centre of the vast hall—­once the banqueting chamber of those petty sovereigns; with its high vaulted roof of cedar which had so often in ancient days rung with the sounds of mirth and revelry—­was a great table at which the twenty-four judges and the three prosecuting officers were seated, in their black caps and gowns of office.  The room was lined with soldiers and crowded with a dark, surging mass of spectators, who had been waiting there all night.

A chair was placed for the prisoner.  He sat down, and the clerk of the commission, Pots by name, proceeded at once to read the sentence.  A summary of this long, rambling, and tiresome paper has been already laid before the reader.  If ever a man could have found it tedious to listen to his own death sentence, the great statesman might have been in that condition as he listened to Secretary Pots.

During the reading of the sentence the Advocate moved uneasily on his seat, and seemed about to interrupt the clerk at several passages which seemed to him especially preposterous.  But he controlled himself by a strong effort, and the clerk went steadily on to the conclusion.

Then Barneveld said: 

“The judges have put down many things which they have no right to draw from my confession.  Let this protest be added.”

“I thought too,” he continued, “that My Lords the States-General would have had enough in my life and blood, and that my wife and children might keep what belongs to them.  Is this my recompense for forty-three years’ service to these Provinces?”

President de Voogd rose: 

“Your sentence has been pronounced,” he said.  “Away! away!  “So saying he pointed to the door into which one of the great windows at the south-eastern front of the hall had been converted.

Without another word the old man rose from his chair and strode, leaning on his staff, across the hall, accompanied by his faithful valet and the provost and escorted by a file of soldiers.  The mob of spectators flowed out after him at every door into the inner courtyard in front of the ancient palace.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

Better to be governed by magistrates than mobs
Burning with bitter revenge for all the favours he had received
Death rather than life with a false acknowledgment of guilt
Enemy of all compulsion of the human conscience
Heidelberg Catechism were declared to be infallible
I know how to console myself
Implication there was much, of assertion very little
John Robinson
Magistracy at that moment seemed to mean the sword
Only true religion
Rather a wilderness to reign over than a single heretic
William Brewster

*** End of the project gutenberg EBOOK life of John of Barneveld, 1618-19 ***

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