intention. It had been formally denied by the States-General that
Barneveld had ever used the language in that assembly with which he had
been charged. He had only revealed to them the exact purport of the
letter to Junius, and of the Queen's secret instructions to Leicester.
Whatever he may have said in private conversation, and whatever
deductions he may have made among his intimate friends, from the admitted
facts in the case, could hardly be made matters of record. It does not
appear that he, or the statesmen who acted with him, considered the Earl
capable of a deliberate design to sell the cities, thus to be acquired,
to Spain, as the price of peace for England. Certainly Elizabeth would
have scorned such a crime, and was justly indignant at rumours prevalent
to that effect; but the wrath of the Queen and of her favourite were,
perhaps, somewhat simulated, in order to cover their real mortification
at the discovery of designs on the part of the Earl which could not be
denied. Not only had they been at last compelled to confess these
negotiations, which for several months had been concealed and stubbornly
denied, but the still graver plots of the Earl to regain his much-coveted
authority had been, in a startling manner, revealed. The leaders of the
States-General had a right to suspect the English Earl of a design to
reenact the part of the Duke of Anjou, and were justified in taking
stringent measures to prevent a calamity, which, as they believed, was
impending over their little commonwealth. The high-handed dealings of
Leicester in the city of Utrecht have been already described. The most
respectable and influential burghers of the place had been imprisoned and
banished, the municipal government wrested from the hands to which it
legitimately belonged, and confided to adventurers, who wore the cloak of
Calvinism to conceal their designs, and a successful effort had been
made, in the name of democracy, to eradicate from one ancient province
the liberty on which it prided itself.