p the broad
staircase, heralding his arrival to the assembled magistracy. He
announced his intention of changing the whole board then and there. The
process was summary. The forty members were required to supply forty
other names, and the Prince added twenty more. From the hundred
candidates thus furnished the Prince appointed forty magistrates such as
suited himself. It is needless to say that but few of the old bench
remained, and that those few were devoted to the Synod, the
States-General, and the Stadholder. He furthermore announced that these
new magistrates were to hold office for life, whereas the board had
previously been changed every year. The cathedral church was at once
assigned for the use of the Contra-Remonstrants.

This process was soon to be repeated throughout the two insubordinate
provinces Utrecht and Holland.

The Prince was accused of aiming at the sovereignty of the whole country,
and one of his grief's against the Advocate was that he had begged the
Princess-Widow, Louise de Coligny, to warn her son-in-law of the dangers
of such ambition. But so long as an individual, sword in hand, could
exercise such unlimited sway over the whole municipal, and provincial
organization of the Commonwealth, it mattered but little whether he was
called King or Kaiser, Doge or Stadholder. Sovereign he was for the time
being at least, while courteously acknowledging the States-General as his
sovereign.

Less than three weeks afterwards the States-General issued a decree
formally disbanding the Waartgelders; an almost superfluous edict, as
they had almost ceased to exist, and there were none to resist the
measure. Grotius recommended complete acquiescence. Barneveld's soul
could no longer animate with courage a whole people.

The invitations which had already in the month of June been prepared for
the Synod to meet in the city of Dortor Dordtrecht-were now issued. The
States of Holland sent back the notification unopened, deeming it an
unwarrantable invasion of their rights that an assembly resisted by a
large majority of their body should be convoked in a city on their own
territory. But this was before the disbandment of the Waartgelders and
the general change of magistracies had been effected.

Earnest consultations were now held as to the possibility of devising
some means of compromise; of providing that the decisions of the Synod
should not be considered binding until after having been ratified by the
se