's sentence was approved by the States-General
on the second of July, 1619. The same day the Arminian Ministers who had
been detained at Dort, were banished, or imprisoned: they were deprived
of their employments, and the effects of several were confiscated. They
continued to assert the irregularity of this Council; and the Bishop of
Meaux observes, that they employed the same arguments which the
Protestants use against the Roman-Catholics concerning the Council of
Trent.

XI. The Prisoners were not brought to their trial till after the rising
of the Synod of Dort. Their confinement had caused great murmuring in
the Province of Holland: for not only all honest men were persuaded of
their innocence; but it was also evident that the sovereignty of the
province of Holland had been openly violated. On the 29th of August,
1618, under the first surprise that an event of this nature must
occasion, when it was mentioned in the Assembly of the States-General,
the Deputies of the Province of Holland expressed great concern; they
complained the rights of Holland had been invaded; adding, that they
would ask their constituents what was to be done in such a melancholy
and singular occurrence. The City of Rotterdam and some others made loud
complaints: They acknowledged that if the three Prisoners were guilty of
treason, or of unlawful correspondence with the Spaniards, they ought to
be prosecuted; but maintained that they could not be legally tried but
by the States of Holland, who alone were their Sovereigns. The Prince of
Orange and the States-General found no way of putting a stop to the
opposition of such Magistrates as were zealous for their Country, or
friends to the Prisoners, but by deposing them. Nothing now remained to
obstruct the Prince of Orange in his projects of revenge: The States of
Holland, not being in a situation to hinder these violences, unwillingly
left the management of this affair to the States-General: but were so
much persuaded of the injustice done them, and the invasion made on
their Sovereignty, that in the end of January 1619[86], notwithstanding
the change of Deputies, they passed a Decree, importing that what had
been done in the imprisonment of the Grand Pensionary, and the
Pensionaries of Rotterdam and Leyden, should not be made a precedent for
the future.

The States-General, desirous of making an end of this affair, on the
nineteenth of November, 1618, nominated twenty-six Commissioners, chose