Life and Death of John of Barneveld Part 62

On the 12th February the States-General sent letters to all their amba.s.sadors and foreign agents, informing them of this execrable plot to overthrow the Commonwealth and take the life of the Stadholder, set on foot by certain Arminian preachers and others of that faction, and this too in winter, when the ice and snow made hostile invasion practicable, and when the enemy was encamped in so many places in the neighbourhood.

"The Arminians," said the despatch, "are so filled with bitterness that they would rather the Republic should be lost than that their pretended grievances should go unredressed." Almost every pulpit shook with Contra-Remonstrant thunder against the whole society of Remonstrants, who were held up to the world as rebels and prince-murderers; the criminal conspiracy being charged upon them as a body. Hardly a man of that persuasion dared venture into the streets and public places, for fear of being put to death by the rabble. The Chevalier William of Na.s.sau, natural son of the Stadholder, was very loud and violent in all the taverns and tap-rooms, drinking mighty draughts to the d.a.m.nation of the Arminians.

Many of the timid in consequence shrank away from the society and joined the Contra-Remonstrant Church, while the more courageous members, together with the leaders of that now abhorred communion, published long and stirring appeals to the universal sense of justice, which was outraged by the spectacle of a whole sect being punished for a crime committed by a few individuals, who had once been unworthy members of it.

Meantime hue and cry was made after the fugitive conspirators. The Blansaerts and William Party having set off from Leyden towards the Hague on Monday night, in order, as they said, to betray their employers, whose money they had taken, and whose criminal orders they had agreed to execute, attempted to escape, but were arrested within ten days. They were exhibited at their prison at Amsterdam to an immense concourse at a shilling a peep, the sums thus collected being distributed to the poor.

Slatius made his way disguised as a boor into Friesland, and after various adventures attempted to cross the Bourtange Moors to Lingen.

Stopping to refresh himself at a tavern near Koevorden, he found himself in the tap-room in presence of Quartermaster Blau and a company of soldiers from the garrison. The dark scowling boor, travel-stained and weary, with felt hat slouched over his forbidding visage, fierce and timorous at once like a hunted wild beast, excited their suspicion.

Seeing himself watched, he got up, paid his scot, and departed, leaving his can of beer untasted. This decided the quartermaster, who accordingly followed the peasant out of the house, and arrested him as a Spanish spy on the watch for the train of specie which the soldiers were then conveying into Koevorden Castle.

Slatius protested his innocence of any such design, and vehemently besought the officer to release him, telling him as a reason for his urgency and an explanation of his unprepossessing aspect--that he was an oculist from Amsterdam, John Hermansen by name, that he had just committed a homicide in that place, and was fleeing from justice.

The honest quartermaster saw no reason why a suspected spy should go free because he proclaimed himself a murderer, nor why an oculist should escape the penalties of homicide. "The more reason," he said, "why thou shouldst be my prisoner." The ex-preacher was arrested and shut up in the state prison at the Hague.

The famous engraver Visser executed a likeness on copper-plate of the grim malefactor as he appeared in his boor's disguise. The portrait, accompanied by a fiercely written broadsheet attacking the Remonstrant Church, had a great circulation, and deepened the animosity against the sect upon which the unfrocked preacher had sworn vengeance. His evil face and fame thus became familiar to the public, while the term Hendrik Slaet became a proverb at pot-houses, being held equivalent among tipplers to shirking the bottle.

Korenwinder, the treasurer of the a.s.sociation, coming to visit Stoutenburg soon after van Dyk had left him, was informed of the discovery of the plot and did his best to escape, but was arrested within a fortnight's time.

Stoutenburg himself acted with his usual promptness and coolness. Having gone straightway to his brother to notify him of the discovery and to urge him to instant flight, he contrived to disappear. A few days later a chest of merchandise was brought to the house of a certain citizen of Rotterdam, who had once been a fiddler, but was now a man of considerable property. The chest, when opened, was found to contain the Seigneur de Stoutenburg, who in past times had laid the fiddler under obligations, and in whose house he now lay concealed for many days, and until the strictness with which all roads and ferries in the neighbourhood were watched at first had somewhat given way. Meantime his cousin van der Dussen had also effected his escape, and had joined him in Rotterdam. The faithful fiddler then, for a thousand florins, chartered a trading vessel commanded by one Jacob Beltje to take a cargo of Dutch cheese to Wesel on the Rhine. By this means, after a few adventures, they effected their escape, and, arriving not long afterwards at Brussels, were formally taken under the protection of the Archd.u.c.h.ess Isabella.

Stoutenburg afterwards travelled in France and Italy, and returned to Brussels. His wife, loathing his crime and spurning all further communication with him, abandoned him to his fate. The daughter of Marnix of Sainte-Aldegonde had endured poverty, obscurity, and unmerited obloquy, which had become the lot of the great statesman's family after his tragic end, but she came of a race that would not brook dishonour.

The conspirator and suborner of murder and treason, the hirer and companion of a.s.sa.s.sins, was no mate for her.

Stoutenburg hesitated for years as to his future career, strangely enough keeping up a hope of being allowed to return to his country.

Subsequently he embraced the cause of his country's enemies, converted himself to the Roman Church, and obtained a captaincy of horse in the Spanish service. He was seen one day, to the disgust of many spectators, to enter Antwerp in black foreign uniform, at the head of his troopers, waving a standard with a death's-head embroidered upon it, and wearing, like his soldiers, a sable scarf and plume. History disdains to follow further the career of the renegade, traitor, end a.s.sa.s.sin.

When the Seigneur de Groeneveld learned from his younger brother, on the eventful 6th of February, that the plot had been discovered, he gave himself up for lost. Remorse and despair, fastening upon his naturally feeble character, seemed to render him powerless. His wife, of more hopeful disposition than himself and of less heroic mould than Walburg de Marnix, encouraged him to fly. He fled accordingly, through the desolate sandy downs which roll between the Hague and the sea, to Scheveningen, then an obscure fishing village on the coast, at a league's distance from the capital. Here a fisherman, devoted to him and his family, received him in his hut, disguised him in boatman's attire, and went with him to the strand, proposing to launch his pinkie, put out at once to sea, and to land him on the English coast, the French coast, in Hamburg--where he would.

The sight of that long, sandy beach stretching for more than seventy miles in an unbroken, melancholy line, without cove, curve, or indentation to break its cruel monotony, and with the wild waves of the German Ocean, lashed by a wintry storm, breaking into white foam as far as the eye could reach, appalled the fugitive criminal. With the certainty of an ignominious death behind him, he shrank abjectly from the terrors of the sea, and, despite the honest fisherman's entreaties, refused to enter the boat and face the storm. He wandered feebly along the coast, still accompanied by his humble friend, to another little village, where the fisherman procured a waggon, which took them as far as Sandvoort. Thence he made his way through Egmond and Petten and across the Marsdiep to Tegel, where not deeming himself safe he had himself ferried over to the neighbouring island of Vlieland. Here amongst the quicksands, whirlpools, and shallows which mark the last verge of habitable Holland, the unhappy fugitive stood at bay.

Meantime information had come to the authorities that a suspicious stranger had been seen at Scheveningen. The fisherman's wife was arrested. Threatened with torture she at last confessed with whom her husband had fled and whither. Information was sent to the bailiff of Vlieland, who with a party of followers made a strict search through his narrow precincts. A group of seamen seated on the sands was soon discovered, among whom, dressed in s.h.a.ggy pea jacket with long fisherman's boots, was the Seigneur de Groeneveld, who, easily recognized through his disguise, submitted to his captors without a struggle. The Scheveningen fisherman, who had been so faithful to him, making a sudden spring, eluded his pursuers and disappeared; thus escaping the gibbet which would probably have been his doom instead of the reward of 4000 golden guilders which he might have had for betraying him. Thus a sum more than double the amount originally furnished by Groeneveld, as the capital of the a.s.sa.s.sination company, had been rejected by the Rotterdam boatman who saved Stoutenburg, and by the Scheveningen fisherman who was ready to save Groeneveld. On the 19th February, within less than a fortnight from the explosion of the conspiracy, the eldest son of Barneveld was lodged in the Gevangen Poort or state prison of the Hague.

The awful news of the 6th February had struck the widow of Barneveld as with a thunderbolt. Both her sons were proclaimed as murderers and suborners of a.s.sa.s.sins, and a price put upon their heads. She remained for days neither speaking nor weeping; scarcely eating, drinking, or sleeping. She seemed frozen to stone. Her daughters and friends could not tell whether she were dying or had lost her reason. At length the escape of Stoutenburg and the capture of Groeneveld seemed to rouse her from her trance. She then stooped to do what she had sternly refused to do when her husband was in the hands of the authorities. Accompanied by the wife and infant son of Groeneveld she obtained an audience of the stern Stadholder, fell on her knees before him, and implored mercy and pardon for her son.

Maurice received her calmly and not discourteously, but held out no hopes of pardon. The criminal was in the hands of justice, he said, and he had no power to interfere. But there can scarcely be a doubt that he had power after the sentence to forgive or to commute, and it will be remembered that when Barneveld himself was about to suffer, the Prince had asked the clergyman Walaeus with much anxiety whether the prisoner in his message had said nothing of pardon.

Referring to the bitter past, Maurice asked Madame de Barneveld why she not asked mercy for her son, having refused to do so for her husband.

Her answer was simple and n.o.ble:

"My husband was innocent of crime," she said; "my son is guilty."

The idea of pardon in this case was of course preposterous. Certainly if Groeneveld had been forgiven, it would have been impossible to punish the thirteen less guilty conspirators, already in the hands of justice, whom he had hired to commit the a.s.sa.s.sination. The spectacle of the two cowardly ringleaders going free while the meaner criminals were gibbeted would have been a shock to the most rudimentary ideas of justice. It would have been an equal outrage to pardon the younger Barnevelds for intended murder, in which they had almost succeeded, when their great father had already suffered for a constructive lese-majesty, the guilt of which had been stoutly denied. Yet such is the dreary chain of cause and effect that it is certain, had pardon been n.o.bly offered to the statesman, whose views of const.i.tutional law varied from those of the dominant party, the later crime would never have been committed. But Francis Aerssens--considering his own and other partisans lives at stake if the States' right party did not fall--had been able to bear down all thoughts of mercy. He was successful, was called to the house of n.o.bles, and regained the emba.s.sy of Paris, while the house of Barneveld was trodden into the dust of dishonour and ruin. Rarely has an offended politician's revenge been more thorough than his. Never did the mocking fiend betray his victims into the hands of the avenger more sardonically than was done in this sombre tragedy.

The trials of the prisoners were rapidly conducted. Van Dyk, cruelly tortured, confessed on the rack all the details of the conspiracy as they were afterwards embodied in the sentences and have been stated in the preceding narrative. Groeneveld was not tortured. His answers to the interrogatories were so vague as to excite amazement at his general ignorance of the foul transaction or at the feebleness of his memory, while there was no attempt on his part to exculpate himself from the d.a.m.ning charge. That it was he who had furnished funds for the proposed murder and mutiny, knowing the purpose to which they were to be applied, was proved beyond all cavil and fully avowed by him.

On the 28th May, he, Korenwinder, and van Dyk were notified that they were to appear next day in the courthouse to hear their sentence, which would immediately afterwards be executed.

That night his mother, wife, and son paid him a long visit of farewell in his prison. The Gevangen Poort of the Hague, an antique but mean building of brown brick and commonplace aspect, still stands in one of the most public parts of the city. A gloomy archway, surmounted by windows grimly guarded by iron lattice-work, forms the general thoroughfare from the aristocratic Plaats and Kneuterdyk and Vyverberg to the inner court of the ancient palace. The cells within are dark, noisome, and dimly lighted, and even to this day the very instruments of torture, used in the trials of these and other prisoners, may be seen by the curious. Half a century later the brothers de Witt were dragged from this prison to be literally torn to pieces by an infuriated mob.

The misery of that midnight interview between the widow of Barneveld, her daughter-in-law, and the condemned son and husband need not be described.

As the morning approached, the gaoler warned the matrons to take their departure that the prisoner might sleep.

"What a woful widow you will be," said Groeneveld to his wife, as she sank choking with tears upon the ground. The words suddenly aroused in her the sense of respect for their name.

"At least for all this misery endured," she said firmly, "do me enough honour to die like a gentleman." He promised it. The mother then took leave of the son, and History drops a decorous veil henceforth over the grief-stricken form of Mary of Barneveld.

Next morning the life-guards of the Stadholder and other troops were drawn up in battle-array in the outer and inner courtyard of the supreme tribunal and palace. At ten o'clock Groeneveld came forth from the prison. The Stadholder had granted as a boon to the family that he might be neither fettered nor guarded as he walked to the tribunal. The prisoner did not forget his parting promise to his wife. He appeared full-dressed in velvet cloak and plumed hat, with rapier by his side, walking calmly through the inner courtyard to the great hall. Observing the windows of the Stadholder's apartments crowded with spectators, among whom he seemed to recognize the Prince's face, he took off his hat and made a graceful and dignified salute. He greeted with courtesy many acquaintances among the crowd through which he pa.s.sed. He entered the hall and listened in silence to the sentence condemning him to be immediately executed with the sword. Van Dyk and Korenwinder shared the same doom, but were provisionally taken back to prison.

Groeneveld then walked calmly and gracefully as before from the hall to the scaffold, attended by his own valet, and preceded by the provost-marshal and a.s.sistants. He was to suffer, not where his father had been beheaded, but on the "Green Sod." This public place of execution for ordinary criminals was singularly enough in the most elegant and frequented quarter of the Hague. A few rods from the Gevangen Poort, at the western end of the Vyverberg, on the edge of the cheerful triangle called the Plaats, and looking directly down the broad and stately Kneuterdyk, at the end of which stood Aremberg House, lately the residence of the great Advocate, was the mean and sordid scaffold.

Groeneveld ascended it with perfect composure. The man who had been browbeaten into crime by an overbearing and ferocious brother, who had quailed before the angry waves of the North Sea, which would have borne him to a place of entire security, now faced his fate with a smile upon his lips. He took off his hat, cloak, and sword, and handed them to his valet. He calmly undid his ruff and wristbands of pointlace, and tossed them on the ground. With his own hands and the a.s.sistance of his servant he unb.u.t.toned his doublet, laying breast and neck open without suffering the headsman's hands to approach him.

He then walked to the heap of sand and spoke a very few words to the vast throng of spectators.

"Desire of vengeance and evil counsel," he said, "have brought me here.

If I have wronged any man among you, I beg him for Christ's sake to forgive me."

Kneeling on the sand with his face turned towards his father's house at the end of the Kneuterdyk, he said his prayers. Then putting a red velvet cap over his eyes, he was heard to mutter:

"O G.o.d! what a man I was once, and what am I now?"

Calmly folding his hands, he said, "Patience."

The executioner then struck off his head at a blow. His body, wrapped in a black cloak, was sent to his house and buried in his father's tomb.

Van Dyk and Korenwinder were executed immediately afterwards. They were quartered and their heads exposed on stakes. The joiner Gerritsen and the three sailors had already been beheaded. The Blansaerts and William Party, together with the grim Slatius, who was savage and turbulent to the last, had suffered on the 5th of May.

Fourteen in all were executed for this crime, including an unfortunate tailor and two other mechanics of Leyden, who had heard something whispered about the conspiracy, had nothing whatever to do with it, but from ignorance, apathy, or timidity did not denounce it. The ringleader and the equally guilty van der Dussen had, as has been seen, effected their escape.

Thus ended the long tragedy of the Barnevelds. The result of this foul conspiracy and its failure to effect the crime proposed strengthened immensely the power, popularity, and influence of the Stadholder, made the orthodox church triumphant, and nearly ruined the sect of the Remonstrants, the Arminians--most unjustly in reality, although with a pitiful show of reason--being held guilty of the crime of Stoutenburg and Slatius.

The Republic--that magnificent commonwealth which in its infancy had confronted, single-handed, the greatest empire of the earth, and had wrested its independence from the ancient despot after a forty years'

struggle--had now been rent in twain, although in very unequal portions, by the fiend of political and religious hatred. Thus crippled, she was to go forth and take her share in that awful conflict now in full blaze, and of which after-ages were to speak with a shudder as the Thirty Years'

War.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Argument in a circle He that stands let him see that he does not fall If he has deserved it, let them strike off his head Misery had come not from their being enemies O G.o.d! what does man come to!

Party hatred was not yet glutted with the blood it had drunk Rose superior to his doom and took captivity captive This, then, is the reward of forty years' service to the State To milk, the cow as long as she would give milk

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS, ENTIRE JOHN OF BARNEVELD, 1614-23:

Acts of violence which under pretext of religion Adulation for inferiors whom they despise Affection of his friends and the wrath of his enemies And give advice. Of that, although always a spendthrift Argument in a circle Better to be governed by magistrates than mobs Burning with bitter revenge for all the favours he had received Calumny is often a stronger and more lasting power than disdain Casual outbursts of eternal friendship Changed his positions and contradicted himself day by day Conciliation when war of extermination was intended Considered it his special mission in the world to mediate Created one child for d.a.m.nation and another for salvation Death rather than life with a false acknowledgment of guilt Denoungced as an obstacle to peace Depths theological party spirit could descend Depths of credulity men in all ages can sink Devote himself to his gout and to his fair young wife Enemy of all compulsion of the human conscience Extraordinary capacity for yielding to gentle violence France was mourning Henry and waiting for Richelieu Furious mob set upon the house of Rem Bischop Hardly a sound Protestant policy anywhere but in Holland He that stands let him see that he does not fall Heidelberg Catechism were declared to be infallible Highborn demagogues in that as in every age affect adulation History has not too many really important and emblematic men Human nature in its meanness and shame I hope and I fear I know how to console myself If he has deserved it, let them strike off his head Implication there was much, of a.s.sertion very little In this he was much behind his age or before it It had not yet occurred to him that he was married John Robinson King who thought it furious madness to resist the enemy Logic is rarely the quality on which kings pride themselves Magistracy at that moment seemed to mean the sword Make the very name of man a term of reproach Misery had come not from their being enemies Mockery of negotiation in which nothing could be negotiated More apprehension of fraud than of force Necessity of deferring to powerful sovereigns Never lack of fishers in troubled waters Not his custom nor that of his councillors to go to bed O G.o.d! what does man come to!

Only true religion Opening an abyss between government and people Opposed the subjection of the magistracy by the priesthood Partisans wanted not accommodation but victory Party hatred was not yet glutted with the blood it had drunk Pot-valiant hero Puritanism in Holland was a very different thing from England Rather a wilderness to reign over than a single heretic Resolve to maintain the civil authority over the military Rose superior to his doom and took captivity captive Seemed bent on self-destruction Stand between hope and fear Successful in this step, he is ready for greater ones Tempest of pa.s.sion and prejudice That he tries to lay the fault on us is pure malice The magnitude of this wonderful sovereign's littleness The effect of energetic, uncompromising calumny The evils resulting from a confederate system of government This, then, is the reward of forty years' service to the State This wonderful sovereign's littleness oppresses the imagination To milk, the cow as long as she would give milk To stifle for ever the right of free enquiry William Brewster Wise and honest a man, although he be somewhat longsome Yes, there are wicked men about Yesterday is the preceptor of To-morrow