But there is one dark, deep stain on which the eye of posterity, unheeding the surrounding radiance, is constantly fixed: it is the blood of Barneveldt." The Binnenhof leads to the Buitenhof, a large open space, the old gateway to which is the Gevangenpoort prison--scene of another shameful deed in the history of Holland, the death of John and Cornelius de Witt.

The massacre occurred two hundred and thirty-three years ago--in 1672.

Cornelius de Witt was wrongfully accused of an attempt to procure the assassination of the Stadtholder, William III.

To him, in his cell in the Gevangenpoort, came, on 22nd August, John de Witt, late Grand Pensionary, brought hither by a bogus message.
I quote from Davies, who elsewhere makes it clear that (as Dumas says) William III was privy to the crime: "His friends, fearful of some treachery, besought him to pause and inquire into the truth of the summons before he obeyed it; and his only daughter threw herself at his feet, and implored him with floods of tears not to risk unnecessarily a life so precious.

But his anxiety for his brother, with whom he had ever lived on terms of the tenderest affection, proved stronger than their remonstrances; and setting out on foot, attended by his servant and two secretaries, he hastened to the prison.