A few days after Grotius' arrest, his wife presented a petition, praying that she might have leave to stay with her husband till the end of the process. This grace was refused: she was not even permitted to see him; and having asked to speak to him in presence of his guards, they were so hard-hearted, as to deny even this slight favour.

Some days after these imprisonments, the Prince of Orange and the Deputies of the States-General made a tour through the towns of Holland. They had the power in their hands, and the Arminians were in the greatest consternation. The Prince met with no opposition to his designs: he deposed such magistrates as were relations or friends of the three illustrious prisoners, putting in their place others that were wholly devoted to him; and obliged some towns to receive a garrison, particularly Rotterdam. The Arminians had hitherto been the more powerful party there[85], and had excluded the Contra-Remonstrants from preaching in the great Church: but the Prince took that church from them, and gave it, with all the rest, to the Gomarists, leaving only two to the Arminians. He placed a garrison of an hundred men in the town and turned out and banished the Ministers who had distinguished themselves by their zeal for Arminianism, such as Vorstius, Utengobard, and Episcopius. Ledenberg, Secretary of Utrecht, hearing of these violences, was so terrified, that he made away with himself in prison.

FOOTNOTES:

[83] Du Maurier says the three prisoners were arrested the 22d of August; others assure us it was the 24th. La Neuville, Le Clerc. But it is evident from what Grotius says himself, Ep. 104, that it was the 29th.

[84] Le Clerc.

[85] Mercure François, an. 1617.

[X.] The warmest opposers of a National Synod being disabled from giving any further obstruction, the States-General proceeded to the holding of it. The States of Holland, who in May, 1618, had renewed their protest against the convocation of a National Synod, frightened by the violences exercised against the three illustrious prisoners, at last gave their consent; and it met at Dort.

It was opened on the fifteenth of November, 1618, in the name of the States-General, who assisted at it by their Deputies; and was composed of about seventy Contra-Remonstrants, with only fourteen Arminians. John Bogerman, Minister of Leewarden in Friesland, was chosen President, and had with him four assessors; all five declared enemies of the Arminians. On the tenth of December the Remonstrants brought in a long Writing, containing their reasons for not acknowledging the Synod, as being an illegal assembly where the parties made themselves Judges, contrary to the laws of equity and the Canons of the Church. They further shewed, that most of those who composed the pretended synod were guilty of the schism complained of; that it was publickly notorious they were their declared enemies, and consequently incompetent judges. They afterwards proposed twelve conditions, without which they could not acknowledge the authority of the Synod, nor submit to any of its decisions. This paper put the Synod into a very ill humour. Next day the Arminians giving in a protest, it was censured, and a decree of the Deputies of the States-General ordered that the Synod should proceed, without regarding the protest.

The Arminians wanted to leave Dort; but an order from the States-General obliged them to stay. Their five articles were condemned; and Episcopius and the other Arminian ministers deposed, and declared guilty of corrupting religion, breaking the unity of the Church, and occasioning great scandal. The Synod's sentence was approved by the States-General on the second of July, 1619. The same day the Arminian Ministers who had been detained at Dort, were banished, or imprisoned: they were deprived of their employments, and the effects of several were confiscated. They continued to assert the irregularity of this Council; and the Bishop of Meaux observes, that they employed the same arguments which the Protestants use against the Roman-Catholics concerning the Council of Trent.

[XI.] The Prisoners were not brought to their trial till after the rising of the Synod of Dort. Their confinement had caused great murmuring in the Province of Holland: for not only all honest men were persuaded of their innocence; but it was also evident that the sovereignty of the province of Holland had been openly violated. On the 29th of August, 1618, under the first surprise that an event of this nature must occasion, when it was mentioned in the Assembly of the States-General, the Deputies of the Province of Holland expressed great concern; they complained the rights of Holland had been invaded; adding, that they would ask their constituents what was to be done in such a melancholy and singular occurrence. The City of Rotterdam and some others made loud complaints: They acknowledged that if the three Prisoners were guilty of treason, or of unlawful correspondence with the Spaniards, they ought to be prosecuted; but maintained that they could not be legally tried but by the States of Holland, who alone were their Sovereigns. The Prince of Orange and the States-General found no way of putting a stop to the opposition of such Magistrates as were zealous for their Country, or friends to the Prisoners, but by deposing them. Nothing now remained to obstruct the Prince of Orange in his projects of revenge: The States of Holland, not being in a situation to hinder these violences, unwillingly left the management of this affair to the States-General: but were so much persuaded of the injustice done them, and the invasion made on their Sovereignty, that in the end of January 1619[86], notwithstanding the change of Deputies, they passed a Decree, importing that what had been done in the imprisonment of the Grand Pensionary, and the Pensionaries of Rotterdam and Leyden, should not be made a precedent for the future.