Life and Death of John of Barneveld Part 49

Of the extinct volcano itself which once caused such devastation, and in which a great commonwealth was well-nigh swallowed up, little is left but slag and cinders. The past was made black and barren with them. Let us disturb them as little as possible.

The little English congregation remained at Leyden till toward the end of the Truce, thriving, orderly, respected, happy. They were witnesses to the tumultuous, disastrous, and tragical events which darkened the Republic in those later years, themselves un.o.bserved and unmolested. Not a syllable seems to remain on record of the views or emotions which may have been excited by those scenes in their minds, nor is there a trace left on the national records of the Netherlands of their protracted residence on the soil.

They got their living as best they might by weaving, printing, spinning, and other humble trades; they borrowed money on mortgages, they built houses, they made wills, and such births, deaths, and marriages as occurred among them were registered by the town-clerk.

And at last for a variety of reasons they resolved to leave the Netherlands. Perhaps the solution of the problem between Church and State in that country by the temporary subjection of State to Church may have encouraged them to realize a more complete theocracy, if a sphere of action could be found where the experiment might be tried without a severe battle against time-hallowed inst.i.tutions and vested rights.

Perhaps they were appalled by the excesses into which men of their own religious sentiments had been carried by theological and political pa.s.sion. At any rate depart they would; the larger half of the congregation remaining behind however till the pioneers should have broken the way, and in their own language "laid the stepping-stones."

They had thought of the lands beneath the Equator, Raleigh having recently excited enthusiasm by his poetical descriptions of Guiana. But the tropical scheme was soon abandoned. They had opened negotiations with the Stadholder and the States-General through Amsterdam merchants in regard to settling in New Amsterdam, and offered to colonize that country if a.s.sured of the protection of the United Provinces. Their pet.i.tion had been rejected. They had then turned their faces to their old master and their own country, applying to the Virginia Company for a land-patent, which they were only too happy to promise, and to the King for liberty of religion in the wilderness confirmed under his broad seal, which his Majesty of course refused. It was hinted however that James would connive at them and not molest them if they carried themselves peaceably. So they resolved to go without the seal, for, said their magistrate very wisely, "if there should be a purpose or desire to wrong them, a seal would not serve their turn though it were as broad as the house-floor."

Before they left Leyden, their pastor preached to them a farewell sermon, which for loftiness of spirit and breadth of vision has hardly a parallel in that age of intolerance. He laid down the principle that criticism of the Scriptures had not been exhausted merely because it had been begun; that the human conscience was of too subtle a nature to be imprisoned for ever in formulas however ingeniously devised; that the religious reformation begun a century ago was not completed; and that the Creator had not necessarily concluded all His revelations to mankind.

The words have long been familiar to students of history, but they can hardly be too often laid to heart.

n.o.ble words, worthy to have been inscribed over the altar of the first church to be erected by the departing brethren, words to bear fruit after centuries should go by. Had not the deeply injured and misunderstood Grotius already said, "If the trees we plant do not shade us, they will yet serve for our descendants?"

Yet it is pa.s.sing strange that the preacher of that sermon should be the recent champion of the Contra-Remonstrants in the great controversy; the man who had made himself so terrible to the pupils of the gentle and tolerant Arminius.

And thus half of that English congregation went down to Delftshaven, attended by the other half who were to follow at a later period with their beloved pastor. There was a pathetic leave-taking. Even many of the Hollanders, mere casual spectators, were in tears.

Robinson, kneeling on the deck of the little vessel, offered a prayer and a farewell. Who could dream that this departure of an almost nameless band of emigrants to the wilderness was an epoch in the world's history?

Yet these were the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, the founders of what was to be the mightiest republic of modern history, mighty and stable because it had been founded upon an idea.

They were not in search of material comfort and the chances of elevating their condition, by removing from an overpeopled country to an organized Commonwealth, offering a wide field for pauper labourers. Some of them were of good social rank and highest education, most of them in decent circ.u.mstances, none of them in absolute poverty. And a few years later they were to be joined by a far larger company with leaders and many brethren of ancient birth and landed possessions, men of "education, figure; and estate," all ready to convert property into cash and to place it in joint-stock, not as the basis of promising speculation, but as the foundation of a church.

It signifies not how much or how little one may sympathize with their dogma or their discipline now. To the fact that the early settlement of that wilderness was by self-sacrificing men of earnestness and faith, who were bent on "advancing the Gospel of Christ in remote parts of the world," in the midst of savage beasts, more savage men, and unimaginable difficulties and dangers, there can be little doubt that the highest forms of Western civilization are due. Through their provisional theocracy, the result of the independent church system was to establish the true purport of the Reformation, absolute religious equality. Civil and political equality followed as a matter of course.

Two centuries and a half have pa.s.sed away.

There are now some seventy or eighty millions of the English-speaking race on both sides the Atlantic, almost equally divided between the United Kingdom and the United Republic, and the departure of those outcasts of James has interest and significance for them all.

Most fitly then, as a distinguished American statesman has remarked, does that scene on board the little English vessel, with the English pastor uttering his farewell blessing to a handful of English exiles for conscience sake; depicted on canvas by eminent artists, now adorn the halls of the American Congress and of the British Parliament. Sympathy with one of the many imperishable bonds of union between the two great and scarcely divided peoples.

We return to Barneveld in his solitary prison.

CHAPTER XX.

Barneveld's Imprisonment--Ledenberg's Examination and Death-- Remonstrance of De Boississe--Aerssens admitted to the order of Knights--Trial of the Advocate--Barneveld's Defence--The States proclaim a Public Fast--Du Maurier's Speech before the a.s.sembly-- Barneveld's Sentence--Barneveld prepares for Death--Goes to Execution.

The Advocate had been removed within a few days after the arrest from the chamber in Maurice's apartments, where he had originally been confined, and was now in another building.

It was not a dungeon nor a jail. Indeed the commonplace and domestic character of the scenery in which these great events were transacted has in it something pathetic. There was and still remains a two-storied structure, then of modern date, immediately behind the antique hall of the old Counts within the Binnenhof. On the first floor was a courtroom of considerable extent, the seat of one of the chief tribunals of justice The story above was divided into three chambers with a narrow corridor on each side. The first chamber, on the north-eastern side, was appropriated for the judges when the state prisoners should be tried. In the next Hugo Grotius was imprisoned. In the third was Barneveld. There was a tower at the north-east angle of the building, within which a winding and narrow staircase of stone led up to the corridor and so to the prisoners'

apartments. Rombout Hoogerbeets was confined in another building.

As the Advocate, bent with age and a life of hard work, and leaning on his staff, entered the room appropriated to him, after toiling up the steep staircase, he observed--

"This is the Admiral of Arragon's apartment."

It was true. Eighteen years before, the conqueror of Nieuwpoort had a.s.signed this lodging to the chief prisoner of war in that memorable victory over the Spaniards, and now Maurice's faithful and trusted counsellor at that epoch was placed in durance here, as the result of the less glorious series of victories which had just been achieved.

It was a room of moderate dimensions, some twenty-five feet square, with a high vaulted roof and decently furnished. Below and around him in the courtyard were the scenes of the Advocate's life-long and triumphant public services. There in the opposite building were the windows of the beautiful "Hall of Truce," with its sumptuous carvings and gildings, its sculptures and portraits, where he had negotiated with the representatives of all the great powers of Christendom the famous Treaty which had suspended the war of forty years, and where he was wont almost daily to give audience to the envoys of the greatest sovereigns or the least significant states of Europe and Asia, all of whom had been ever solicitous of his approbation and support.

Farther along in the same building was the a.s.sembly room of the States-General, where some of the most important affairs of the Republic and of Europe had for years been conducted, and where he had been so indispensable that, in the words of a contemporary who loved him not, "absolutely nothing could be transacted in his absence, all great affairs going through him alone."

There were two dull windows, closely barred, looking northward over an irregular a.s.semblage of tile-roofed houses and chimney-stacks, while within a stone's throw to the west, but unseen, was his own elegant mansion on the Voorhout, surrounded by flower gardens and shady pleasure grounds, where now sat his aged wife and her children all plunged in deep affliction.

He was allowed the attendance of a faithful servant, Jan Franken by name, and a sentinel stood constantly before his door. His papers had been taken from him, and at first he was deprived of writing materials.

He had small connection with the outward world. The news of the munic.i.p.al revolution which had been effected by the Stadholder had not penetrated to his solitude, but his wife was allowed to send him fruit from their garden. One day a basket of fine saffron pears was brought to him. On slicing one with a knife he found a portion of a quill inside it. Within the quill was a letter on thinnest paper, in minutest handwriting in Latin. It was to this effect.

"Don't rely upon the States of Holland, for the Prince of Orange has changed the magistracies in many cities. Dudley Carleton is not your friend."

A sergeant of the guard however, before bringing in these pears, had put a couple of them in his pocket to take home to his wife. The letter, copies of which perhaps had been inserted for safety in several of them, was thus discovered and the use of this ingenious device prevented for the future.

Secretary Ledenberg, who had been brought to the Hague in the early days of September, was the first of the prisoners subjected to examination. He was much depressed at the beginning of it, and is said to have exclaimed with many sighs, "Oh Barneveld, Barneveld, what have you brought us to!"

He confessed that the Waartgelders at Utrecht had been enlisted on notification by the Utrecht deputies in the Hague with knowledge of Barneveld, and in consequence of a resolution of the States in order to prevent internal tumults. He said that the Advocate had advised in the previous month of March a request to the Prince not to come to Utrecht; that the communication of the message, in regard to disbanding the Waartgelders, to his Excellency had been postponed after the deputies of the States of Holland had proposed a delay in that disbandment; that those deputies had come to Utrecht of their own accord; . . . . that they had judged it possible to keep everything in proper order in Utrecht if the garrison in the city paid by Holland were kept quiet, and if the States of Utrecht gave similar orders to the Waartgelders; for they did not believe that his Excellency would bring in troops from the outside.

He said that he knew nothing of a new oath to be demanded of the garrison. He stated that the Advocate, when at Utrecht, had exhorted the States, according to his wont, to maintain their liberties and privileges, representing to them that the right to decide on the Synod and the Waartgelders belonged to them. Lastly, he denied knowing who was the author of The Balance, except by common report.

Now these statements hardly amounted to a confession of abominable and unpardonable crimes by Ledenberg, nor did they establish a charge of high-treason and corrupt correspondence with the enemy against Barneveld.

It is certain that the extent of the revelations seemed far from satisfactory to the accusers, and that some pressure would be necessary in order to extract anything more conclusive. Lieutenant Nythof told Grotius that Ledenberg had accordingly been threatened with torture, and that the executioner had even handled him for that purpose. This was however denied by the judges of instruction who had been charged with the preliminary examination.

That examination took place on the 27th September. After it had been concluded, Ledenberg prayed long and earnestly on returning to prison. He then entrusted a paper written in French to his son Joost, a boy of eighteen, who did not understand that language. The youth had been allowed to keep his father company in his confinement, and slept in the same room.

The next night but one, at two o'clock, Joost heard his father utter a deep groan. He was startled, groped in the darkness towards his bed and felt his arm, which was stone cold. He spoke to him and received no answer. He gave the alarm, the watch came in with lights, and it was found that Ledenberg had given himself two mortal wounds in the abdomen with a penknife and then cut his throat with a table-knife which he had secreted, some days before, among some papers.

The paper in French given to his son was found to be to this effect.

"I know that there is an inclination to set an example in my person, to confront me with my best friends, to torture me, afterwards to convict me of contradictions and falsehoods as they say, and then to found an ignominious sentence upon points and trifles, for this it will be necessary to do in order to justify the arrest and imprisonment. To escape all this I am going to G.o.d by the shortest road. Against a dead man there can be p.r.o.nounced no sentence of confiscation of property. Done 17th September (o. s.) 1618."

The family of the unhappy gentleman begged his body for decent burial.

The request was refused. It was determined to keep the dead secretary above ground and in custody until he could be tried, and, if possible, convicted and punished. It was to be seen whether it were so easy to baffle the power of the States-General, the Synod, and the Stadholder, and whether "going to G.o.d by the shortest road" was to save a culprit's carca.s.s from ignominy, and his property from confiscation.

The French amba.s.sadors, who had been unwearied in their endeavour to restore harmony to the distracted Commonwealth before the arrest of the prisoners, now exerted themselves to throw the s.h.i.+eld of their sovereign's friends.h.i.+p around the ill.u.s.trious statesman and his fellow-sufferers.

"It is with deepest sorrow," said de Boississe, "that I have witnessed the late hateful commotions. Especially from my heart I grieve for the arrest of the Seignior Barneveld, who with his discretion and wise administration for the past thirty years has so drawn the hearts of all neighbouring princes to himself, especially that of the King my master, that on taking up my pen to apprize him of these events I am gravely embarra.s.sed, fearing to infringe on the great respect due to your Mightinesses or against the honour and merits of the Seignior Barneveld.

. . . My Lords, take heed to your situation, for a great discontent is smouldering among your citizens. Until now, the Union has been the chief source of your strength. And I now fear that the King my master, the adviser of your renowned Commonwealth, maybe offended that you have taken this resolution after consulting with others, and without communicating your intention to his amba.s.sador . . . . It is but a few days that an open edict was issued testifying to the fidelity of Barneveld, and can it be possible that within so short a time you have discovered that you have been deceived? I summon you once more in the name of the King to lay aside all pa.s.sion, to judge these affairs without partiality, and to inform me what I am to say to the King. Such very conflicting accounts are given of these transactions that I must beg you to confide to me the secret of the affair. The wisest in the land speak so strongly of these proceedings that it will be no wonder if the King my master should give me orders to take the Seignior Barneveld under his protection. Should this prove to be the case, your Lords.h.i.+ps will excuse my course . . . I beg you earnestly in your wisdom not to give cause of offence to neighbouring princes, especially to my sovereign, who wishes from his heart to maintain your dignity and interests and to a.s.sure you of his friends.h.i.+p."

The language was vigorous and sincere, but the Amba.s.sador forgot that the France of to-day was not the France of yesterday; that Louis XIII. was not Henry IV.; that it was but a cheerful fiction to call the present King the guide and counsellor of the Republic, and that, distraught as she was by the present commotions, her condition was strength and tranquillity compared with the apparently decomposing and helpless state of the once great kingdom of France. De Boississe took little by his demonstration.

On the 12th December both de Boississe and du Maurier came before the States-General once more, and urged a speedy and impartial trial for the ill.u.s.trious prisoners. If they had committed acts of treason and rebellion, they deserved exemplary punishment, but the amba.s.sadors warned the States-General with great earnestness against the dangerous doctrine of constructive treason, and of confounding acts dictated by violence of party spirit at an excited period with the crime of high-treason against the sovereignty of the State.

"Barneveld so honourable," they said, "for his immense and long continued services has both this Republic and all princes and commonwealths for his witnesses. It is most difficult to believe that he has attempted the destruction of his fatherland, for which you know that he has toiled so faithfully."

They admitted that so grave charges ought now to be investigated. "To this end," said the amba.s.sadors, "you ought to give him judges who are neither suspected nor impa.s.sioned, and who will decide according to the laws of the land, and on clear and undeniable evidence . . . . So doing you will show to the whole world that you are worthy to possess and to administer this Commonwealth to whose government G.o.d has called you."