Every action, word, and thought, of Barneveld's life was a refutation of it.

But he was unwilling, at the bidding of a king, to treat a professor with contumely who had just been solemnly and unanimously invited by the great university, by the States of Holland, and by the Stadholder to an important chair; and that was enough for the diplomatist and courtier.
"He, and only he," said Winwood passionately, "hath opposed his Majesty's purposes with might and main." Formerly the Ambassador had been full of complaints of "the craving humour of Count Maurice," and had censured him bitterly in his correspondence for having almost by his inordinate pretensions for money and other property brought the Treaty of Truce to a standstill.

And in these charges he was as unjust and as reckless as he was now in regard to Barneveld.
The course of James and his agents seemed cunningly devised to sow discord in the Provinces, to inflame the growing animosity of the Stadholder to the Advocate, and to paralyse the action of the Republic in the duchies.

If the King had received direct instructions from the Spanish cabinet how to play the Spanish game, he could hardly have done it with more docility.

But was not Gondemar ever at his elbow, and the Infanta always in the perspective?
And it is strange enough that, at the same moment, Spanish marriages were in France as well as England the turning-point of policy.
Henry had been willing enough that the Dauphin should espouse a Spanish infanta, and that one of the Spanish princes should be affianced to one of his daughters.