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The Commissioners proceeded to the trial of Barneveldt. Uniformly protesting against the competency of the tribunal, Barneveldt defended himself with great firmness and ability.
Prince Maurice now almost openly avowed his pretensions to absolute sovereignty: he knew that his success wholly depended on the consent of Barneveldt. To seduce him to favor his designs he had recourse to the dowager princess of Orange, his mother-in-law, whose gentle character and exemplary conduct had procured her universal esteem and the influence naturally attendant on it.
He was a monk of the order of St. Francis, named John de Neyen, a native of Antwerp, and a person as well versed in court intrigue as in the studies of the cloister. He, in the first instance, repaired secretly to The Hague; and had several private interviews with Prince Maurice and Barneveldt, before he was regularly introduced to the states-general in his official character.
Besides these came two other men, side by side, perhaps in the same boat, of whom the world was like to hear much, from that time forward, and whose names are to be most solemnly linked together, so long as Netherland history shall endure; one, a fair-faced flaxen-haired boy of eighteen, the other a square- visaged, heavy-browed man of forty Prince Maurice and John of Olden- Barneveldt.
Barneveldt died on the scaffold by the hands of the executioner on the 13th of May, 1619, in the seventy-second year of his age. Grotius and Hoogerbeets were sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. Ledenberg committed suicide in his cell, sooner than brave the tortures which he anticipated at the hands of his enemies.
To justify this measure, reports were spread that Barneveldt intended to deliver it up to the Spaniards; and the ignorant, insensate, and ungrateful people swallowed the calumny. This and such minor efforts were, however, all subservient to the one grand object of utterly destroying, by a public proscription, the whole of the patriot party, now identified with Arminianism.
Religious contention did not so fully occupy Barneveldt but that he kept a constant eye on political concerns. He was well informed on all that passed in the English court; he knew the wants of James, and was aware of his efforts to bring about the marriage of his son with the infanta of Spain.
The Prince observed to her, that she had made no such application in behalf of her husband; "No," she replied, "I know my son is guilty, I therefore solicit his pardon; I knew my husband was innocent, I therefore solicited no pardon for him." On Monday morning, May 13, 1619, Barneveldt was informed that he was to be executed upon that day.
The Arminians were forthwith outlawed; a hundred ministers who refused to subscribe to the dictates of the Synod were banished; Hugo Grotius and Rombout Hoogerbeets were imprisoned for life at Loevestein; the body of the secretary Ledenberg, was hung; and Van Olden Barneveldt, the friend of William the Silent, was beheaded in his seventy-second year....
Many more pages than we are able to afford sentences might be devoted to the details of these iniquitous proceedings, and an account of their awful consummation. The pious heroism of Barneveldt was never excelled by any martyr to the most holy cause. He appealed to Maurice against the unjust sentence which condemned him to death; but he scorned to beg his life.
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