to bribe foreign agents withal by saying that his whole allowance for
extraordinary expenses and trouble in maintaining his diplomatic and
internal correspondence was exactly 500 florins yearly. He alluded to the
slanders circulated as to his wealth and its sources by those who envied
him for his position and hated him for his services.

"But I beg you to believe, My Lords," he continued, "that my property is
neither so great nor so small as some people represent it to be.

"In the year '75 I married my wife," he said. "I was pleased with her
person. I was likewise pleased with the dowry which was promptly paid
over to me, with firm expectation of increase and betterment . . . . I ac
knowledge that forty-three years ago my wife and myself had got together
so much of real and personal property that we could live honourably upon
it. I had at that time as good pay and practice as any advocate in the
courts which brought me in a good 4000 florins a year; there being but
eight advocates practising at the time, of whom I was certainly not the
one least employed. In the beginning of the year '77 I came into the
service of the city of Rotterdam as 'Pensionary. Upon my salary from that
town I was enabled to support my family, having then but two children.
Now I can clearly prove that between the years 1577 and 1616 inclusive I
have inherited in my own right or that of my wife, from our relatives,
for ourselves and our children by lawful succession, more than 400
Holland morgens of land (about 800 acres), more than 2000 florins yearly
of redeemable rents, a good house in the city of Delft, some houses in
the open country, and several thousand florins in ready money. I have
likewise reclaimed in the course of the past forty years out of the water
and swamps by dyking more than an equal number of acres to those
inherited, and have bought and sold property during the same period to
the value of 800,000 florins; having sometimes bought 100,000 florins'
worth and sold 60,000 of it for 160,000, and so on."

It was evident that the thrifty Advocate during his long life had
understood how to turn over his money, and it was not necessary to
imagine "waggon-loads of Spanish pistoles" and bribes on a gigantic scale
from the hereditary enemy in order to account for a reasonable opulence
on his part.

"I have had nothing to do with trade," he continued, "it having been the
custom of my ancestors to risk no money except where the plough go