nt a place of assembling
he would give them his own. But he meant that they should have a public
church to themselves, and that very soon. King James thoroughly approved
of all these proceedings. At that very instant such of his own subjects
as had seceded from the Established Church to hold conventicles in barns
and breweries and backshops in London were hunted by him with bishops'
pursuivants and other beagles like vilest criminals, thrown into prison
to rot, or suffered to escape from their Fatherland into the
trans-Atlantic wilderness, there to battle with wild beasts and savages,
and to die without knowing themselves the fathers of a more powerful
United States than the Dutch Republic, where they were fain to seek in
passing a temporary shelter. He none the less instructed his envoy at the
Hague to preach the selfsame doctrines for which the New England Puritans
were persecuted, and importunately and dictatorially to plead the cause
of those Hollanders who, like Bradford and Robinson, Winthrop and Cotton,
maintained the independence of the Church over the State.

Logic is rarely the quality on which kings pride themselves, and
Puritanism in the Netherlands, although under temporary disadvantage at
the Hague, was evidently the party destined to triumph throughout the
country. James could safely sympathize therefore in Holland with what he
most loathed in England, and could at the same time feed fat the grudge
he owed the Advocate. The calculations of Barneveld as to the respective
political forces of the Commonwealth seem to have been to a certain
extent defective.

He allowed probably too much weight to the Catholic party as a motive
power at that moment, and he was anxious both from that consideration and
from his honest natural instinct for general toleration; his own broad
and unbigoted views in religious matters, not to force that party into a
rebellious attitude dangerous to the state. We have seen how nearly a
mutiny in the important city of Utrecht, set on foot by certain Romanist
conspirators in the years immediately succeeding the Truce, had subverted
the government, had excited much anxiety amongst the firmest allies of
the Republic, and had been suppressed only by the decision of the
Advocate and a show of military force.

He had informed Carleton not long after his arrival that in the United
Provinces, and in Holland in particular, were many sects and religions of
which, according to his expression, "