mpts to accommodate these fearful
quarrels had been frustrated, and that on his departure the previous year
to Utrecht on account of his health he had again offered to resign all
his offices and to leave Holland altogether rather than find himself in
perpetual opposition to his Excellency.

"I begged you in such case," he said, "to lend your hand to the procuring
for me an honourable discharge from My Lords the States, but your
Excellency declared that you could in no wise approve such a step and
gave me hope that some means of accommodating the dissensions would yet
be proposed."

"I went then to Vianen, being much indisposed; thence I repaired to
Utrecht to consult my old friend Doctor Saulo Saul, in whose hands I
remained six weeks, not being able, as I hoped, to pass my seventieth
birthday on the 24th September last in my birthplace, the city of
Amersfoort. All this time I heard not one single word or proposal of
accommodation. On the contrary it was determined that by a majority vote,
a thing never heard of before, it was intended against the solemn
resolves of the States of Holland, of Utrecht, and of Overyssel to bring
these religious differences before the Assembly of My Lords the
States-General, a proceeding directly in the teeth of the Act of Union
and other treaties, and before a Synod which people called National, and
that meantime every effort was making to discredit all those who stood up
for the laws of these Provinces and to make them odious and despicable in
the eyes of the common people.

"Especially it was I that was thus made the object of hatred and contempt
in their eyes. Hundreds of lies and calumnies, circulated in the form of
libels, seditious pamphlets, and lampoons, compelled me to return from
Utrecht to the Hague. Since that time I have repeatedly offered my
services to your Excellency for the promotion of mutual accommodation and
reconciliation of differences, but without success."

He then alluded to the publication with which the country was ringing,
'The Necessary and Living Discourse of a Spanish Counsellor', and which
was attributed to his former confidential friend, now become his
deadliest foe, ex-Ambassador Francis Aerssens, and warned the Prince that
if he chose, which God forbid, to follow the advice of that seditious
libel, nothing but ruin to the beloved Fatherland and its lovers, to the
princely house of Orange-Nassau and to the Christian religion could be
the issue. "The Sp