of Gratz, who was afterward elected emperor.  The honorary empire of the seas seems at this time to have been successfully claimed by the United Provinces.  They paid back with interest the haughty conduct with which they had been long treated by the English; and they refused to pay the fishery duties to which the inhabitants of Great Britain were subject.  The Dutch sailors had even the temerity, under pretext of pursuing pirates, to violate the British territory.  They set fire to the town of Crookhaven, in Ireland, and massacred several of the inhabitants.  King James, immersed in theological studies, appears to have passed slightly over this outrage.  More was to have been expected from his usual attention to the affairs of Ireland; his management of which ill-fated country is the best feature of his political character, and ought, to Irish feelings at least, to be considered to redeem its many errors.  But he took fire at the news that the states had prohibited the importation of cloth dyed and dressed in England.  It required the best exertion of Barneveldt’s talents to pacify him; and it was not easy to effect this through the jaundiced medium of the ambassador Carleton.  But it was unanswerably argued by the pensionary that the manufacture of cloth was one of those ancient and natural sources of wealth which England had ravished from the Netherlands, and which the latter was justified in recovering by every effort consistent with national honor and fair principles of government.

The influence of Prince Maurice had gained complete success for the Calvinist party, in its various titles of Gomarists, non-remonstrants, etc.  The audacity and violence of these ferocious sectarians knew no bounds.  Outrages, too many to enumerate, became common through the country; and Arminianism was on all sides assailed and persecuted.  Barneveldt frequently appealed to Maurice without effect; and all the efforts of the former to obtain justice by means of the civil authorities were paralyzed by the inaction in which the prince retained the military force.  In this juncture, the magistrates of various towns, spurred on by Barneveldt, called out the national militia, termed Waardegelders, which possessed the right of arming at its own expense for the protection of the public peace.  Schism upon schism was the consequence, and the whole country was reduced to that state of anarchy so favorable to the designs of an ambitious soldier already in the enjoyment of almost absolute power.  Maurice possessed all the hardihood and vigor suited to such an occasion.  At the head of two companies of infantry, and accompanied by his brother Frederick Henry, he suddenly set out at night from The Hague; arrived at the Brille; and in defiance of the remonstrances of the magistrates, and in violation of the rights of the town, he placed his devoted garrison in that important place.  To justify this measure, reports were spread that Barneveldt intended to deliver it up to the Spaniards; and the ignorant, insensate, and ungrateful people swallowed the calumny.