. Barneveld was again sent forth on an
embassy to the King. The cardinal point in his policy, as it had ever
been in that of William the Silent, was to maintain close friendship with
France, whoever might be its ruler. An alliance between that kingdom and
Spain would be instantaneous ruin to the Republic. With the French and
English sovereigns united with the Provinces, the cause of the
Reformation might triumph, the Spanish world-empire be annihilated,
national independence secured.

Henry assured the Ambassador that the treaty of Vervins was
indispensable, but that he would never desert his old allies. In proof of
this, although he had just bound himself to Spain to give no assistance
to the Provinces, open or secret, he would furnish them with thirteen
hundred thousand crowns, payable at intervals during four years. He was
under great obligations to his good friends the States, he said, and
nothing in the treaty forbade him to pay his debts.

It was at this period too that Barneveld was employed by the King to
attend to certain legal and other private business for which he professed
himself too poor at the moment to compensate him. There seems to have
been nothing in the usages of the time or country to make the
transaction, innocent in itself, in any degree disreputable. The King
promised at some future clay, when he should be more in funds, to pay him
a liberal fee. Barneveld, who a dozen years afterwards received 20,000
florins for his labour, professed that he would much rather have had one
thousand at the time.

Thence the Advocate, accompanied by his colleague, Justinus de Nassau,
proceeded to England, where they had many stormy interviews with
Elizabeth. The Queen swore with many an oath that she too would make
peace with Philip, recommended the Provinces to do the same thing with
submission to their ancient tyrant, and claimed from t