was pursuing. Arrogant, overbearing, self-concentrated, accustomed to
lead senates and to guide the councils and share the secrets of kings,
familiar with and almost an actor in every event in the political history
not only of his own country but of every important state in Christendom
during nearly two generations of mankind, of unmatched industry, full
of years and experience, yet feeling within him the youthful strength
of a thousand intellects compared to most of those by which he was
calumniated, confronted, and harassed; he accepted the great fight which
was forced upon him. Irascible, courageous, austere, contemptuous, he
looked around and saw the Republic whose cradle he had rocked grown to be
one of the most powerful and prosperous among the states of the world,
and could with difficulty imagine that in this supreme hour of her
strength and her felicity she was ready to turn and rend the man whom
she was bound by every tie of duty to cherish and to revere.

Sir Dudley Carleton, the new English ambassador to the States, had
arrived during the past year red-hot from Venice. There he had perhaps
not learned especially to love the new republic which had arisen among
the northern lagunes, and whose admission among the nations had been at
last accorded by the proud Queen of the Adriatic, notwithstanding the
objections and the intrigues both of French and English representatives.
He had come charged to the brim with the political spite of James against
the Advocate, and provided too with more than seven vials of theological
wrath. Such was the King's revenge for Barneveld's recent successes.
The supporters in the Netherlands of the civil authority over the Church
were moreover to be instructed by the political head of the English
Church that such supremacy, although highly proper for a king, was
"thoroughly unsuitable for a many-headed republic." So much for church
government. As for doctrine, Arminianism and Vorstianism were to be
blasted with one thunderstroke from the British throne.