character of his Excellency the Prince by declaring on various occasions
that he aspired to the sovereignty of the country. He had held a
ciphered correspondence on the subject with foreign ministers of the
Republic. He had given great offence to the King of Great Britain by
soliciting from him other letters in the sense of those which his Majesty
had written in 1613, advising moderation and mutual toleration. He had
not brought to condign punishment the author of 'The Balance', a pamphlet
in which an oration of the English ambassador had been criticised, and
aspersions made on the Order of the Garter. He had opposed the formation
of the West India Company. He had said many years before to Nicolas van
Berk that the Provinces had better return to the dominion of Spain. And
in general, all his proceedings had tended to put the Provinces into a
"blood bath."

There was however no accusation that he had received bribes from the
enemy or held traitorous communication with him, or that he had committed
any act of high-treason.

His private letters to Caron and to the ambassadors in Paris, with which
the reader has been made familiar, had thus been ransacked to find
treasonable matter, but the result was meagre in spite of the minute and
microscopic analysis instituted to detect traces of poison in them.

But the most subtle and far-reaching research into past transactions was
due to the Greffier Cornelis Aerssens, father of the Ambassador Francis,
and to a certain Nicolas van Berk, Burgomaster of Utrecht.

The process of tale-bearing, hearsay evidence, gossip, and invention went
back a dozen years, even to the preliminary and secret conferences in
regard to the Treaty of Truce.