page_title: Trial of Oldenbarnevelt, Grotius and Hogerbeets
section_title: The Court
hierarchical_section_title: Trial of Oldenbarnevelt, Grotius and Hogerbeets / The Trial / The Court
caption_attribution_description: English: The drawing is according to a note on the back made after a similar drawing that had been published in The Hague in 1621. The figures in the drawing were copied from two prints by Jan Luyken (1537 and 1540). The placard gives the names of all 24 judges in the trial of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt in 1619, two of the fiscals and the provost, accusing them of having been bribed by stadtholder Maurice, Prince of Orange, Oldenbarnevelt's nemesis., and cursing them for all eternity.
context_page_description: The Trial of Oldenbarnevelt, Grotius and Hogerbeets was the trial for treason of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, Land's Advocate of Holland, Hugo Grotius, pensionary of Dordrecht, Rombout Hogerbeets, pensionary of Leiden, and their co-defendant Gilles van Ledenberg, secretary of the States of Utrecht by an ad hoc court of delegated judges of the States General of the Netherlands that was held between 29 August 1618 and 18 May 1619, and resulted in a death sentence for Oldenbarnevelt, and sentences of life in prison for Grotius and Hogerbeets. The trial was and is controversial for political and legal reasons: political, because it put the crown on the Coup d'etat of stadtholder Maurice, Prince of Orange and his partisans in the States General of the Dutch Republic that ended the previous Oldenbarnevelt regime and put the Orangist party in power for the time being; legal, because the trial deprived the defendants of their civil rights under contemporary law, and the judges changed both the "constitution" of the Republic and its laws in an exercise of ex post facto legislation.
context_section_description: As the States General was rather new to the notion of their own, special sovereignty, they did not possess their own permanent judiciary, though they did convene crijghsraden (courts-martial) to try military personnel for military offenses. But apparently convening a court-martial was never considered. The judiciary of the Dutch Republic was organised by province in hierarchies of local and regional courts with the provincial high court or Hof at the apex. In the province of Holland the competent court for cases of treason was the Hof van Holland. As three of the prisoners were servants of the States of Holland it would seem that they therefore ought to be tried before this court. As a matter of fact, under the maxim of the Jus de non evocando they even had the right to be tried by that court. But there were practical problems with this. In the first place the partisans of Oldenbarnevelt at this time were still in the majority in the States of Holland, making it unlikely that they would agree with a prosecution and instruct the procureur-generaal (solicitor general) at the court to open one. In addition the justices in both the Hof van Holland and the Hoge Raad were "clients" of Oldenbarnevelt and friends of the other prisoners (Hogerbeets had been a justice in the Hof himself; van Brederode, the son-in-law of Oldenbarnevelt was president of the Hoge Raad). Finally, the Hof would insist on following existing law and precedent, and here the case for the prosecution was extremely weak, as will become clear in the sequel.
  Maurice and his allies in the States General therefore felt that they had to come up with an alternative. Already in the secret resolution of 28 August mention is made of the commissioners who had accompanied Maurice to Utrecht to disarm the waardgelders there, and who had done "good work". So they were now charged with investigating the matter as commissioners of the States General.  These commissioners were Nicolaes de Voogd, delegate of Gelderland, Adriaan Mandemaker, delegate of Zeeland, Adriaan Ploos, delegate of Utrecht, Abel Coenders, delegate of Groningen (who was later replaced by another delegate of Groningen), and Rink Aitsma, delegate of Friesland. They were assisted by two advocaten fiscaal (prosecutors), Pieter van Leeuwen, procureur-generaal in the Hof van Utrecht, and Laurens de Silla, an advocate in the Hof van Gelderland. Hendrik Pots, who worked as a solicitor at the Hof van Holland was appointed the griffier (Court clerk). Later Anthonie Duyck was appointed as a third fiscal
  But this was an unsatisfactory arrangement. In the Fall of 1618 Maurice  continued the political "alteration" in Holland by visiting a number of the "Remonstrant" cities, usually with a strong armed escort, and changing their governments (a practice known as verzetten van de wet) by replacing pro-Oldenbarnevelt burgomasters and vroedschappen with Counter-Remonstrant ones. In this way the States of Holland had an anti-Oldenbarnevelt majority by January, 1619. It then became possible to supplement the original delegated judges with a number of judges from Holland, with the consent of the States of Holland. In total 12 Judges from Holland were appointed and 12 judges from the other six provinces (two for each).
  The 24 members of the Court were:
  Nicolaes de Voogd (president), burgomaster of Arnhem, for Gelderland;
  Hendrik van Essen, Councillor of Zutphen, for Gelderland;
  Nicolaas Kromhout, president, Hof van Holland, for Holland;
  Adriaan Junius, justice, Hof van Holland, for Holland;
  Pieter Kouwenburg van Belois, justice, Hof van Holland, for Holland;
  Hendrik Rosa, justice, Hof van Holland, for Holland;
  Adriaan van Zwieten, baljuw of Rijnland, for Holland;
  Hugo Muys van Holy, schout of Dordrecht, for Holland;
  Arent Meinertsz, burgomaster of Haarlem, for Holland;
  Gerard Beukelsz. van Zanten, gecommitteerde raad of Holland, for Holland;
  Jacob van Broekhoven, gecommitteerde raad of Holland, for Holland;
  Reinier Pauw, burgomaster of Amsterdam, for Holland;
  Pieter Jansz. Schagen, vroedschap of Alkmaar, for Holland;
  Albrecht 
caption: Cartoon by Jan Stolker on the 24 judges that tried Oldenbarneverlt c.s.
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