The Waartgelders were numbered with the terrors of the past, and not a cat had mewed at their disappearance.
Charter-books, parchments, 13th Articles, Barneveld's teeth, Arminian forts, flowery orations of Grotius, tavern talk of van Ostrum, city immunities, States' rights, provincial laws, Waartgelders and all--the martial Stadholder, with the orange plume in his hat and the sword of Nieuwpoort on his thigh, strode through them as easily as through the whirligigs and mountebanks, the wades and fritters, encumbering the streets of Utrecht on the night of his arrival.
Secretary Ledenberg and other leading members of the States had escaped the night before.

Grotius and his colleagues also took a precipitate departure.

As they drove out of town in the twilight, they met the deputies of the six opposition cities of Holland just arriving in their coach from the Hague.

Had they tarried an hour longer, they would have found themselves safely in prison.
Four days afterwards the Stadholder at the head of his body-guard appeared at the town-house.

His halberdmen tramped up the broad staircase, heralding his arrival to the assembled magistracy.