Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v11, 1619-23


CHAPTER XXI.

Barneveld's Execution--The Advocate's Conduct on the Scaffold--The
Sentence printed and sent to the Provinces--The Proceedings
irregular and inequitable.

In the beautiful village capital of the "Count's Park," commonly called
the Hague, the most striking and picturesque spot then as now was that
where the transformed remains of the old moated castle of those feudal
sovereigns were still to be seen. A three-storied range of simple,
substantial buildings in brown brickwork, picked out with white stone in
a style since made familiar both in England and America, and associated
with a somewhat later epoch in the history of the House of Orange,
surrounded three sides of a spacious inner paved quadrangle called the
Inner Court, the fourth or eastern side being overshadowed by a beechen
grove. A square tower flanked each angle, and on both sides of the
south-western turret extended the commodious apartments of the
Stadholder. The great gateway on the south-west opened into a wide open
space called the Outer Courtyard. Along the north-west side a broad and
beautiful sheet of water, in which the walls, turrets, and chapel-spires
of the enclosed castle mirrored themselves, was spread between the mass
of buildings and an umbrageous promenade called the Vyverberg, consisting
of a sextuple alley of lime-trees and embowering here and there a stately
villa. A small island, fringed with weeping willows and tufted all over
with lilacs, laburnums, and other shrubs then in full flower, lay in the
centre of the miniature lake, and the tall solid tower of the Great
Church, surmounted by a light openwork spire, looked down from a little