Two attempts on the lives of the two brothers in the summer of 1672--an attack on John de Witt which came very near killing him and prostrated him for weeks on a sick bed, and the other on Cornelius, who escaped from it almost unhurt--were the first serious manifestations of the public ill-will. It was only too evident that the Orange party was at the bottom of these outbursts of hostility, and that Prince William himself was not a stranger to the intrigues. On the second of July, 1672, the Prince of Orange was elected Stadtholder of Holland and Zealand for life. These were the only two provinces not occupied by the French armies, and the Prince’s
election was therefore equivalent to his appointment as Stadtholder of the Republic. In effect it placed the De Witts at his mercy.
In vain the Grand Pensionary handed in his resignation on the fourth of August. The Orange party was not satisfied with permitting him to retire from the public service; it formed a sinister conspiracy which engulfed the two illustrious men in ruin and death. A worthless scoundrel, a certain Tichelaar who on several occasions had been accused of felonies, openly charged Cornelius de Witt with having tried to bribe him to assassinate the Prince Stadtholder,--a proposition which he had indignantly rejected in spite of the tempting rewards offered to him. Incredible as it may appear, the accusation, contradicted both by the noble character of Cornelius de Witt and by the bad reputation of the informer, was eagerly acted upon by the authorities of Holland. Cornelius was arrested and imprisoned at the Hague, where for four days he was subjected to the infamy of the torture. It was hoped that in his agony he would make a confession of guilt which, true or not, would justify his partisan judges in passing a sentence of death on him. But Cornelius remained firm in his disdainful denial of the odious accusation, and the repetition of the torture on four different days did not change his testimony. Under these circumstances his base judges, instruments of the Stadtholder and his party, did not dare to pronounce the death sentence against him; but they found him guilty nevertheless, deprived him of all his public dignities, and exiled him for life from the territory of the Republic.