Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/62

48 For about seven years Vorstius concealed himself from his bigoted enemies in Tergau, but James would not let him rest there; he sent a number of English and Scotch divines to the Synod of Dort, in 1619, who loudly demanded the further proscription of Vorstius.



They succeeded, and the unfortunate advocate of Arminianism was expelled from Holland. After wandering about in poverty and obscurity, hiding from the face of his enemies, who would well have liked to kill him, the duke of Holstein, in 1622, offered him an asylum in his states, with seven hundred families of his adherents, who had been exiled with him. But the persecuted man was now sinking under his miseries, and died in the autumn of that year. The king's hand was now in for persecution, and he the proceeded to practise all that he had preached to the Dutch. He set up the flaming stake again in Smithfield, and has the grim distinction of being the last English monarch who signed the writ de heretico comburendo.

His first victim was Bartholomew Legate, an Arian, or unitarian, who, after being examined by James himself and