2-704-484 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The execution of Johan van Oldenbarneveldt, 1619, (1754). ''s Lands Advokaat Joan van Oldenbarneveld, op't Hofschavot in den Haage, gereed, om onthalst te worden, in't jaar 1619'. Dutch statesman and Land's Advocate Johan van Oldenbarneveldt (1547-1619) was arrested at the age of seventy-one, and tried before a bench of judges. In what was considered to be a 'kangaroo court', the the death sentence was pronounced on 12 May 1619. The next day he was beheaded in the Binnenhof, in The Hague. Van Oldenbarneveldt had played an important role in the Dutch struggle for independence from Spain, and in the same year of his death "The Tragedy of Sir John van Olden Barnavelt", a Jacobean play, was produced by the King's Men at the Globe Theatre in London.