den Berg, and the gentlemen connected with that institution, especially
M. de Jonghe and M. Hingman, without whose aid it would have been
difficult for me to decipher and to procure copies of the almost
illegible holographs of Barneveld.

I must also thank M. van Deventer for communicating copies of some
curious manuscripts relating to my subject, some from private archives in
Holland, and others from those of Simancas.

A single word only remains to be said in regard to the name of the
statesman whose career I have undertaken to describe.

His proper appellation and that by which he has always been known in his
own country is Oldenbarneveld, but in his lifetime and always in history
from that time to this he has been called Barneveld in English as well as
French, and this transformation, as it were, of the name has become so
settled a matter that after some hesitation it has been adopted in the
present work.

The Author would take this opportunity of expressing his gratitude for
the indulgence with which his former attempts to illustrate an important
period of European history have been received by the public, and his
anxious hope that the present volumes may be thought worthy of attention.
They are the result at least of severe and conscientious labour at the
original sources of history, but the subject is so complicated and
difficult that it may well be feared that the ability to depict and
unravel is unequal to the earnestness with which the attempt has been
made.

LONDON, 1873.