assembly, he had submitted a plan for cashiering the enlisted soldiery
and substituting for them other troops, native-born, who should be sworn
in the usual form to obey the laws of the Union. The deputation from
Holland to Utrecht, according to his personal knowledge, had received no
instructions personal or oral to authorize active steps by the troops of
the Holland quota, but to abstain from them and to request the Prince
that they should not be used against the will and commands of the States
of Utrecht, whom they were bound by oath to obey so long as they were in
garrison there.

No man knew better than he whether the military oath which was called
new-fangled were a novelty or not, for he had himself, he said, drawn it
up thirty years before at command of the States-General by whom it was
then ordained. From that day to this he had never heard a pretence that
it justified anything not expressly sanctioned by the Articles of Union,
and neither the States of Holland nor those of Utrecht had made any
change in the oath. The States of Utrecht were sovereign within their
own territory, and in the time of peace neither the Prince of Orange
without their order nor the States-General had the right to command the
troops in their territory. The governor of a province was sworn to obey
the laws of the province and conform to the Articles of the General
Union.

He was asked why he wrote the warning letter to Ledenberg, and why he was
so anxious that the letter should be burned; as if that were a deadly
offence.

He said that he could not comprehend why it should be imputed to him
as a crime that he wished in such turbulent times to warn so important
a city as Utrecht, the capital of his native province, against tumults,