matter of course, political men with such bold views in religious matters
were bitterly assailed by their rigid opponents. Barneveld, with his "nil
scire tutissima fides," was denounced as a disguised Catholic or an
infidel, and as for Paul Buys, he was a "bolsterer of Papists, an
atheist, a devil," as it has long since been made manifest.

Nevertheless these men believed that they understood the spirit of their
country and of the age. In encouragement to an expanding commerce, the
elevation and education of the masses, the toleration of all creeds, and
a wide distribution of political functions and rights, they looked for
the salvation of their nascent republic from destruction, and the
maintenance of the true interests of the people. They were still loyal to
Queen Elizabeth, and desirous that she should accept the sovereignty of
the Provinces. But they were determined that the sovereignty should be a
constitutional one, founded upon and limited by the time-honoured laws
and traditions of their commonwealth; for they recognised the value of a
free republic with an hereditary chief, however anomalous it might in
theory appear. They knew that in Utrecht the Leicestrian party were about
to offer the Queen the sovereignty of their Province, without conditions,
but they were determined that neither Queen Elizabeth nor any other
monarch should ever reign in the Netherlands, except under conditions to
be very accurately defined and well secured.

Thus, contrasted, then, were the two great parties in the Netherlands, at
the conclusion of Leicester's first year of administration. It may easily
be understood that it was not an auspicious moment to leave the country
without a chief.

The strength of the States-party lay in Holland, Zeeland, Friesland. The
main stay of the democratic or Leicester faction was in the city of
Utrecht, but the Earl had many partizans in Gelderland, Friesland, and in
Overyssel, the capital of which Province, the wealthy and thriving
Deventer, second only in the republic to Amsterdam for commercial and
political importance, had been but recently secured for the Provinces by
the vigorous measures of Sir William Pelham.

The condition of the republic and of the Spanish Provinces was, at that
moment, most signally contrasted. If the effects of despotism and of
liberty could ever be exhibited at a single glance, it was certainly only
necessary to look for a moment at the picture of the obedient and of the