PG Edition of Netherlands series — Complete

by John Lothrop Motley

Meantime the Netherlands were a confederacy, not a nation. Their general government was but a committee.

It could ask of, but not command, the separate provinces. It had no dealings with nor power over the inhabitants of the country; it could say "Thou shalt" neither to state nor citizen; it could consult only with corporations—fictitious and many-headed personages—itself incorporate. There was no first magistrate, no supreme court, no commander-in-chief, no exclusive mint nor power of credit, no national taxation, no central house of representation and legislation, no senate. Unfortunately it had one church, and out of this single matrix of centralism was born more discord than had been produced by all the centrifugal forces of provincialism combined.

There had been working substitutes found, as we well know, for the deficiencies of this constitution, but the Advocate felt himself bound to obey and enforce obedience to the laws and privileges of his country so long as they remained without authorized change. His country was the Province of Holland, to which his allegiance was due and whose servant he was. That there was but one church paid and sanctioned by law, he admitted, but his efforts were directed to prevent discord within that church, by counselling moderation, conciliation, mutual forbearance, and abstention from irritating discussion of dogmas deemed by many thinkers and better theologians than himself not essential to salvation. In this he was much behind his age or before it. He certainly was not with the majority.

And thus, while the election of Ferdinand had given the signal of war all over Christendom, while from the demolished churches in Bohemia the tocsin was still sounding, whose vibrations were destined to be heard a generation long through the world, there was less sympathy felt with the call within the territory of the great republic of Protestantism than would have seemed imaginable a few short years before. The capture of the Cloister Church at the Hague in the summer of 1617 seemed to minds excited by personal rivalries and minute theological controversy a more momentous event than the destruction of the churches in the Klostergrab in the following December. The triumph of Gomarism in a single Dutch city inspired more enthusiasm for the moment than the deadly buffet to European Protestantism could inspire dismay.

The church had been carried and occupied, as it were, by force, as if an enemy's citadel. It seemed necessary to associate the idea of practical warfare with a movement which might have been a pacific clerical success. Barneveld and those who acted with him, while deploring the intolerance out of which the schism had now grown to maturity, had still hoped for possible accommodation of the quarrel. They dreaded popular tumults leading to oppression of the magistracy by the mob or the soldiery and ending in civil war. But what was wanted by the extreme partisans on either side was not accommodation but victory.

"Religious differences are causing much trouble and discontents in many cities," he said. "At Amsterdam there were in the past week two assemblages of boys and rabble which did not disperse without violence, crime, and robbery. The brother of Professor Episcopius (Rem Bischop) was damaged to the amount of several thousands. We are still hoping that some better means of accommodation may be found."

The calmness with which the Advocate spoke of these exciting and painful events is remarkable. It was exactly a week before the date of his letter that this riot had taken place at Amsterdam; very significant in its nature and nearly tragical in its results. There were no Remonstrant preachers left in the city, and the people of that persuasion were excluded from the Communion service. On Sunday morning, 17th February (1617), a furious mob set upon the house of Rem Bischop, a highly respectable and wealthy citizen, brother of the Remonstrant professor Episcopius, of Leyden. The house, an elegant mansion in one of the principal streets, was besieged and after an hour's resistance carried by storm. The pretext of the assault was that Arminian preaching was going on within its walls, which was not the fact. The mistress of the house, half clad, attempted to make her escape by the rear of the building, was pursued by the rabble with sticks and stones, and shrieks of "Kill the Arminian harlot, strike her dead," until she fortunately found refuge in the house of a neighbouring carpenter. There the hunted creature fell insensible on the ground, the master of the house refusing to give her up, though the maddened mob surged around it, swearing that if the "Arminian harlot"—as respectable a matron as lived in the city—were not delivered over to them, they would tear the house to pieces. The hope of plunder and of killing Rem Bischop himself drew them at last back to his mansion. It was thoroughly sacked; every portable article of value, linen, plate, money, furniture, was carried off, the pictures and objects of art destroyed, the house gutted from top to bottom. A thousand spectators were looking on placidly at the work of destruction as they returned from church, many of them with Bible and Psalm-book in their hands. The master effected his escape over the roof into an adjoining building. One of the ringleaders, a carpenter by trade, was arrested carrying an armful of valuable plunder. He was asked by the magistrate why he had entered the house. "Out of good zeal," he replied; "to help beat and kill the Arminians who were holding conventicle there." He was further asked why he hated the Arminians so much. "Are we to suffer such folk here," he replied, "who preach the vile doctrine that God has created one man for damnation and another for salvation?"—thus ascribing the doctrine of the church of which he supposed himself a member to the Arminians whom he had been plundering and wished to kill.

Rem Bischop received no compensation for the damage and danger; the general cry in the town being that the money he was receiving from Barneveld and the King of Spain would make him good even if not a stone of the house had been left standing. On the following Thursday two elders of the church council waited upon and informed him that he must in future abstain from the Communion service.

It may well be supposed that the virtual head of the government liked not the triumph of mob law, in the name of religion, over the civil authority. The Advocate was neither democrat nor demagogue. A lawyer, a magistrate, and a noble, he had but little sympathy with the humbler classes, which he was far too much in the habit of designating as rabble and populace. Yet his anger was less against them than against the priests, the foreigners, the military and diplomatic mischief-makers, by whom they were set upon to dangerous demonstrations. The old patrician scorned the arts by which highborn demagogues in that as in every age affect adulation for inferiors whom they despise. It was his instinct to protect, and guide the people, in whom he recognized no chartered nor inherent right to govern. It was his resolve, so long as breath was in him, to prevent them from destroying life and property and subverting the government under the leadership of an inflamed priesthood.

It was with this intention, as we have just seen, and in order to avoid bloodshed, anarchy, and civil war in the streets of every town and village, that a decisive but in the Advocate's opinion a perfectly legal step had been taken by the States of Holland. It had become necessary to empower the magistracies of towns to defend themselves by enrolled troops against mob violence and against an enforced synod considered by great lawyers as unconstitutional.