These volumes contain a slight and rapid sketch of Barneveld's career up
to the point at which the Twelve Years' Truce with Spain was signed in
the year 1609. In previous works the Author has attempted to assign the
great Advocate's place as part and parcel of history during the
continuance of the War for Independence. During the period of the Truce
he will be found the central figure. The history of Europe, especially
of the Netherlands, Britain, France, and Germany, cannot be thoroughly
appreciated without a knowledge of the designs, the labours, and the fate
of Barneveld.

The materials for estimating his character and judging his judges lie in
the national archives of the land of which he was so long the foremost
citizen. But they have not long been accessible. The letters, state
papers, and other documents remain unprinted, and have rarely been read.
M. van Deventer has published three most interesting volumes of the
Advocate's correspondence, but they reach only to the beginning of 1609.
He has suspended his labours exactly at the moment when these volumes
begin. I have carefully studied however nearly the whole of that
correspondence, besides a mass of other papers. The labour is not light,
for the handwriting of the great Advocate is perhaps the worst that ever
existed, and the papers, although kept in the admirable order which
distinguishes the Archives of the Hague, have passed through many hands
at former epochs before reaching their natural destination in the
treasure-house of the nation. Especially the documents connected with
the famous trial were for a long time hidden from mortal view, for
Barneveld's judges had bound themselves by oath to bury the proceedings
out of sight. And the concealment lasted for centuries. Very recently
a small portion of those papers has been published by the Historical
Society of Utrecht. The "Verhooren," or Interrogatories of the Judges,
and the replies of Barneveld, have thus been laid before the reading