The nucleus of the Binnenhof was the castle or palace of William II., Count of Holland in the thirteenth century--also Emperor of Germany and father of Florence V., who built the great hall of the knights (into which, however, one may penetrate only on Thursdays), and whose tomb we shall see in Alkmaar church.

The Stadtholders made the Binnenhof their headquarters; but the present Royal Palace is half a mile north-west of it.

Other buildings have been added from time to time, and the trams are now allowed to rush through with their bells jangling the while.

The desecration is not so glaring as at Utrecht, but it seems thoroughly wrong--as though we were to permit a line to traverse Dean's Yard at Westminster.

A more appropriate sanction is that extended to one or two dealers in old books and prints who have their stalls in the Binnenhof's cloisters.
It was in the Binnenhof that the scaffold stood on which John van Barneveldt was beheaded in 1619, the almost inevitable result of his long period of differences with the Stadtholder Maurice, son of William the Silent.