the negotiations of
the States of Utrecht, and with Prince Maurice in 1590 with cognizance of
the States-General and those of Holland for, the governorship of that
province, the custom of the Generality for the last thirty years
according to which religious matters have always been left to the
disposition of the States of each province . . . . Carleton is
strenuously urging this course in his Majesty's name, and I fear that in
the present state of our humours great troubles will be the result."

The expulsion by an armed mob, in the past year, of a Remonstrant
preacher at Oudewater, the overpowering of the magistracy and the forcing
on of illegal elections in that and other cities, had given him and all
earnest patriots grave cause for apprehension. They were dreading, said
Barneveld, a course of crimes similar to those which under the Earl of
Leicester's government had afflicted Leyden and Utrecht.

"Efforts are incessant to make the Remonstrants hateful," he said to
Caron, "but go forward resolutely and firmly in the conviction that our
friends here are as animated in their opposition to the Spanish dominion
now and by God's grace will so remain as they have ever proved themselves
to be, not only by words, but works. I fear that Mr. Carleton gives too
much belief to the enviers of our peace and tranquillity under pretext of
religion, but it is more from ignorance than malice."

Those who have followed the course of the Advocate's correspondence,
conversation, and actions, as thus far detailed, can judge of the
gigantic nature of the calumny by which he was now assailed. That this
man, into every fibre of whose nature was woven undying hostility to
Spain, as the great foe to national independence and religious liberty
throughout the continent of Europe, whose every effort, as we have seen,
during all these years of nominal peace had been to organize a system of
general European defence against the war now actually begun upon
Protestantism, should be accused of being a partisan of Spain, a creature
of Spain, a pensioner of Spain, was enough to make honest men pray that
the earth might be swallowed up. If such idiotic calumnies could be
believed, what patriot in the world could not be doubted? Yet they were
believed. Barneveld was bought by Spanish gold. He had received whole
boxes full of Spanish pistoles, straight from Brussels! For his part in
the truce negotiations he had received 120,000 ducats in one lump.

"It