And the authorities in town and village nailed up the barn-doors, and dispersed the canal boat congregations, while the populace pelted them with stones.

The seceders appealed to the Stadholder, pleading that at least they ought to be allowed to hear the word of God as they understood it without being forced into churches where they were obliged to hear Arminian blasphemy.
At least their barns might be left them.

"Barns," said Maurice, "barns and outhouses! Are we to preach in barns?
The churches belong to us, and we mean to have them too." Not long afterwards the Stadholder, clapping his hand on his sword hilt, observed that these differences could only be settled by force of arms.
An ominous remark and a dreary comment on the forty years' war against the Inquisition.
And the same scenes that were enacting in Holland were going on in Overyssel and Friesland and Groningen; but with a difference.

Here it was the Five Points men who were driven into secession, whose barns were nailed up, and whose preachers were mobbed.

A lugubrious spectacle, but less painful certainly than the hangings and drownings and burnings alive in the previous century to prevent secession from the indivisible church.
It is certain that stadholders and all other magistrates ever since the establishment of independence were sworn to maintain the Reformed religion and to prevent a public divine worship under any other form.