English public diplomacy in the Dutch Republic, 1609–1619

Abstract

This article studies the strategies and effects of early modern public diplomacy. It does so by analysing how two English ambassadors stationed in the Dutch Republic during the Truce period (1609–1621), Ralph Winwood and Dudley Carleton, used print in their diplomatic negotiations. Focusing on the Vorstius affair (1611–1613) and the affair of the Balance (1617–1619), the article shows how Dutch politico-religious controversies became entangled with foreign policy. Winwood and Carleton, it argues, had a clear public diplomacy strategy in which print played a prominent part. Their public interventions contributed to the escalation of the Dutch conflict, and severely damaged both the domestic and international reputation of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. Thus, English public diplomacy helped to bring about the fall of this leading statesman.

KEYWORDS:

• Anglo-Dutch relations
• public diplomacy
• Spanish-Dutch Truce 1609-1621
• Winwood, Sir Ralph, 1563-1617
• Carleton, Dudley, 1st Viscount Dorchester, 1573-1632

In recent years it has become increasingly clear that diplomacy played an important part in the management of early modern religious and political print.¹ Whereas traditional diplomatic history saw early modern diplomacy as a business of elites among each other that was best described in terms of high politics, scholars working in the new diplomatic history have taken a much broader interest in diplomatic practices.² They recognized that, as the European diplomatic network developed rapidly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ambassadors, envoys and agents increasingly made use of printed publicity to support their negotiations and maintain the reputation of their state. As a result, soft power and public diplomacy – the diplomatic practice of communicating with foreign audiences – are now recognized as essential concerns for early modern diplomats, and an important new area of study.³ Print, evidently, played a major role in these diplomatic efforts. Despite this recent recognition, however, we still know little about the strategies and effects of early modern public diplomacy, which has hardly been studied as such.⁴

Focusing on how diplomats included print in their diplomatic strategies, this article seeks to illustrate the important effects of early modern public diplomacy. It does so by analysing the role of English public diplomacy in the Dutch Republic during a period that exhibits various of the most spectacular and consequential examples of the practice: the Truce Period of 1609–1621. During this period, the temporary peace with Spain allowed the Dutch Republic to be recognized as an independent player on the international stage, and develop into a diplomatic hub for anti-Habsburg Europe.⁵ As a whole string of alliances took shape in preparation for the resumption of war at the end of the Truce, the Republic was brought to the brink of a civil war by the religious controversy between the Remonstrants and the Contraremonstrants over the doctrine of predestination and the position of the Church vis-a-vis the state. Because the outcome of these domestic conflicts would inevitably affect the Republic’s position in European confessional conflict and the developing anti-Habsburg alliance, they became ever more entangled with matters of foreign policy. Moreover, as the Dutch crisis threatened the fragile status quo in Europe, it led to far-reaching public interferences by foreign powers, most notably England and France.⁶

The Dutch Revolt had already been a source of international political publicity in the years before the Truce, but now the Dutch Republic also became the most important locus of public diplomacy.⁷ The new state, it should be stressed, was unusually receptive to foreign interventions due to its peculiar federal and political constitution. While foreign diplomats were expected to deal with the States General in The Hague, which handled all foreign policy, the real decisions were made by the civic regents in the provincial States. As a result, diplomatic agents had much to gain by addressing the sizeable group of regents who were not present in the States General’s assembly room, but who were vital to the decision-making process nonetheless, through printed publications that inescapably found wider dissemination.⁸ Moreover, since leaking was endemic amongst the divided Dutch ruling class, numerous diplomatic documents were printed or reported on in the Republic throughout the seventeenth century, breaking the arcana of international affairs to wider Dutch and European audiences.⁹ As a result, the Dutch Republic in this period presents an ideal case to study early modern public diplomacy in action.

Below, I will focus on two of the more notorious diplomatic controversies in this period, the Vorstius affair (1611–1613) and the affair of the Balance (1617–1619), to show how the English ambassadors involved in these affairs, Ralph Winwood (c. 1563–1617) and Dudley Carleton (1573–1632), strategically managed printed publications to achieve their goals. By conducting diplomacy in public, I argue, Winwood and Carleton purposefully contributed to the escalation of the conflict, and helped bring about its violent end when the leader of the Remonstrant States of Holland, John van Oldenbarnevelt (1547–1619), was executed in The Hague in May 1619.

In making this argument, this article speaks to two bodies of scholarship. Firstly, there has recently been considerable interest in the Truce debates, both by scholars of Dutch pamphlet culture such as Craig Harline and Roeland Harms, and by literary scholars such as Freya Sierhuis.¹⁰ These studies invariably approach these fierce public debates from a national, Dutch perspective. This article supplements this national perspective by focusing on the important role of international relations in the escalation of the debates in the 1610s. Secondly, excellent studies exist that deal with the Truce Period in general, and of Anglo-Dutch texts and affairs in particular both before and during the Synod of Dort (1618–1619).¹¹ Scholars such as Kim Hackett, Anthony Milton, and Eric Platt have shown how Anglo-Dutch political and religious entanglements were reflected in printed publicity on both sides of the Channel. While the profusion and prominence of Anglo-Dutch exchanges in the period are widely appreciated, approaching them from the perspective of public diplomacy adds to our understanding of the international dynamics of public debate.

Investigating diplomatic agency, as well as the aims, methods and strategies diplomats employed, highlights both the structural involvement of the relatively new diplomatic system in the making and the management of (Dutch) public controversies, and the international reach and consequences of public diplomacy. Only through a focused and detailed reconstruction, with constant reference to both diplomatic correspondence and the publicity diplomats generated, is it possible to reveal the deliberate ways in which Winwood and Carleton deployed the press to great effect. Their interventions had major consequences for both Dutch domestic politics and the course of European conflict for years to come, showing both the power and the dangers inherent to their approach of public diplomacy.

Ralph Winwood vs. Conradus Vorstius

On 4 February 1613, The Hague was the scene of a special ceremony. Around the Binnenhof, the centre of government, the civic guard was out in full strength, armed with muskets, to keep the huge crowd at bay. Soldiers took possession of Binnenhof itself and manned the canons positioned at the entrances and on the Vijverberg opposite the government buildings, where a crowd of dignitaries prepared to enter the States General’s assembly room. Barrels filled with pitch were lined up throughout the town, ready to be lit at dusk. Twelve trumpeteers, making a great show and reverberating noise, made their way to the inner court. Proceeding through a path left open by the civic guard and the soldiers, they were followed by a colourful company of nobles, German princes, and the prince of Portugal. At their centre were Count Maurice of Nassau (1567–1618), stadholder of Holland, Zeeland, Guelders, Utrecht and Overijssel, the English ambassador, Sir Ralph Winwood, and the Garter principal king of arms, who was carrying a purse of green silk. On this day, they were going to invest the Dutch stadholder with the Order of the Garter contained within it, and all The Hague celebrated.¹²

The ceremony was widely reported in the press. The official account was published by the States General’s official printer Hillebrant Van der Wouw, and several other descriptions, as well as a history of the Order, followed suit.¹³ A news print engraved by Simon Frisius showed the moment when Winwood attached the Garter to Maurice’s leg against the backdrop of the States General’s assembly room transformed into a majestic neoclassical architectural scene to highlight the importance of the event (see Figure 1).¹⁴ Poets sang the praise of the elevated prince both in Latin and Dutch.¹⁵ Reported internationally in news books and chronicles such as the Mercure François,¹⁶ and depicted on a variety of medals,¹⁷ the Garter ceremony was evidently a highly symbolic media event.

Figure 1. News print engraved by Simon Frisius entitled Figuirlicke Afbeeldinghe ende waerachtighe Beschryvinghe vande Groote Vergaderinge in s’Graven-Hage op de presentatie vanden Engelschen Ridderlicken coussebant, uyt den name ende van wegen des Conincks van Groot Britannien, &c. Ghepresenteert aen den Doorluchtigen Vorst Maurits van Nassua, &c. Op den 4en. Februarij des Jaers 1613. (Atlas van Stolk, Rotterdam)

The ceremony can also be regarded as the culmination of a public campaign masterminded by the English ambassador, Ralph Winwood, against the leader of the States of Holland, John van Oldenbarnevelt, in the famous Vorstius affair. Scholars such as Shriver, Van Deursen and Platt have recognized that with the bestowal of the Garter, James VI/I (1566–1625) signalled his belief in the leadership of Maurice of Nassau, and his disaffection with Oldenbarnevelt.¹⁸ This section builds on that work by analysing Winwood’s use of publicity in the Vorstius affair, and the major effect of his interventions on Dutch domestic politics. Oldenbarnevelt himself, who fiercely opposed James’s public espousal of Maurice, clearly recognized this effect.¹⁹ Both the ceremony and the publications that described it emphasized the harmonious alliance between Nassau and Stuart.²⁰ Such publicity shaped the Truce conflicts. Egged on by his ambassadors and the Calvinist archbishop Abott, James showed himself a partisan in Dutch domestic politics. Through his authoritative public statements and gestures, English diplomacy co-authored the opposition between Maurice and Oldenbarnevelt and licensed agitation against Oldenbarnevelt and the States of Holland.

The start of this public campaign was sixteen months earlier, on 5 November 1611, when Winwood made an oration before the States General. In it, he presented a letter from his king protesting against the nomination of Conrad Vorstius (1569–1622) as professor of theology at the University of Leiden.²¹ James, who had been notified of the nomination by Dutch opponents of the Arminians considered Vorstius a “blasphemous monster”,²² and demanded that the decision be reversed. Installing Vorstius as the successor of Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609), Winwood stated, would be like transgressing “from a fever to a hot disease”.²³ At the end of his oration, he “exhibited” both the king’s letter and the written text of his speech for distribution among the States’ members.²⁴ It did not take long before both documents were disseminated widely in print. Winwood’s oration, originally delivered in French, appeared in no fewer than four Dutch editions.²⁵ The king’s letter, with its fierce attacks on Arminius and Vorstius, was printed in three distinct Dutch translations from the French original, and appeared in at least four editions.²⁶ That Dutch Contraremonstrants were responsible for the translations and dissemination is suggested by a prefatory poem hailing the king as a second David and Protector of the Faith bringing joy to “the pious”.²⁷ It cannot be ruled out that Winwood himself also had a hand in the printing campaign, but, as we shall see below, it is more likely that he relied on the Contraremonstrant members of the States General to do it for him.

The States General now faced a terrible dilemma. As self-styled Protector of the Faith, guarantor of the Truce with Spain and the Republic’s most important ally next to the king of France, James could hardly be ignored. Yet he was meddling in a domestic issue that belonged, as Winwood himself admitted, to the authority of the States and the curators of the university of Leiden. Succumbing to James meant a loss of face that was just as bad as the disadvantages of resisting him. The States therefore did what they did best: prevaricate and play for time. Only after a long delay and a second oration by Winwood in late November, which was also printed, did they issue a non-committal answer. In the face of the English publication campaign, this strategy was bound to fail.²⁸

John van Oldenbarnevelt, the leader of the States of Holland, the most important Remonstrant bastion, clearly recognized the dangers that the publication of English diplomatic communication presented. He rightly considered it a much bigger threat than the home-bred Contraremonstrant libels that were in circulation at this point. In a letter to Noel de Caron, the Dutch ambassador in London, he expressed his concerns, writing that the “church conflicts” had now become much more complicated

because some have resorted to the strategy [beleyt] of, in addition to the many libels that are published in print, printing the letters of His Majesty and the propositions by the Lord Winwood, and have disseminated them amongst the community[.] [T]o what end, your Lordship (as a man who has experience with this [strategy] himself) may judge.²⁹

The “end” was clear to Oldenbarnevelt: supported by the authority of the king, the Contraremonstrants would feel free to defy the States by all means necessary. An escalation of public unrest and subversiveness was bound to follow. Observing this process of polarisation, Dutch Catholic Franciscus Dusseldorpius gloated in his diary that James’s railing had amused both Catholics and the “heretics” themselves.³⁰ For Catholics like Dusseldorpius, it seemed that, whatever the outcome, the intervention could only weaken the Republic’s position vis-à-vis Catholic powers.

Oldenbarnevelt responded quickly: first, he instructed Caron to promise James that he would do the utmost to ensure that the king’s letter and his ambassador’s propositions would be taken into account. Furthermore, Caron was to ask the king to condemn their publication:

Many pious and wise men in this state are convinced that His Majesty, in his abundant royal wisdom, prudence and affection towards the maintenance of the prosperity of these lands, would not condone his letters, nor the said propositions of the Lord Winwood, to be thus disseminated in print amongst the common people.³¹

Secondly, Oldenbarnevelt reinforced the diplomatic initiative to placate the king. Convinced that James was a firm supporter of the authority of the government in Church affairs, and misled by “flandricized” Calvinists on Remonstrant doctrine, Oldenbarnevelt ordered Caron to seek his support for the Remonstrant position. Throughout the Vorstius affair, Oldenbarnevelt fed Caron with information to “properly educate” the king on the issue of the religious conflict.³²

In his efforts to sway James, however, Oldenbarnevelt made things worse by seeking to defame the Contraremonstrants. Thus, in May 1612, he sent Caron two pamphlets written by the Delft minister Reynier Donteclock, “in which I have underlined various of the most important points” that showed the similarity between the “fanatics” [gepassioneerden] in the Netherlands and the Puritans in England.³³ Donteclock, a Calvinist from Flanders, was adamant that the States of Holland had no authority to settle Church matters, so one can see why Oldenbarnevelt thought his pamphlets might sway James to support the Arminians. “If you should need to write on the matter”, he later wrote to Caron, “it is above all important to emphasize that church men and their business should stand under the command of the Sovereign Government”.³⁴ Oldenbarnevelt’s involvement in the Remonstrant campaign to persuade James and others was a prominent charge in his indictment in 1619. The final paragraph of the document that led to his death presented it as an effort to render “the entire government suspect and odious amongst foreign kings and potentates”.³⁵

Publicity again complicated diplomatic business. Pamphlets were disseminated throughout the Province of Holland to convince readers that James, once made aware of the facts of the matter, would support the Remonstrants, because both their doctrinal and their ecclesiological positions were so much more compatible with his own domestic position. According to Winwood himself, Remonstrants in the States of Holland helped to spread the rumour that James was now willing “to lette fall the cawse” against Vorstius because the Dutch ambassador in London, Noel de Caron, had convinced him that:

The Ministers, which opposed against Vorstius, were Puritanes; that by their councells, & practices Flandres did fall, by relapse, into the hand of the Spanyard: that they were the men, who debauched the Earle of Leycester in his gouverment, and suche like.³⁶

This was indeed what was being reiterated in Remonstrant pamphlets, and fully in line with what Oldenbarnevelt himself believed.

Winwood was concerned about these pamphlets and the lack of public response to Vorstius and the Remonstrants due to Remonstrant censorship.³⁷ He recognized that, as a foreign envoy, he was in an excellent position to break the “inhibitions” to Contra-Remonstrant publication. He did so in two different ways. Firstly, he asked his colleague in Brussels, William Trumbull, to find a “smart Jesuite” with a “quick and nimble spirit” like Becanus to write against Vorstius. He sent him Vorstius’ De Attributis Dei and his Apology for the purpose, although he warned that his involvement should remain a secret.³⁸ Secondly, Winwood stepped up his official communication, threatening to publish material that could not be suppressed in his “Deep Protestation”.

Winwood’s third oration, the “Deep Protestation”, was delivered to the States General on 19 December 1611 and read in the States of Holland the following day.³⁹ The text was given to all members for consultation with their civic principals.⁴⁰ In this diplomatic hand grenade of a speech, Winwood berated the States for their lack of regard of the king’s letter of 5 November, and insisted that they acted upon his request. Central to the speech was the threat of publication. “The King my Master”, Winwood asserted,

Holds himself bound to avenge [the continuing presence of Vorstius] or to show that it grieves him. And if no reparation will be made of this with the utmost haste, he will (and this cannot be prevented but by banning Vorstius) make it appear through public writings, which he will have printed and published for the World, how much he detests the Atheisms and Heresies of the said Vorstius and all those who maintain, favour and protect the same.⁴¹

That any such publication presented a radical escalation of the conflict can be derived from the fact that Winwood legitimized James’s course of action by quoting Matthew 18:15–17:

If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church.

Publication, then, would involve the rest of the Church, both domestic and international, severely damaging the reputation of the States in both spheres. Moreover, by quoting Matthew, Winwood made an additional implicit threat. Many among his audience, the States General and the readers of the published oration, must have been aware of the next verse: “but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican”. Publicizing the King’s word, Winwood threatened, was the final step before a breakdown of Anglo-Dutch relations.

The speech was a clever move, which forced both James’s and the States’ hands. James wavered whether or not Winwood had exceeded his instructions, but eventually felt compelled to defend his honour and show that Winwood’s threat was not idle.⁴² So when the States had still failed to comply with the King’s demand two months after the “Deep Protestation”, Winwood presented James’s Declaration to the States General. The printed publication recapitulated the whole affair. Apart from a declaration by the king stating his displeasure and rehearsing his demands, it included all the official communications that had already been published in the previous months: the king’s letter presented to the States on 5 November as well as Winwood’s three orations. The pamphlet was disseminated with care. Winwood received 100 printed copies of the French text printed in London to persuade wavering regents. He also ordered a translation in Dutch.⁴³ As early as 1 March, Winwood reported to Cecil that the French version had been reprinted by a Dutch printer, and that the Dutch translation had appeared in print as well.⁴⁴ Printed in Dordrecht by the English Calvinist printer George Waters, it sported an engraving of the royal coat of arms on the title-page, enhancing the text’s authority. This Dutch translation was soon reprinted in other cities.⁴⁵ The fact that two other translations appeared, which differed from Waters’s edition, suggests that Winwood was not the only one seeking to disseminate the Declaration among a wider Dutch audience.⁴⁶

The aim of publishing the Declaration was to clear the king’s name and to break the Dutch stalemate by persuading the voting regents in Holland in French (the speeches’ original language) and Dutch. At the same time, efforts were made to enhance its international reception. In addition to the French version, Winwood received 100 copies of “the Kings Latin books” in mid-March.⁴⁷ Although the number of copies was low, the Declaration soon circulated in diplomatic circles, not just in print, but also in transcript. This even led to to a Spanish translation, made by a certain father Diego de Veiras early in the spring for the benefit of Philip III, who had a keen interest in the Dutch crisis.⁴⁸ Thus James and Winwood put the States before an international tribunal of worried Protestants and scornful Catholics.

The impact of the publication was considerable. The unwilling States of Holland were particularly distressed by the fact that Winwood had not only presented the text in their assembly, but also disseminated it “in print in these lands”.⁴⁹ Like Oldenbarnevelt, the States worried it would diminish their already compromised authority. Yet however much the States of Holland decried the publication of the king’s word, it finally succeeded in propelling them into action. They decided to hear Vorstius on 22 March 1612. The latter held a lengthy apologetic speech in German, which the States of Holland had printed in Dutch as well as Latin, so that it could be presented to James. It could not prevent their defeat.⁵⁰ In May, Vorstius was banished to Gouda; he would never exercise his professorate. James and Winwood had obtained a diplomatic victory through publication.

The English public intervention in the Vorstius episode had profound consequences. James and his ambassador publicly became partisans in the Dutch domestic conflict, which was deeply unsettling for the Remonstrants and an encouragement of Contraremonstrant agitation. The affair also poisoned James’s relationship with Oldenbarnevelt. In private, James wrote to Winwood that he had become convinced that Oldenbarnevelt was

Completely alienated & deviated from the right path, & in particular by relying fully on the Queen of France; & on the contrary, that the Count Maurice is strongly devoted to the good cause & to me in particular.⁵¹

After the Vorstius affair, English diplomacy focused its attention on Maurice of Nassau. As early as February 1612, Winwood reported that Maurice was the victim of party strife. Maurice, who foresaw “the Miseries into which thease Countreys are likely to fall”, was “most affectionate to his Majesty’s Service”, and committed to the “Advancement of Religion”. Yet he was frustrated at every turn by the Remonstrants of Holland, who did not want him to have any authority, at home or abroad. In “Monsieur Barnevelt”, by contrast, he found a “Coldness of affection in all things”. Winwood, clearly, was thinking of means to boost Maurice’s reputation.⁵² The plan of the Garter ceremony was born.

It was only after James had raised Maurice’s prestige that a conciliatory gesture towards Oldenbarnevelt was made. In 1613, pleased with Vorstius’s removal and the nomination of the moderate Contraremonstrant Johannes Polyander in his stead, the king sent a letter to the States General declaring himself against a national synod. The conflict between Remonstrants and Contraremonstrants, the king now wrote, should be resolved by “publick authority”, which was exactly what the Remonstrant provinces wanted. In subsequent years, this letter became a stock reference in Remonstrant pamphlets and speeches.⁵³ Grotius especially was fond of quoting the king, both in a speech to the Amsterdam city magistrate and in his Ordinum Pietas.⁵⁴ Oldenbarnevelt was much relieved; the storm seemed to have passed. However, neither the king nor his advisers forgot how Oldenbarnevelt had treated them. What was even worse was that Winwood’s publication strategy proved to be a model for the behaviour of his successor, Dudley Carleton, who soon after his arrival became embroiled in what may be called the affair of the Balance.

Dudley Carleton vs. « Monsieur le Balancier »

Dudley Carleton arrived in the Dutch Republic in January 1616, just when the religious conflict between the Remonstrants and the Contraremonstrants was picking up steam. Before long, he felt “amongst rageing lyons” in a country “at warr w[i]th it selfe”.⁵⁵ Like Winwood, who had become secretary of state, Carleton was firmly attached to International Protestantism and leaned heavily towards the Contraremonstrants. He quickly developed a dislike for Oldenbarnevelt, whose pro-French course and preferment of the French ambassador Benjamin Aubery Du Maurier were perhaps even more worrisome to the English than his support of the Remonstrants. When the Contraremonstrants clamoured for a national synod to resolve the conflicts – a move which Oldenbarnevelt fiercely resisted because it impinged on the authority of the States – Carleton was sympathetic. Between 1616 and 1618, Carleton, close to the circle around Maurice of Orange and fed by the Contraremonstrant partisan Matthew Slade,⁵⁶ became a central and public supporter of the Contraremonstrants. This led to another controversy, much less well-known than the Vorstius affair, but highly similar and closely connected to it: the affair of the Balance. Carleton’s struggle with “Monsieur le Balancier”, as he called the author,⁵⁷ was highly public, and played a major role in the escalation of the Truce Conflicts and Oldenbarnevelt’s downfall.

Fearing that the Dutch domestic religious conflicts might get out of hand, Carleton sought to force the matter by going public. He agreed with Maurice that he would ask James to send a letter pleading for a national synod.⁵⁸ In March, Winwood (now secretary of state) duly sent Carleton a letter from the king. In it, James reminded the States of the “mal & danger imminent” which the “malheureuses divisions” presented, and insisted that they should end the religious conflict by calling “un synode national” as soon as possible. This, of course, was exactly what Oldenbarnevelt and the Remonstrants were trying to prevent. It was clear from the beginning that the letter was meant to support the Contraremonstrants, whom both Winwood and Carleton by this time had come to refer to as “the better party”.⁵⁹ Importantly for future developments, this was also the opinion of other Protestant observers in The Hague.

To put maximal pressure on the States of Holland, which together with Utrecht remained the main bulwark of the Remonstrants, the king intended to circulate the letter as widely as possible. Carleton received instructions accordingly. Winwood wrote that he had “no doubt but the letter will no sooner be published in the Assembly, but presently it will come forth in print”. If anyone would succeed “to smother and suppress it”, Carleton had the liberty to print it himself, as long as he had the support of Maurice “and the better party”.⁶⁰ Winwood sensed things well. Carleton replied that after his reading of the letter in the assembly, Oldenbarnevelt had moved the States to order “that no copies should be published of the letter, save only one to be sent to every province, and that their clerks should have express order to the purpose”. Evidently, Oldenbarnevelt saw the danger of the king’s interference and sought to limit the letter’s impact and circulation. Carleton was not worried, however, and expected that “this restraint serves only to make [publication] hearkned after with more earnestness”. In the unlikely case that the letter would not find its way to the press, he would arrange the printing itself.⁶¹ Winwood and Carleton’s low expectations of Dutch secrecy soon proved to be correct. Two weeks later, Carleton reported that the king’s letter had indeed been printed anonymously in Amsterdam without his interference, both in French and in Dutch.⁶² However, since somewhere along the way errors had crept in, Carleton felt “forced” to arrange his own publication anyway, for which he took to Delft.⁶³ It was this corrected copy, in French, which he sent to Winwood to be shown to the king.⁶⁴ Oldenbarnevelt, who firmly believed that the arcana of the state should never be published, detested the move.⁶⁵

The effect of the king’s published letter was considerable. According to Carleton himself it was read everywhere, “working many visible effects, settling some, which were wavering, and confirming others”.⁶⁶ Within weeks, four Contraremonstrant provinces (Friesland, Groningen, Guelders and Zeeland) felt emboldened to ask for a national synod. The States of Holland, who up until then had simply refused to even discuss the matter, now felt compelled to do so, “volentes nolentes”, as Carleton remarked contentedly.⁶⁷ As in the Vorstius affair before, the king’s word carried remarkable power in the Republic, which had been the case since his works had been translated at his succession.⁶⁸ It might even have influenced citizens in Arminian-led towns such as Oudewater and Heusden to depose their Arminian preachers and install Contraremonstrants in acts of defiance against local magistrates. The letter also helped provide Contraremonstrants with an authoritative text to refer to in the ongoing polemic, and as such it was frequently recycled. When the Contraremonstrant magistrate of Amsterdam defended its demand for a national synod, they made much of the king’s letter, and included it in their apology.⁶⁹

With foreign royal support for the Contraremonstrants, the authority of Arminian leaders wavered. This also had its effect on foreign observers. In diplomatic circles, rumour now had it that the Dutch might have “to follow the example of the French in the Marschal d’Ancre” to end their differences.⁷⁰ This refence to Concino Concini, Louis XIII’s most powerful minister, who had recently been killed at the king’s order, was devastating. The only remedy for Holland’s troubles, it was suggested, was to kill the divisive spirit of d’Ancre in his new incarnation: Oldenbarnevelt. As Oldenbarnevelt grew more stubborn, so too did diplomatic hostility. According to Carleton, Oldenbarnevelt grew ever more “heated” against a synod. While he must have known that he would lose much credit in England with this stance, he underestimated the animosity among Protestant diplomats. Winwood went as far as to say that whoever opposed a synod was “neither a Good Christian nor a Good Politician”.⁷¹ Philibert du Bois, agent for several Protestant German princes, even called the Arminians “Gottlosen rotten”.⁷² It is no coincidence that at this early stage of the conflict, rumour in England had it that Oldenbarnevelt had been imprisoned, “the presage of the misfortunes which befell him”.⁷³

One might wonder to what extent such judgements were self-fulfilling prophecies. Given their proximity to the Stadtholder, the unequivocal condemnation of Oldenbarnevelt by the international Protestant community was an important precondition for the dramatic developments of 1618–1619, as it encouraged Maurice to allow the division between him and Oldenbarnevelt to widen beyond repair. After the States of Holland’s so-called Sharp Resolution of August, calls for violence against Oldenbarnevelt became louder, and the comparison between Oldenbarnevelt and Concini persisted.⁷⁴ It was increasingly clear that the international pressure combined with the ever more furious domestic mood was unsustainable.

Foreign pressure on Maurice to interfere mounted. James was afraid that Dutch religious divisions might spread across the Channel and sought to limit French influence in the Republic. Many other princes were also affected by the religious quarrels. Partisanship, Dudley Carleton wrote, had crippled the Dutch decision-making process, since anything “which one party requires or shews to admit with willingness, [is] crossed by the other, out of a humour of contradiction only, without further design”.⁷⁵ Thus, thwarted by Holland, the States General failed to act decisively upon requests for aid from anti-Habsburg powers.⁷⁶ Louis XIII, who asked for assistance in his domestic troubles; Gustavus Adolphus, who requested help to fight the pro-Habsburg king of Poland; the duke of Savoy, who was embroiled in a succession crisis in Monferrato between a pro-Habsburg and anti-Habsburg candidate in 1617; and Bohemia, where revolt broke out in 1618, were all left to wait. The Dutch Council of State complained to the States General about the disastrous effect of the religious troubles on foreign policy.⁷⁷ The States’ paralysis inflicted great damage on the Dutch international reputation. Three Dutch representatives abroad, Gideon van den Boetzelaer in France, Noël de Caron in England, and Pieter Cornelisz van Brederode in the Holy Roman Empire, insisted in letters read to the States General on the very same day that “bad rumours” about the religious schism harmed Dutch reputation.⁷⁸ In speeches to the States General, envoys of France and Sweden expressed their hope that the domestic divisions would soon be ended.⁷⁹ Diplomats close to Maurice – Suriano of Venice, Carleton of England, and Du Bois of Bohemia, Saxony and Hessen – were of one mind: the best way to achieve this was by having the Contraremonstrants have their way. Yet Oldenbarnevelt and his supporters in Holland had strength left. They managed to stave off attacks for more than a year, and denied James’s demand for a national synod.

Like Winwood six years before, Carleton now prepared a public oration to force the matter. On 6 October 1617, he gave a speech to the States General that repeated the argument in the king’s letter of March and supported the four Contraremonstrant provinces.⁸⁰ Carleton emphasized the international context in which the Truce conflicts occurred. “We hear nothing here”, he said, “but the mockeries and derisions of our enemies”. He referred to the “scare, anxiety, and astonishment” in the country as an argument to end the dispute. Emphasizing that Remonstrant sermons had caused confusion amongst soldiers and were harming discipline, he suggested that Remonstrantism presented an immediate threat to the Republic’s survival, and appealed to the States to restore the union in state and church in order to “confuse” the enemy.⁸¹ The only way to do so, he argued, was through the synod his master the king had suggested. Oldenbarnevelt was not pleased, and sent Grotius to Rotterdam to work on a reply.⁸²

Long before Grotius was finished, however, Carleton’s speech was out in print. It is unclear who arranged for the printing of the speech. The French ambassador Du Maurier told the Venetian resident Suriano that he suspected Carleton of having printed the oration himself. In his own correspondence, Carleton denied this, and wrote to John Ogle that he was “religious … not to giue abroad anything in theyr state more than goeth thorow theyr own hands”, and to a friend that the printing of the speech was “much against my minde”.⁸³ In reality, he showed himself to be well-pleased with the publication. He devoted much energy to the dissemination of the printed speech, and was angered when the States of Utrecht banned it.⁸⁴ Regardless of whether Carleton initiated the publication or not, he was clearly feigning innocence. The adage he shared with Winwood that anything spoken in the assembly “presently … will come forth in print” clearly shows that Carleton knew very well the speech would be published by one or more of the States’ Contraremonstrant members. Furthermore, the Vorstius affair had taught him that it was likely to be circulated widely in several languages. He confirmed as much in a letter to Thomas Lake, the only acting secretary of state in the months after Winwood’s death.⁸⁵ Carleton, then, fully expected the speech to be printed, and was not disappointed.

The Dutch edition of the speech was sold by public criers throughout the Republic and ran through at least four editions in Dutch.⁸⁶ Local magistrates in Amsterdam and The Hague purportedly printed the oration to incite the public to “disturbances”.⁸⁷ Agents such as Du Bois circulated transcripts of the speech to a variety of courts in the Holy Roman Empire and elsewhere, and it did not take long before translations in French, German, and English were printed for foreign audiences.⁸⁸ Carleton, speaking in the closed assembly room of the States General, had the ear of Europe. Like Winwood, he had transformed the genre of the diplomatic harangue into an instrument of public persuasion, and through correspondents such as Matthew Slade in Amsterdam and John Ogle in Utrecht, he closely monitored the reception of his words.⁸⁹ Unlike Winwood, however, Carleton’s action turned him into the main character in a polemic that was started by the anonymously published, 70-page-long Balance. The subsequent affair showed Carleton wrestling with “Monsieur le Balancier”, and demonstrated that when print became an instrument of diplomacy, ambassadors themselves became subject to public scrutiny. By breaking the arcana, Carleton had also broken both his own and the king of England’s inviolability.

The author of the Balance was Jacobus Taurinus (1576–1618), a Remonstrant preacher-cum-pamphleteer in Utrecht. Taurinus had his pamphlet printed in his own town, where he was protected by the local authorities. He was fed information by Grotius, who was preparing the official response, and even conferred with Oldenbarnevelt before the pamphlet was published. Presumably, influential Remonstrants, possibly even Taurinus’s friend Wttenbogaert, paid for the campaign, allowing it to spread at least as widely as Carleton’s Oration. According to their later testimonies, neither Taurinus, nor the printer and publisher had a hand in its dissemination. It was fetched at the Utrecht printer’s office by unknown distributers, who disseminated the work in Holland, especially in Amsterdam and Leiden, where booksellers had received “big packages” of the pamphlet without knowing who had sent them.⁹⁰

Carleton received the Balance in Dutch in mid-November, after having been warned that it was in the making by his wide network of correspondents.⁹¹ Since he could not read Dutch, the Amsterdam Contraremonstrant schoolmaster Matthew Slade translated the full pamphlet for him into English. In close cooperation with the Amsterdam Contraremonstrant elite, Slade supplied Carleton with arguments and material against it.⁹² Slade’s friend Festus Hommius analysed the pamphlet’s style, content and even its typeface to assist Carleton in identifying the author, albeit with little success (Taurinus remained anonymous until his death the next year).⁹³ Carleton was enraged by the Balance, and did anything he could to counter it. In the meantime, his opponents sought to disseminate it as widely as possible. The French ambassador Du Maurier employed the minister of the Walloon Church in Utrecht, Carolus Niellius, a close friend of Taurinus, to make a French translation for Louis XIII, which he also had printed for the French-reading public.⁹⁴ Given its brazen content, the international circulation of the Balance was even more damaging to Carleton than the original Dutch text.

Taurinus started The Balance by expressing his scruples in “attacking” a person of such “Grandness and Lustre” as the ambassador of the king of England, who, like all other envoys, should be treated with the utmost respect. “But”, he argued,

When I eventually saw said Oration being advertised and publicly sold in various places on 28 and 29 October […] and moreover, that people used the name of his Majesty and horribly abused the same Oration to cause more bitterness amongst the common people, and to harm the public authority, I, considering everything, eventually decided that it was time to take up the pen and to respond to it with this Balance.⁹⁵

In other words, publication rendered Carleton, and through him the king of England, vulnerable. Carleton, Taurinus argued, should have prevented the publication of his Oration, “because the common people should not be made judges of the weighty business that passes between high lords”.⁹⁶ Niellius, probably taking his cue from Du Maurier,⁹⁷ stressed the point about Carleton’s responsibility for the controversy even more strongly.⁹⁸ While conceding that it was “an audacious and irrevent act” for a private person to “examine” matters of state in public, Niellius continued that

Because the oration of the Lord Ambassador has been publicly printed in Dutch and French, without hearing whether the magistrates have anything to object against it, being distributed [semée] and sold everywhere by public criers, it is reasonable […] that those, who are by him reprehended and taxed with diverse faults, will bring their cause to the same tribunal of all the people in the country, to defend themselves before the same judges he appealed to.⁹⁹

In sum, the Balance made Carleton responsible for the publication of his speech, which was then used to excuse its own attack on the English ambassador.

The Balance took the form of an exegesis. For 70 pages, Carleton’s three-page oration was torn to pieces, as Taurinus quoted sentence after sentence, each quotation followed by lengthy refutations. This began with the title of the printed oration, which included the phrase that the speech had been presented “to end the sad discords in Church and polity because of the teachings of Arminius and his followers”.¹⁰⁰ In more than six pages, Taurinus argued that it was “clear as the sun” that not Arminius, but his opponents had caused the rupture in the Church and state.¹⁰¹ He then used the same procedure for every sentence Carleton had uttered. One can see why Carleton was incensed by The Balance.

The tone of the text, too, was audacious. The fact that Den Tex, in his magisterial biography of Oldenbarnevelt, calls the pamphlet “respectful” can only be explained by the biographer’s bias for his subject and the Remonstrants.¹⁰² In fact, Taurinus’ disdain for the ambassador clearly shines through the rhetorical veneer of respect he seeks to uphold. According to the Balance, Carleton is “far from the truth”, “with all respect, erring grossly”, committing “errors” (mis-slaghen) and “big faults”.¹⁰³ Parts of the text are described as “poppycock” (beuselingh).¹⁰⁴ Carleton is described as “much confused” and, playing on Carleton’s own reference to Hippocrates, compared to a doctor lacking knowledge of anatomy.¹⁰⁵ He is (rightly) said to “speak the language of the Contraremonstrants”.¹⁰⁶ Irreverently, Taurinus offers sarcastic asides, for instance in his response to Carleton’s comment on the Remonstrants’ respect for public authority (“thank God that something positive is said about the Remonstrants”).¹⁰⁷ Finally, the pamphlet is filled with tu quoques, to the effect that Carleton is asked why he did not remedy things in England before presuming to do so in the Netherlands.¹⁰⁸ Near the end of the Balance, Taurinus even cites James’s own religious policy and past behaviour to suggest that Carleton’s speech went against the king’s instructions.¹⁰⁹

Banning the balance

For months, Carleton did all he could to oppose the Balance. As Matthew Slade suggested, he tried to use the public controversy to damage the reputation and position of the Remonstrants, and force them to “betray their malice”.¹¹⁰ He listed his objections in a letter to king James, pretending not to be shaken by the “many imbecilities” against his own person, but shocked by all the attacks on other people it contained, most of all of course those aimed at the king himself.¹¹¹ This care for others, he high-mindedly maintained, was what had persuaded him to demand a ban. It was immediately clear to all that this request would put the Remonstrants in an impossible position, and this must have been exactly why Carleton insisted on it. The problem for the States of Holland, Oldenbarnevelt explained to Caron, was that by publishing a ban “his proposition would be held for good, which many have objected to, before his proposition has been publicly answered”.¹¹² This was the fundamental battle that was waged over the Balance: by publicizing the ban, the States of Holland would validate Carleton’s oration, contradict themselves, and offer triumph on a silver plate to the Contraremonstrants. As in the Vorstius case, then, English public diplomacy forced the States’ hands: publicity compelled them to either act against their own stated policy or publicly offend the king of England. Of course, it was also a great personal humiliation for Oldenbarnevelt should he be forced to write and sign a ban of a text he himself had instigated. According to Suriano, the Venetian resident, Oldenbarnevelt visited Carleton to dissuade him from his intent, but Carleton, who thought Oldenbarnevelt to be “mad” (matto) at this point, was not to be stopped.¹¹³ On 25 November, he appeared in the assembly of the States General with printed copies of the Balance which were handed out to the delegates. As the Lords leafed through it with ever more worried expressions, he made his complaint. The infamous libel harmed both the king’s honour and his own before “the entire Christendom”, and therefore the ambassador demanded that the States would issue a placard ordering the book to be burned, and a reward for information leading to the author and the printer.

The States debated the issue for many days. The Remonstrant provinces Holland, Utrecht and Overijssel argued that a placard against this particular libel was unnecessary, and that one against all seditious publications was called for. Grotius for Holland and Brinius, an Arminian from Guelders, pleaded against a ban “with violence and importunity”.¹¹⁴ They managed to prolong the proceedings, and in his turn, Grotius too visited Carleton to ask him to let the case rest. But Carleton persevered. Within a week, he sent three further memorials to the States, each demanding swift action.¹¹⁵ After two weeks, the Contraremonstrant majority prevailed, and a placard was signed on 8 December. It did not mention a burning, which sounded too much like the Inquisition for the States, but it did order the book to be confiscated, and offered rewards of 1,000 and 600 guilders for the person who could lead the authorities to the author.¹¹⁶ While this was satisfactory on a superficial level, the problem was that the placard would not be printed by the States General, but by the separate provinces. And on the very same day the States General signed the ban, the States of Holland decided they found no harm in the Balance, and refused to either print or enforce the ban.¹¹⁷ They were followed by Utrecht and Overijssel. No matter how much Carleton complained to Oldenbarnevelt, the latter claimed to be powerless to force them.¹¹⁸ The battle continued well into 1618, when Carleton complained that the French translation was being sold freely in Holland for a couple of days. Again he demanded a burning, but this time the States of Holland only burned the book in their own assembly hall. Another trick, according to Carleton, because “of an execution ‘a huis clos’ the world cannot take knowledge”.¹¹⁹

The weeks following Christmas were filled with speculation about the author of the Balance. Even the king himself made inquiries, suggesting to Carleton that Grotius had written it on the basis of a textual comparison between Grotius’s letters and the text of The Balance.¹²⁰ Carleton knew that Grotius had been specifically charged to write the official reply to his oration. Considering him “pedantic” and “corrupt”, he was all too ready to believe the accusation.¹²¹ It stiffened his opposition to Oldenbarnevelt, whose hand he saw in every Remonstrant pamphlet that now came off the press. Thus, he fiercely criticized a pamphlet called Noodighe antwoord op de Contra-remonstranten (Necessary Answer to the Contraremonstrants), for its abuse of Foxe and English authorities, something he found typical of Oldenbarnevelt’s previous mission to convert the king.¹²² An extra reason to be suspicious about this particular pamphlet was the fact that it was printed by the States’ official printer, Hillebrandt Jacobsz, and addressed to the States of Holland.

Even more so than Winwood during the Vorstius affair, the battle of the Balance led Carleton to complain about Remonstrant censorship. He was, or pretended to be, furious that Oldenbarnevelt, who claimed to be incapable of suppressing the Balance, seemed to be very successful in pursuing Contraremonstrant authors. He told the story of the Amsterdam notary Jan Dankerts, who had the misfortune to lose the manuscript of his fierce anti-Remonstrant pamphlet together with a list of the “substantial persons” who had agreed to contribute to the printing costs.¹²³ With this “incontrovertible evidence” in hand,¹²⁴ Oldenbarnevelt had the man arrested and tried, which Carleton saw as a sign of his “hatred” and dishonesty.¹²⁵ He may never have learned that Dankerts, although indeed imprisoned for a while, was protected by the Contraremonstrant mayors of Amsterdam, who prohibited Dankerts’ interrogation and persecution, procured his early release, and indeed rewarded him soon afterwards.¹²⁶ Still, had he known, it would not have altered his perception: throughout 1617 and 1618, he was determined to portray Oldenbarnevelt in a negative light.

Publicity, then, provided Carleton with material against Oldenbarnevelt. He attacked him in various ways: by showing the advocate’s zeal to persecute Contraremonstrants, as in the case of Dankerts, by showing his protection of infamous libellers, as in the case of “Monsieur le Balancier”, and in the end, when Oldenbarnevelt had published his apology or Remonstrance, even by quoting his own words.¹²⁷ Although Carleton’s precise role in Oldenbarnevelt’s downfall has never been cleared up, it is clear that he favoured and stimulated it.

The Balance continued to play its part. After Oldenbarnevelt’s imprisonment, in late August, Maurice of Orange himself reminded Carleton that he should request the publication of the ban in Utrecht and Holland and all other places where it had not yet been advertised. Carleton did this immediately. The Prince, a keen propagandist, timed this request to have it coincide with the procedure that the French ambassadors Du Maurier and Boissise had begun against François van Aerssen, whose pamphlet attacking Oldenbarnevelt’s son in law Cornelis van der Mijle had so offended the king of France that he had sent Boissise with the explicit order to request Aerssen’s punishment. Thus the continuous Anglo-French rivalry in the Dutch Republic continued to affect Dutch publicity. In this conflict between the two protector kings of the Dutch Republic, Louis XIII and James VI/I, the triumph was of course James’s. Whereas Boissise was told that the States did not see anything offensive in Van Aerssen’s pamphlet, Carleton immediately obtained the ban that had been denied to him by the Remonstrants only eight months before. The affair of the Balance evidently was of great importance to the Contraremonstrants, and even contributed to Oldenbarnevelt’s death. One of the charges against Oldenbarnevelt at his trial, months later, was that he had not acted on the king’s request to publish the ban on the Balance in Holland, “to the disreputation of the Generality and the displeasure of a King so closely allied with the same”.¹²⁸

Conclusions

If the English public interferences in the Dutch Truce conflicts show one thing, it is that Winwood and Carleton had a deliberate publication strategy. The sequence in which they operated was extremely similar: they published the king’s letter, escalated in speeches, and pounded on the censor afterwards, while making use of their networks to help print, disseminate and repress texts when needed. Throughout the conflicts, Winwood’s and Carleton’s favoured type of publicity was official communication. This was not because they were averse to publishing anonymous polemic, as is shown by Winwood’s ordering of a Jesuit pamphlet, but because official communication had a great tactical advantage. Unlike anonymous Contraremonstrant libels, it could not be easily repressed. It derived its power from the fact that it conveyed the king’s message, which made it excessively difficult to challenge or ignore without offending James and escalating the conflict (something no party in the Dutch Republic could risk doing).

A further complicating factor was that both Winwood and Carleton used publication to nudge James as much as to pressure the Dutch. Both men were at the centre of what Vivienne Larminie has called “the Jacobean confraternity” of English diplomats committed to international Protestantism,¹²⁹ and both used their speeches to push things further into the Contraremonstrant direction than James might have intended. Relying on States’ members to publish these speeches without James’s orders, they put the King in a position from which he could hardly retreat without damaging his and his ambassador’s honour. Dutch Remonstrants knew that Winwood and Carleton had their own agenda, but were unable to stop them from influencing public debate. Increasingly desperate attempts were made by Oldenbarnevelt and his allies, throughout the period, to circumvent the ambassadors and convince the king of the reasonableness of the Remonstrants’ position, yet this only made things worse.

A vital question invited by Winwood’s and Carleton’s management of print during the Truce Period is whether their public diplomacy produced effects that could not have been achieved by exercising the not so insignificant diplomatic influence they had anyway. The unequivocal answer to that question should be: yes, and in several ways. Firstly, and most importantly, English diplomacy fuelled domestic unrest, as it was designed to. Oldenbarnevelt, shortly before his fall, saw it clearly: the English were constantly and consciously “kindling the fire”.¹³⁰ What he meant was similar to what he had written to Caron during the Vorstius affair: by publicly favouring the Contraremonstrants, they gave license to Contraremonstrants to defy the authority of the States, both in print and in terms of actions. For Oldenbarnevelt, this was the true cause of the escalation of the conflict in 1617–1618. “If only”, he wrote to Caron in the same period, “it had pleased His Majesty to stick to the letters he wrote with good considerations to the Lords of the States General and of Holland in 1613, we would not be in the troubles we are in now”.¹³¹ In the power vacuum of the Truce Conflicts, James’s royal word tilted the balance and encouraged Contraremonstrant subversion. Winwood and Carleton knew this too. They purposefully lent their king’s authority to the “well-affected party” in order to rally the “Church”, in Winwood’s biblical language, against Oldenbarnevelt and the States of Holland.

The blind spot of Oldenbarnevelt and his allies such as Grotius was the importance of James’s (international) reputation, which for Winwood and Carleton was in the end at least as important as the intricacies of the Dutch religious conflict. Arguments about the five points of the Remonstrants, the similarity between the Puritans and the Contraremonstrants, and perhaps even the blasphemies of Vorstius were always to be weighed against considerations of James’s European image. James was convinced that print was an instrument capable of working “great change and alteration in the world”,¹³² and his works, disseminated by his diplomats, were eagerly read by foreign leaders and the wider public alike.¹³³ For James, such campaigns were a means to give substance to his title of Defender of the Faith and his status as the leader of International Protestantism. However, as Malcolm Smuts has recently emphasized, James’s publications were also meant to do political work.¹³⁴ Throughout the Truce Period, James sought to publicly assert his authority in (and perhaps even his suzerainty over) the Dutch Republic, which Oldenbarnevelt and the States of Holland openly resisted with tacit French support. James’s concern for his reputation and his rivalry with the king of France, as well as his ambassadors’ rivalry with their French counterparts in The Hague, may have affected English public diplomacy more than Oldenbarnevelt appreciated.

Once international publication was a fact, James’s honour made it extremely difficult to retreat from his adopted position. In the end, Winwood’s and Carleton’s souring of international opinion on Oldenbarnevelt and the Remonstrants was perhaps even more harmful to Oldernbarnevelt and the Remonstrants than their support for the Dutch Contraremonstrants. Their multilingual campaigns circulated foremost in diplomatic circles, where they did severe damage to Oldenbarnevelt’s reputation. In addition to broadcasting anti-Remonstrant sentiments to Europe, they also signalled James’s support for Maurice and his displeasure with Oldenbarnevelt’s regime. Thus, they helped build the Protestant diplomatic community’s vital support for Maurice’s dramatic actions of 1618–1619.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See for recent work e.g. Bosbach, “Gedruckte Informationen”; Peacey, “My Friend the Gazetier”; Peacey, “Managing Dutch Advices”; Levillain, Le procès de Louis XIV; Helmers, “Public Diplomacy”; Hennings and Holberton, “Andrew Marvell”; Smuts, “Theological Polemics”; Rosseaux, “Friedensverhandlungen”.

2. Sowerby, “Early Modern Diplomatic History”; Watkins, “Toward a New Diplomatic History”.

3. See the introduction of this issue for references.

4. The NWO Vidi Project Inventing Public Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (2020–2025) at the Humanities Cluster of the Royal Netherlands Society of Arts and Sciences is currently studying early modern diplomatic uses of print systematically.

5. Van Deursen, Honni Soit; Groenveld, Twaalfjarig Bestand. On the making of Dutch foreign policy in this period, see: Israel, “Maurits”.

6. See Helmers, “Foreign News”.

7. Helmers, “Public Diplomacy,” passim and 403. For a discussion of the concept of public diplomacy, see also the editors’ introduction to this special issue.

8. See e.g. Helmers, The Royalist Republic, 33–43.

9. De Bruin, Geheimhouding en verraad; Pettegree and Weduwen, Bookshop of the World.

10. Harline, Pamphlets; Harms, Pamfletten en publieke opinie; Sierhuis, The Literature of the Arminian Controversy.

11. Platt, Britain and the Bestandstwisten; Platt, “Pamphlets, Great Britain, and the Bestandstwisten”; Shriver, “Orthodoxy and Diplomacy”; Hackett, “The English Reception”; Nijenhuis, “Saravia”; Van Deursen, Honni Soit; Groenveld, Facetten; Grayson, From Protectorate to Partnership; Grayson, “James I”. On the international involvement in the Synod of Dordt, see e.g. Milton, British Delegation; Goudriaan and Lieburg, Revisiting. On English Puritan printing (including occasional ambassadorial interventions): Sprunger, Trumpets.

12. The description is based on Kn. 2044. Warachtich ende volkomen verhael (1613), A3v–A4r.

13. Kn. 2043–2046; Kn. 2047. Eerste instellinge (1613).

14. Frisius (engr.) Figuirlicke Afbeeldinghe (1613).

15. Huygens, Latijnse gedichten, 298–301; Vondel, Hymnus, 443.

16. Richer, Troisieme Tosme (1616), 65–8.

17. Van Loon, Histoire metallique, 87.

18. Shriver, “Orthodoxy and Diplomacy”; Platt, Britain and the Bestandstwisten, 66–9; Van Deursen, Maurits, 240–6.

19. Den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, vol. 3, 319; Van Deursen, Honni Soit, 111–3.

20. One pamphlet, for instance, showed Maurice’s coat of arms surrounded by the Garter: Kn.2044. Warachtich ende volkomen verhael, A2v.

21. RSG II.I (1610–1612), 504.

22. James I to Winwood, 6/16 October 1611: Kew, The National Archives (hereafter NA), State Papers Foreign (hereafter SP) 84/68, fols. 147–8.

23. Kn. 1864. Oratie (1611), A2v.

24. Kn. 1864. Oratie, A4r.

25. Kn. 1864–1866 and USTC 1436396 (not in Knuttel).

26. Kn. 1868–1871.

27. Kn. 1870. Translaet vanden brief (1611).

28. Kn. 1873. De tweede oratie (1611). Published in 1611 in two Dutch-language editions, and in James’s Declaration.

29. Oldenbarnevelt to Caron, 17 November 1611, in: Van den Bergh, Intendit, 67.

30. Dusseldorpius, Annales, fol. 204r, cited in Nijenhuis, “Saravia,” 171–2.

31. Oldenbarnevelt to Caron, 17 November 1611, in: Van den Bergh, Intendit, 67 (my own translation).

32. Oldenbarnevelt to Caron, 21 May 1612, in: Van den Bergh, Intendit, 72.

33. Oldenbarnevelt to Caron, 21 May 1612, in: Van den Bergh, Intendit, 72. The “little books” presumably are Donteclock’s pamphlets on the Church conflict of 1611 and 1612: Kn. 1857. Bedenckinghe (1611) and Kn. 1948. Overlegginghe (1612) which pleaded in favour of a National Synod and against Wttenbogaert.

34. Oldebarnevelt to Caron, 11 February 1613, in: Van den Bergh, Intendit, 76.

35. Van den Bergh, Intendit, 61.

36. Winwood to Cecil, 10/20 December 1611, as cited in Shriver, “Orthodoxy and Diplomacy,” 461. Geeraert Brandt, in The History of the Reformation, mentions exactly the same rumour, attributing it to a Remonstrant burgomaster in Amsterdam, possibly the former liberal-minded burgomaster Cornelis Pietersz Hooft (who opposed Calvinist hotheads like Petrus Plancius), or Jan Pietersz Reael, Arminius’s father-in law. See, Brandt, Historie, 99.

37. Winwood to Trumbull, 18 February 1612, in: Winwood, Memorials, vol. 3, 339–40.

38. Winwood, Memorials, vol. 3, 311.

39. The French speech circulated in manuscript in diplomatic circles (Winwood, Memorials, vol. 3, 300 and 311) and was printed in one Dutch translation (Kn. 1882. Winwood, De derde oratie (1611)) before it appeared in James’s printed Declaration.

40. RSH 1610–1612, 557.

41. Kn. 1882. Winwood, De derde oratie, A2r.

42. Shriver, “Orthodoxy and Diplomacy”.

43. Winwood to Trumbull, 18 February 1612, in: Winwood, Memorials, vol. 3, 339–40.

44. Winwood to Cecil, 20 February/1 March 1612, cited in Shriver, “Orthodoxy and Diplomacy”, 470.

45. Kn. 1961. Verclaringhe (1612). Two other editions printed in Middelburg in 1612: one by Adriaen van den Vivere (USTC 1011069) and one by Symon Moulert (USTC 1011068). Middelburg, as an Orangist, Contraremonstrant town and still the seat of the English Merchant Adventurers, had a clear stake in disseminating the speech.

46. Kn. 1960. No place, no printer, 1612; Kn. 1962. No place, no printer.

47. More to Winwood, 17 March 1612, in: Winwood, Memorials, vol. 3, 349.

48. Rodenburg to the States General, 6 May 1612, in: van Deursen, Honni Soit, 56.

49. RSH 1610–1612, 940.

50. RSH 1610–1612, 941. Kn. 1970. Vorstius, Oratie (1612) = Vorstius, Oratio apologetica (1612)

51. Winwood, Memorials, vol. 3, 339.

52. Winwood to Salisbury, February 1612, in: Winwood, Memorials, vol. 3, 342–3.

53. On this letter, see Platt, Britain and the Bestandstwisten, 72–6.

54. Ibid., 182.

55. Carleton to Thomas Erskine, 9 November 1617: NA, SP 84/80, fol. 28r.

56. Nijenhuis, Matthew Slade.

57. Carleton to Chamberlain, 3/13 February 1618, in: Lee, ed., Dudley Carleton, 252.

58. Den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, vol. 3, 466.

59. E.g. Winwood to Carleton, 1/11 April 1617, in: Carleton, Letters, 124.

60. Winwood to Carleton, 1/11 April 1617, in: Carleton, Letters, 124.

61. Carleton to Winwood, 13/23 April 1617, in: Carleton, Letters, 117–9.

62. Kn. 2358. Copie d’une lettre (1617) and Kn. 2359. Copie van een brief (1617).

63. Kn. 2360. Copie vanden brief (1617).

64. Carleton to Winwood, 27 April/7 May 1617, in: Carleton, Letters, 121.

65. Den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, vol. 3, 469.

66. Carleton to Winwood, 27 April/7 May 1617, in: Carleton, Letters, 121.

67. Carleton to Winwood, 9/19 May 1617, in: Carleton, Letters, 131.

68. See Stilma, A King Translated.

69. Carleton to Winwood, 20/30 September 1617, in: Carleton, Letters, 181. The pamphlet Carleton speaks of is probably Kn. 2357.

70. Carleton to Winwood, 9/19 May 1617, in: Carleton, Letters, 131.

71. Winwood to Carleton, 4/14 June 1617, in: Carleton, Letters, 134.

72. Philibert Du Bois to Louis of Anhalt-Köthen, 2 February 1618: Dessau, Landesarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt, Z70, A9a, nr. 239 VII, i, fol. 30.

73. Brandt, Historie, 99.

74. Den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, vol. 3, 514. For a later parallel with Ancre, see e.g. Kn. 2507. Junius, Wederlegginge (1618), 398.

75. Carleton to Winwood, 22 June/1 July 1617, in: Carleton, Letters, 142.

76. Den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, vol. 3, 466.

77. Den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, vol. 3, 519.

78. RSG II.iii, 244 (19 October 1617).

79. RSG II.iii, 257 (Du Maurier) and 259 (Skytte).

80. The Hague, Nationaal Archief, 3.01.14, inv. 2536.

81. Kn. 2506. Niellius, Balance, 77.

82. On Grotius’s role in the affair, see Nellen, Hugo Grotius, 246–52.

83. Carleton to Ogle, 7 October 1617: NA, SP 84/79, fol. 104r; Carleton to a friend, 9 November 1617: NA, SP 84/79, fol. 229r.

84. Carleton to a friend, 13/23 October 1617: NA, SP 84/79, fol. 225r; Carleton to a friend, 19 October 1617: NA, SP 84/79, fol. 229r; Carleton to a friend, 9 November 1617: NA, SP 84/79, fol. 229r; Ogle to Carleton, 12 November 1617: NA, SP 84/80, fol. 3r–3v; Du Maurier to Louis XIII, 10 November 1617: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (hereafter BNF), CDO Hollande III (1616–1618), fol. 184r.

85. Carleton to Lake, 2 December 1617, in: Carleton, Letters, 206.

86. Kn. 2363. Carleton, Oratie (1617). The three anonymous publications are Kn. 2361–62, 64.

87. Kn. 2368. Taurinus, Weegh-Schael, E2v.

88. USTC 1017036. Harangue (1617); USTC 2095603. Fürtrag (1617); USTC 3008100. Carleton, Dudley, The speech (1618).

89. See e.g. Nijenhuis, Matthew Slade, passim, and NA, SP 84/80, fol. 3r–3v,

90. According to the testimony by the printer of the Weegh-schael, Abraham van Herwech in September 1618. HUA 1.4.121–7 (10 September 1618). Reprinted in Rogge, “Jacobus Taurinus”.

91. See e.g. Slade to Carleton, 20 October 1617, in: Nijenhuis, Matthew Slade, 61–2, and Carleton to Ogle, 20 November 1617: NA, SP 84/80, fol. 56v.

92. Slade to Carleton, 11, 20 and 28 December 1617, 10 and 17 January 1618, in: Nijenhuis, Matthew Slade, 68–75.

93. Festus Hommius to Carleton, November 1618: NA, SP 84/80, fol. 85r.

94. Du Maurier to Louis XIII, 23 November 1617: BNF, CDO Hollande III (1616–1618), fol. 188r.

95. Kn. 2368. Taurinus, Weegh-Schael, A2r.

96. Taurinus, Weegh-Schael, A2r.

97. BNF, CDO Hollande III (1616–1618), fols. 181v-182r.

98. Carolus Niellius, minister of the Walloon Church in Utrecht, was Taurinus’s close colleague. He would later be imprisoned in Loevestein Castle.

99. Niellius, Balance, 4–5.

100. Carleton, Oratie, titlepage.

101. Kn. 2368. Taurinus, Weegh-schael, b1r–b1v.

102. Den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, vol. 3, 531

103. Kn. 2368. Taurinus, Weegh-schael, b1v, b2v, b3v, c2r.

104. Kn. 2368. Taurinus, Weegh-schael, c3v.

105. Kn. 2368. Taurinus, Weegh-Schael, a2v.

106. Kn. 2368. Taurinus, Weegh-Schael, f2v.

107. Kn. 2368. Taurinus, Weegh-Schael, d1v.

108. Kn. 2368. Taurinus, Weegh-Schael, c3v.

109. Kn. 2368. Taurinus, Weegh-Schael, f2v-f3v; g1r-g2v.

110. Slade to Carleton, 20 October 1617, in: Nijenhuis, Matthew Slade, 61 (Nijenhuis misread “bewray”, see NA, SP 84/79, fol. 192v).

111. Carleton to James I, 8 December 1618, in: Carleton, Letters, 215–6.

112. Oldenbarnevelt to Caron, 4 January 1618, in: Van den Bergh, Intendit, 92

113. Suriano to the Venetian Senate, 28 November 1617: Venice, Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Senato, dispacci, signori stati, filza 5, fol. 138v. See also: Suriano to the Venetian Senate, 6 November 1617 (fols. 84r–85v). I thank Nina Lamal for the reference.

114. Carleton to James I, 8/18 December 1617, in: Carleton, Letters, 216.

115. Memorials of 17/27 November, 21 November/1 December, 24 November/4 December 1617, in: Carleton, Letters, 211.

116. Carleton, Memorial to the States General, 15/25 November 1617; USTC 1505046. Placcaet (1617); Baudartius, Memorien (1624), 69–73; Den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, vol. 3, 531–4.

117. RSH 1613–1619, 464 (8 December 1617). Carleton to Lake, 24 December 1617, in: Carleton, Letters, 225–6.

118. Den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, vol. 3, 519.

119. Carleton to Lake, 21 February 1618, in: Carleton, Letters, 243.

120. Lake to Carleton, 1/11 January 1618, in: Carleton, Letters, 228–9.

121. Carleton to Chamberlain, 3/13 February 1618, in: Lee, Jacobean Letters, 253.

122. Carleton to Chamberlain, 3/13 February 1618, in: Lee, Jacobean Letters, 253–4.

123. Carleton to Lake, 5/15 April 1618, in: Carleton, Letters, 260–1.

124. Unfinished Remonstration of Oldenbarnevelt to the States of Holland, printed in: Carpentier, Historie (1658), 228. See also Veenendaal, Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. Bescheiden, vol. 3, 485.

125. Carleton to Lake, 5/15 April 1618, in: Carleton, Letters, 260–1.

126. RSH 11 April 1618, 2 November 1618; Van der Aa, “Dankerts (Jan),” 55.

127. Carleton to Lake, 14/24 April 1618, in: Carleton, Letters, 264.

128. Van den Bergh, Intendit, 54.

129. Larminie, “The Jacobean Diplomatic Fraternity”.

130. Carleton to Naunton, 3/13 October 1618, in: Carleton, Letters, 304.

131. Oldenbarnevelt to Caron, 26 maart 1618, in: Van den Bergh, Intendit, 97.

132. James Montague in James I, Workes, sig. c4r.

133. On James’s royal authorship and authority, see: Rickard, Authorship and Authority. On the European impact: Patterson, King James VI and I; Willson, “James I and His Literary Assistants”; Stilma, A King Translated.

134. Smuts, “Theological Polemics”.