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THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, Project Gutenberg Edition, Volume 97
Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v11, 1619-23
Barneveld's Execution—The Advocate's Conduct on the Scaffold—The Sentence printed and sent to the Provinces—The Proceedings irregular and inequitable.
In the beautiful village capital of the "Count's Park," commonly calledthe Hague, the most striking and picturesque spot then as now was thatwhere the transformed remains of the old moated castle of those feudalsovereigns were still to be seen. A three-storied range of simple,substantial buildings in brown brickwork, picked out with white stone ina style since made familiar both in England and America, and associatedwith a somewhat later epoch in the history of the House of Orange,surrounded three sides of a spacious inner paved quadrangle called theInner Court, the fourth or eastern side being overshadowed by a beechengrove. A square tower flanked each angle, and on both sides of thesouth-western turret extended the commodious apartments of theStadholder. The great gateway on the south-west opened into a wide openspace called the Outer Courtyard. Along the north-west side a broad andbeautiful sheet of water, in which the walls, turrets, and chapel-spiresof the enclosed castle mirrored themselves, was spread between the massof buildings and an umbrageous promenade called the Vyverberg, consistingof a sextuple alley of lime-trees and embowering here and there a statelyvilla. A small island, fringed with weeping willows and tufted all overwith lilacs, laburnums, and other shrubs then in full flower, lay in thecentre of the miniature lake, and the tall solid tower of the GreatChurch, surmounted by a light openwork spire, looked down from a littledistance over the scene.
It was a bright morning in May. The white swans were sailing tranquillyto and fro over the silver basin, and the mavis, blackbird, andnightingale, which haunted the groves surrounding the castle and thetown, were singing as if the daybreak were ushering in a summer festival.
But it was not to a merry-making that the soldiers were marching and thecitizens. thronging so eagerly from every street and alley towards thecastle. By four o'clock the Outer and Inner Courts had been lined withdetachments of the Prince's guard and companies of other regiments to thenumber of 1200 men. Occupying the north-eastern side of the court rosethe grim, time-worn front of the ancient hall, consisting of one tallpyramidal gable of ancient grey brickwork flanked with two tall slendertowers, the whole with the lancet-shaped windows and severe style of thetwelfth century, excepting a rose-window in the centre with the decoratedmullions of a somewhat later period.
In front of the lower window, with its Gothic archway hastily convertedinto a door, a shapeless platform of rough, unhewn planks had that nightbeen rudely patched together. This was the scaffold. A slight railingaround it served to protect it from the crowd, and a heap of coarse sandhad been thrown upon it. A squalid, unclean box of unpla