to you; and I so much esteem
the honour of your friendship that I should always neglect my private
affairs in order to do everything for your service and meet your desires
. . . . . If M. de Craimgepolder comes back from his visit home, you must
restrict him in two things, the table and tennis, and you can do this if
you require him to follow the King assiduously as his service requires."

Something at a future day was to be heard of William of Barneveld, as
well as of his elder brother Reinier, and it is good, therefore, to have
these occasional glimpses of him while in the service of the King and
under the supervision of one who was then his father's devoted friend,
Francis Aerssens. There were to be extraordinary and tragical changes in
the relations of parties and of individuals ere many years should go by.

Besides the sons of the Advocate, his two sons-in-law, Brederode,
Seignior of Veenhuizep, and Cornelis van der Myle, were constantly
employed? in important embassies. Van der Myle had been the first
ambassador to the great Venetian republic, and was now placed at the head
of the embassy to France, an office which it was impossible at that
moment for the Advocate to discharge. At the same critical moment
Barneveld's brother Elias, Pensionary of Rotterdam, was appointed one of
the special high commissioners to the King of Great Britain.

It is necessary to give an account of this embassy.

They were provided with luminous and minute instructions from the hand of
the Advocate.

They were, in the first place, and ostensibly, to thank the King for his
services in bringing about the truce, which, truly, had been of the
slightest, as was very well known. They were to explain, on the part of
the States, their delay in sending this solemn commission, caused by the
tardiness of the King of Spain in sending his ratification to the treaty,
and by the many disputations caused by the irresolutions of the Archdukes
and the obstinacy of their commissioners in regard to their many
contraventions of the treaty. After those commissioners had gone, further
hindrances had been found in the "extraordinary tempests, high floods,
rising of the waters, both of the ocean and the rivers, and the very
disastrous inundations throughout nearly all the United Provinces, with
the immense and exorbitant damage thus inflicted, both on the public and
on many individuals; in addition to all which were to be mentioned the
troubles in the city o