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The Commandant of Louvestein going to Heusden to raise recruits, Grotius' wife made a visit to his lady, and told her in conversation, that she was desirous of sending away a chest full of books, for her husband was so weak, it gave her great uneasiness to see him study with such application.
On the execution of Barneveldt, Grotius was condemned to imprisonment for life in the castle of Louvestein; but after nearly two years spent in the prison, his faithful wife planned and effected his escape. She had procured the privilege of sending him a chest of books, which occasionally passed and repassed, closely scrutinized.
However, not to endanger his health, she caused holes to be bored opposite to the part where his face was to be, to breathe at; and made him try if he could continue shut up in that confined posture as long as it would require to go from Louvestein to Gorcum. Finding it might be done, she resolved to seize the first favourable opportunity. It soon offered.
That literature is an ornament in prosperity, and a comfort in adverse fortune, has been often said by the best and wisest men; but no one experienced the truth of this assertion in a higher degree than Grotius, during his imprisonment at Louvestein.
One of the principal grounds on which they went, was, as we have already seen, his silence concerning the Trinity, in his book Of the truth of the Christian religion: but he has justified his method in such a manner, that this objection cannot be sustained by an equitable judge: he seems to have foreseen it; for, writing to his brother from his prison at Louvestein whilst he was composing this treatise in Dutch verse, "My intention, he says, is not to explain the doctrines of Christianity, but to make the profane, the Pagans, Jews, and Mahometans acknowledge the truth of the Christian religion, and afterwards have recourse to our sacred books to be informed of its tenets.
He tells us that when he was deprived of pen and ink he was got to the forty-ninth title, which is an invective against tyranny, that had a great relation to what passed at that time in Holland. On his removal to Louvestein he resumed this work, and he finished it at Paris.
Three years after the publication of his Stobæus, Grotius printed a work which may be looked upon as a continuation of it; being an extract of the Comedies and Tragedies of the Greeks: the text is translated into Latin verse. In this work he inserted only such maxims as he thought best worth preserving. He began it, as we have observed, when a prisoner at Louvestein.
The ministers of Charenton accepted the decisions of the Synod of Dort, and, in conformity with them, refused, when Grotius repaired to Paris, after his escape from Louvestein, to admit him into their communion.
Andrew, those of Louvestein and Crevecoeur: that the states should pay him the sum of twenty millions of livres for the charges of the war: that they should every year send him a solemn embassy, and present him with a golden medal, as an acknowledgment that they owed to him the preservation of that liberty which, by the assistance of his predecessors, they had formerly acquired: and that they should give entire satisfaction to the king of England: and he allowed them but ten days for the acceptance of these demands.
The determined refusal of the States had induced him to withdraw the demand; but he intrigued, through the agency of Beverning, with the leaders of the Louvestein party; and obtained a secret article, by which the states of Holland and West Friesland promised never to elect the prince of Orange for their stadtholder, nor suffer him to have the chief command of the army and navy.
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