He would lend, he said, his best assistance to convey the villain to England, and would undertake that the ministers of the vengeance of James should find a secure asylum in France.

Burnet was well aware of his danger: but timidity was not among his faults.
He published a courageous answer to the charges which had been brought against him at Edinburgh.

He knew, he said, that it was intended to execute him without a trial: but his trust was in the King of Kings, to whom innocent blood would not cry in vain, even against the mightiest princes of the earth.

He gave a farewell dinner to some friends, and, after the meal, took solemn leave of them, as a man who was doomed to death, and with whom they could no longer safely converse.

Nevertheless he continued to show himself in all the public places of the Hague so boldly that his friends reproached him bitterly with his foolhardiness.
[263] While Burnet was William's secretary for English affairs in Holland, Dykvelt had been not less usefully employed in London.