"We have no commission whatever to lay down the law," said van Leeuwen.
"Your worship will write whatever you like."
While he was writing, Anthony Walaeus came in, a preacher and professor
of Middelburg, a deputy to the Synod of Dordtrecht, a learned and amiable
man, sent by the States-General to minister to the prisoner on this
supreme occasion; and not unworthy to be thus selected.
The Advocate, not knowing him, asked him why he came.
"I am not here without commission," said the clergyman. "I come to
console my lord in his tribulation."
"I am a man," said Barneveld; "have come to my present age, and I know
how to console myself. I must write, and have now other things to do."
The preacher said that he would withdraw and return when his worship was
at leisure.
"Do as you like," said the Advocate, calmly going on with his writing.
When the letter was finished, it was sent to the judges for their
inspection, by whom it was at once forwarded to the family mansion in the
Voorhout, hardly a stone's throw from the prison chamber.
Thus it ran:
"Very dearly beloved wife, children, sons-in-law, and grandchildren,
I greet you altogether most affectionately. I receive at this moment the
very heavy and sorrowful tidings that I, an old man, for all my services
done well and faithfully to the Fatherland for so many years (after
having performed all respectful and friendly offices to his Excellency
the Prince with upright affection so far as my official duty and vocation
would permit, shown friendship to many people of all sorts, and wittingly
injured no man), must prepare myself to die to-morrow.
"I console myself in God the Lord, who knows all hearts, and who will
judge all men. I beg you all together to do the same. I have steadily
and faithfully served My Lords the States of Holland and their nobles and
cities. To the States of Utrecht as sovereigns of my own Fatherland I
have imparted at their request upright and faithful counsel, in order to
save them from tumults of the populace, and from the bloodshed with which
they had so long been threatened. I had the same views for the cities of
Holland in order that every one might be protected and no one injured.
"Live together in love and peace. Pray for me to Almighty God, who will
graciously hold us all in His holy keeping.
"From my chamber of sorrow, the 12th May 1619.
"Your very dear husband, father, father-in-law, and grandfather,
"JOHN OF BARNEVELD."
It was thought strange that the judges should permit so simple and clear
a statement, an argument in itself, to be forwarded. The theory of his
condemnation was to rest before the public on his confessions of guilt,
and here in the instant of learning the nature of the sentence in a few
hours to be pronounced upon him he had in a few telling periods declared
his entire innocence. Nevertheless the letter had been sent at once to
its address.
So soon as this sad business had been disposed of, Anthony Walaeus
returned. The Advocate apologized to the preacher for his somewhat
abrupt greeting on his first appearance. He was much occupied and did
not know him, he said, although he had often heard of him. He begged
him, as well as the provost-marshal, to join him at supper, which was
soon brought.
Barneveld ate with his usual appetite, conversed cheerfully on various
topics, and pledged the health of each of his guests in a glass of beer.
Contrary to his wont he drank at that repast no wine. After supper he
went out into the little ante-chamber and called his servant, asking him
how he had been faring. Now John Franken had just heard with grief
unspeakable the melancholy news of his master's condemnation from two
soldiers of the guard, who had been sent by the judges to keep additional
watch over the prisoner. He was however as great a stoic as his master,
and with no outward and superfluous manifestations of woe had simply
implored the captain-at-arms, van der Meulen, to intercede with the
judges that he might be allowed to stay with his lord to the last.
Meantime he had been expressly informed that he was to say nothing to the
Advocate in secret, and that his master was not to speak to him in a low
tone nor whisper in his ear.
When the Advocate came out into the ante-chamber and looking over his
shoulder saw the two soldiers he at once lowered his voice.
"Hush-speak low," he whispered; "this is too cruel." John then informed
him of van der Meulen's orders, and that the soldiers had also been
instructed to look to it sharply that no word was exchanged between
master and man except in a loud voice.
"Is it possible," said the Advocate, "that so close an inspection is held
over me in these last hours? Can I not speak a word or two in freedom?
This is a needless mark of disrespect."
The soldiers begged him not to take their conduct amiss as they were
obliged strictly to obey orders.
He returned to his chamber, sat down in his chair, and begged Walaeus to
go on his behalf to Prince Maurice.
"Tell his Excellency," said he, "that I have always served him with
upright affection so far as my office, duties, and principles permitted.
If I, in the discharge of my oath and official functions, have ever done
anything contrary to his views, I hope that he will forgive it, and that
he will hold my children in his gracious favour."
It was then ten o'clock. The preacher went downstairs and crossed the
courtyard to the Stadholder's apartments, where he at once gained
admittance.
Maurice heard the message with tears in his eyes, assuring Walaeus that
he felt deeply for the Advocate's misfortunes. He had always had much
affection for him, he said, and had often warned him against his mistaken
courses. Two things, however, had always excited his indignation. One
was that Barneveld had accused him of aspiring to sovereignty. The other
that he had placed him in such danger at Utrecht. Yet he forgave him
all. As regarded his sons, so long as they behaved themselves well they
might rely on his favour.
As Walaeus was about to leave the apartment, the Prince called him back.
"Did he say anything of a pardon?" he asked, with some eagerness.
"My Lord," answered the clergyman, "I cannot with truth say that I
understood him to make any allusion to it."
Walaeus returned immediately to the prison chamber and made his report of
the interview. He was unwilling however to state the particulars of the
offence which Maurice declared himself to have taken at the acts of the
Advocate.
But as the prisoner insisted upon knowing, the clergyman repeated the
whole conversation.
"His Excellency has been deceived in regard to the Utrecht business,"
said Barneveld, "especially as to one point. But it is true that I had
fear and apprehension that he aspired to the sovereignty or to more
authority in the country. Ever since the year 1600 I have felt this fear
and have tried that these apprehensions might be rightly understood."
While Walaeus had been absent, the Reverend Jean la Motte (or Lamotius)
and another clergyman of the Hague had come to the prisoner's apartment.
La Motte could not look upon the Advocate's face without weeping, but the
others were more collected. Conversation now ensued among the four; the
preachers wishing to turn the doomed statesman's thought to the
consolations of religion.
But it was characteristic of the old lawyer's frame of mind that even now
he looked at the tragical position in which he found himself from a
constitutional and controversial point of view. He was perfectly calm
and undaunted at the awful fate so suddenly and unexpectedly opened
before his eyes, but he was indignant at what he esteemed the ignorance,
injustice, and stupidity of the sentence to be pronounced against him.
"I am ready enough to die," he said to the three clergymen, "but I cannot
comprehend why I am to die. I have done nothing except in obedience to
the laws and privileges of the land and according to my oath, honour, and
conscience."
"These judges," he continued, "come in a time when other maxims prevail
in the State than those of my day. They have no right therefore to sit
in judgment upon me."
The clergymen replied that the twenty-four judges who had tried the case
were no children and were conscientious men; that it was no small thing
to condemn a man, and that they would have to answer it before the
Supreme Judge of all.
"I console myself," he answered, "in the Lord my God, who knows all
hearts and shall judge all men. God is just.
"They have not dealt with me," he continued, "as according to law and
justice they were bound to deal. They have taken away from me my own
sovereign lords and masters and deposed them. To them alone I was
responsible. In their place they have put many of my enemies who were
never before in the government, and almost all of whom are young men who
have not seen much or read much. I have seen and read much, and know
that from such examples no good can follow. After my death they will
learn for the first time what governing means."
"The twenty-four judges are nearly all of them my enemies. What they
have reproached me with, I have been obliged to hear. I have appealed
against these judges, but it has been of no avail. They have examined me
in piecemeal, not in statesmanlike fashion. The proceedings against
me have been much too hard. I have frequently requested to see the notes
of my examination as it proceeded, and to confer upon it with aid and
counsel of friends, as would be the case in all lands governed by law.
The request was refused. During this long and wearisome affliction and
misery I have not once been allowed to speak to my wife and children.
These are indecent proceedings against a man seventy-two years of age,
who has served his country faithfully for three-and-forty years. I bore
arms with the volunteers at my own charges at the siege of Haarlem and
barely escaped with life."
It was not unnatural that the aged statesman's thoughts should revert in
this supreme moment to the heroic scenes in which he had been an actor
almost a half-century before. He could not but think with bitterness of
those long past but never forgotten days when he, with other patriotic
youths, had faced the terrible legions of Alva in defence of the
Fatherland, at a time when the men who were now dooming him to a
traitor's death were unborn, and who, but for his labours, courage,
wisdom, and sacrifices, might have never had a Fatherland to serve,
or a judgment-seat on which to pronounce his condemnation.
Not in a spirit of fretfulness, but with disdainful calm, he criticised
and censured the proceedings against himself as a violation of the laws
of the land and of the first principles of justice, discussing them as
lucidly and steadily as if they had been against a third person.
The preachers listened, but had nothing to say. They knew not of such
matters, they said, and had no instructions to speak of them. They had
been sent to call him to repentance for his open and hidden sins and to
offer the consolations of religion.
"I know that very well," he said, "but I too have something to say
notwithstanding." The conversation then turned upon religious topics,
and the preachers spoke of predestination.
"I have never been able to believe in the matter of high predestination,"
said the Advocate. "I have left it in the hands of God the Lord. I hold
that a good Christian man must believe that he through God's grace and by
the expiation of his sin through our Redeemer Jesus Christ is predestined
to be saved, and that this belief in his salvation, founded alone on
God's grace and the merits of our Redeemer Jesus Christ, comes to him
through the same grace of God. And if he falls into great sins, his firm
hope and confidence must be that the Lord God will not allow him to
continue in them, but that, through prayer for grace and repentance, he
will be converted from evil and remain in the faith to the end of his
life."
These feelings, he said, he had expressed fifty-two years before to three
eminent professors of theology in whom he confided, and they had assured
him that he might tranquilly continue in such belief without examining
further. "And this has always been my creed," he said.
The preachers replied that faith is a gift of God and not given to all
men, that it must be given out of heaven to a man before he could be
saved. Hereupon they began to dispute, and the Advocate spoke so
earnestly and well that the clergymen were astonished and sat for
a time listening to him in silence.
He asked afterwards about the Synod, and was informed that its decrees
had not yet been promulgated, but that the Remonstrants had been
condemned.
"It is a pity," said he. "One is trying to act on the old Papal system,
but it will never do. Things have gone too far. As to the Synod, if My
Lords the States of Holland had been heeded there would have been first a
provincial synod and then a national one."--"But," he added, looking the
preachers in the face, "had you been more gentle with each other, matters
would not have taken so high a turn. But you have been too fierce one
against the other, too full of bitter party spirit."
They replied that it was impossible for them to act against their
conscience and the supreme authority. And then they asked him if there
was nothing that troubled him in, his conscience in the matters for which
he must die; nothing for which he repented and sorrowed, and for which he
would call upon God for mercy.
"This I know well," he said, "that I have never willingly done wrong to
any man. People have been ransacking my letters to Caron--confidential
ones written several years ago to an old friend when I was troubled and
seeking for counsel and consolation. It is hard that matter of
impeachment against me to-day should be sought for thus."
And then he fell into political discourse again on the subject of the
Waartgelders and the State rights, and the villainous pasquils and libels
that had circulated so long through the country.
"I have sometimes spoken hastily, I confess," he said; "but that was
when I was stung by the daily swarm of infamous and loathsome pamphlets,
especially those directed against my sovereign masters the States of
Holland. That I could not bear. Old men cannot well brush such things
aside. All that was directly aimed at me in particular I endeavoured to
overcome with such patience as I could muster. The disunion and mutual
enmity in the country have wounded me to the heart. I have made use
of all means in my power to accommodate matters, to effect with all
gentleness a mutual reconciliation. I have always felt a fear lest
the enemy should make use of our internal dissensions to strike a blow
against us. I can say with perfect truth that ever since the year '77
I have been as resolutely and unchangeably opposed to the Spaniards and
their adherents, and their pretensions over these Provinces, as any man
in the world, no one excepted, and as ready to sacrifice property and
shed my blood in defence of the Fatherland. I have been so devoted to
the service of the country that I have not been able to take the
necessary care of my own private affairs."
So spoke the great statesman in the seclusion of his prison, in the
presence of those clergymen whom he respected, at a supreme moment, when,
if ever, a man might be expected to tell the truth. And his whole life
which belonged to history, and had been passed on the world's stage
before the eyes of two generations of spectators, was a demonstration of
the truth of his words.
But Burgomaster van Berk knew better. Had he not informed the twenty-
four commissioners that, twelve years before, the Advocate wished to
subject the country to Spain, and that Spinola had drawn a bill of
exchange for 100,000 ducats as a compensation for his efforts?
It was eleven o'clock. Barneveld requested one of the brethren to say an
evening prayer. This was done by La Motte, and they were then requested
to return by three or four o'clock next morning. They had been directed,
they said, to remain with him all night. "That is unnecessary," said the
Advocate, and they retired.
His servant then helped his master to undress, and he went to bed as
usual. Taking off his signet-ring, he gave it to John Franken.
"For my eldest son," he said.
The valet sat down at the head of his bed in order that his master might
speak to him before he slept. But the soldiers ordered him away and
compelled him to sit in a distant part of the room.
An hour after midnight, the Advocate having been unable to lose himself,
his servant observed that Isaac, one of the soldiers, was fast asleep.
He begged the other, Tilman Schenk by name, to permit him some private
words with his master. He had probably last messages, he thought, to
send to his wife and children, and the eldest son, M. de Groeneveld,
would no doubt reward him well for it. But the soldier was obstinate in
obedience to the orders of the judges.
Barneveld, finding it impossible to sleep, asked his servant to read to
him from the Prayer-book. The soldier called in a clergyman however,
another one named Hugo Bayerus, who had been sent to the prison, and who
now read to him the Consolations of the Sick. As he read, he made
exhortations and expositions, which led to animated discussion, in which
the Advocate expressed himself with so much fervour and eloquence that
all present were astonished, and the preacher sat mute a half-hour long
at the bed-side.
"Had there been ten clergymen," said the simple-hearted sentry to the
valet, "your master would have enough to say to all of them."
Barneveld asked where the place had been prepared in which he was to die.
"In front of the great hall, as I understand," said Bayerus, "but I don't
know the localities well, having lived here but little."
"Have you heard whether my Grotius is to die, and Hoogerbeets also?" he
asked?