in reality bribes; and in the law-courts the wealthy suitor or offender could generally count on a charitable construction being placed upon all points in his favour.  The severe placards, for instance, against the public celebration of any form of worship but that of the Reformed religion, according to the decrees of the Synod of Dort, were notoriously not enforced.  Those who were able and willing to pay for a dispensation found a ready and judicious toleration.

This toleration was not entirely due to the venality of the officials, but rather to the spirit of materialistic indifference that was abroad among the orthodox Calvinists, who were alone eligible for public office.  Large numbers of those who professed the established faith were in reality either nominal conformists too much immersed in affairs to trouble about religious questions, or actually free-thinkers in disguise.  It must never be forgotten that in the United Provinces taken as a whole, the Calvinists, whether orthodox or arminian, formed a minority of the population.  Even in Holland itself more than half the inhabitants were Catholics, including many of the old families and almost all the peasantry.  Likewise in Utrecht, Gelderland and Overyssel the Catholics were in the majority.  The Generality lands, North Brabant and Dutch Flanders, were entirely of the Roman faith.  In Holland, Zeeland and especially in Friesland and Groningen the Mennonite Baptists and other sects had numerous adherents.  Liberty of thought and to a large extent of worship was in fact at this time the characteristic of the Netherlands, and existed in spite of the unrepealed placards which enforced under pain of heavy penalties a strict adherence to the principles of Dort.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XII

LETTERS, SCIENCE AND ART

The epithet “glorious”—­roemrijke—­has been frequently applied by Dutch historians to the period of Frederick Henry—­and deservedly.  The preceding chapter has told that it was a time of wonderful maritime and colonial expansion, of commercial supremacy and material prosperity.  But the spirit of the Holland, which reached its culminating point of national greatness in the middle of the 17th century, was far from being wholly occupied with voyages of adventure and conquest on far distant seas, or engrossed in sordid commercialism at home.  The rapid acquisition of wealth by successful trade is dangerous to the moral health and stability alike of individuals and of societies; and the vices which follow in its train had, as we have already pointed out, infected to a certain extent the official and commercial classes in the Dutch republic at this epoch.  There is, however, another side of the picture.  The people of the United Provinces in their long struggle for existence, as a free and independent state, had had all the dormant energies and qualities of which their race was capable called