the refugees against this spirit of toleration, one of the favourite
preachers in the town, of Arminian tendencies, had declared in the
pulpit, that he would as lieve see the Spanish as the Calvinistic
inquisition established over his country; using an expression, in regard
to the church of Geneva, more energetic than decorous.

It was from Leyden that the chief opposition came to a synod, by which a
great attempt was to be made towards subjecting the new commonwealth to a
masked theocracy; a scheme which the States of Holland had resisted with
might and main. The Calvinistic party, waxing stronger in Leyden,
although still in a minority, at last resolved upon a strong effort to
place the city in the hands of that great representative of Calvinism,
the Earl of Leicester. Jacques Volmar, a deacon of the church, Cosmo de
Pescarengis, a Genoese captain of much experience in the service of the
republic, Adolphus de Meetkerke, former president of Flanders, who had
been, by the States, deprived of the seat in the great council to which
the Earl had appointed him; Doctor Saravia, professor of theology in the
university, with other deacons, preachers, and captains, went at
different times from Leyden to Utrecht, and had secret interviews with
Leicester.

A plan was at last agreed upon, according to which, about the middle of
October, a revolution should be effected in Leyden. Captain Nicholas de
Maulde, who had recently so much distinguished himself in the defence of
Sluys, was stationed with two companies of States' troops in the city.
He had been much disgusted--not without reason--at the culpable
negligence through which the courageous efforts of the Sluys garrison
had been set at nought, and the place sacrificed, when it might so easily
have been relieved; and he ascribed the whole of the guilt to Maurice,
Hohenlo, and the States, although it could hardly be denied that at least