Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory

by Lisa Jardine

  22 N.N.W. Akkerman and P.R. Sellin, ‘A Stuart Masque in Holland, Ballet de la Carmesse de La Haye (1655)’, Parts 1 and 2, Ben Jonson Journal 11 (2004), 207–58; 227 and 12 (2005), 141–64.

  23 Ibid., Part 1, p.227.

  24 Ibid., p.228.

  25 Ibid., p.229.

  26 Ibid., p.231.

  27 On such entertainments see M. Keblusek, ‘“A divertissment of little plays”: Theater aan de Haagse hoven van Elizabeth van Bohemen en Mary Stuart’, in J.A.F. de Jongste et al., Vermaak van de Elite in de Vroegmoderne Tijd (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 1999).

  28 See N.N.W. Akkerman, The Letters of the Queen of Bohemia (unpublished dissertation, Free University of Amsterdam, 2008).

  29 Akkerman and Sellin, ‘A Stuart Masque in Holland’, Part 2, 158.

  30 Ibid., pp.142–3.

  31 For Huygens’s musical dealings with Brussels, see R. Rasch, ‘Constantijn Huygens in Brussel op bezoek bij Leopold Wilhelm van Oostenrijk 1648–1656’, Revue belge de Musicologie/Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Muziekwetenschap 55, ‘six siècles de vie musicale à Bruxelles/Zes eeuwen muziekleven te Brussel’ (2001), 127–46.

  32 See Lynn Hulse, ‘Cavendish, William, first Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne (bap. 1593, d. 1676)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.catalogue.ulrls.lon.ac.uk:80/view/article/4946, accessed 9 April 2007].

  33 See above, Chapter 4.

  34 In October 1648 Frederik Nassau-Zuijlenstein (natural son of Frederik Hendrik) married Mary Killigrew, lady-in-waiting to Mary Stuart, at The Hague, and there was a large gathering of English nobility.

  35 K. Whitaker, Mad Madge: Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, Royalist, Writer and Romantic (London: Chatto & Windus, 2003), p.113.

  36 On Bolsover see T. Mowl, Architecture Without Kings: The Rise of Puritan Classicism under Cromwell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp.167–9. See also T. Raylor, ‘“Pleasure reconciled to virtue”: William Cavendish, Ben Jonson, and the decorative scheme at Bolsover Castle’, Renaissance Quarterly 52 (1999), 402–39.

  37 L. Worsley, U. Härting and M. Keblusek, ‘Horsemanship’, in Beneden and de Poorter, Royalist Refugees, pp.37–54.

  38 J. Knowles, ‘“We’ve lost, should we lose too our harmless mirth?” Cavendish’s Antwerp Entertainments’, in ibid., pp.70–7.

  39 On Lanier’s career in the household of Charles I see J. Brotton, The Sale of the Late King’s Goods (London: Macmillan, 2006).

  40 Knowles, ‘We’ve lost, should we lose too our harmless mirth?’, p.77.

  41 5/15 September 1653.

  42 Huygens to Margaret Cavendish, 9/19 September 1671. On this exchange of letters see now N.N.W. Akkerman and Marguérite Corporaal, ‘Mad Science Beyond Flattery: The Correspondence of Margaret Cavendish and Constantijn Huygens’, Early Modern Literary Studies Special Issue 14 (May, 2004), 2.1–21 [http://purl.oclc.org/emls/si-14/akkecorp.html].

  43 Huygens included some poems in English (now lost).

  44 Antwerp, 20 March 1657.

  45 27 March 1657.

  46 30 March 1657.

  47 L. Brodsley, C. Frank and J.W. Steeds, ‘Prince Rupert’s drops’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 41 (1986), 1–26.

  48 This report was published by Christopher Merrett as an appendix to his translation of Antonio Neri’s Art of Glass (1662), pp.353–62.

  49 R. Hooke, ‘Observatiion vii. Of some Phaenomena of Glass Drops’, Micrographia or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies made by Magnifying Glasses with Observation and Inquiries thereupon (London, 1665), pp.33–44.

  8: Masters of All They Survey

  1 For a vivid sense of the new consumer culture getting under way in the course of the seventeenth century, see J. Styles and A. Vickery (eds), Gender, Taste, and Material Culture in Britain and North America, 1700–1830 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006).

  2 See H.J. Louw, ‘Anglo–Netherlandish architectural interchange c.1600–c.1660’, Architectural History 24 (1981), 1–23.

  3 See PRO, WORK 5/2; D. Knoop and G.P. Jones, The London Mason in the Seventeenth Century (1935), 71; H. Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840, 3rd edn (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), p.299.

  4 K. Ottenheym, ‘“Possessed by such a passion for building”, Frederik Hendrik and architecture’, in Keblusek and Zijlmans, Princely Display, pp.105–25; p.110.

  5 ‘[13?] November 1635’. Worp, letter 1301.

  6 ‘Au camp soubs Philippine, le 2e de Juillet 1639’ (Worp, letter 2149), and 14 November 1639 (Worp, letter 2272).

  7 See K.A Ottenheym, ‘De correspondentie tussen Rubens en Huygens over architectuur (1635–40)’, Bulletin Koninklijke Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond 1997, pp.1–11.

  8 Utricia Swann sang at Hofwijk in 1642, and Huygens wrote a poem of lavish praise of her singing, which put the nightingale to shame. T. van Strien and K. van der Leer, Hofwijk: Het gedicht en de buitenplaats van Constantijn Huygens (Zutphen: Walborg Pers, 2002), pp.82–3.

  9 See Koen Ottenheym, ‘“Possessed by such a passion for building”: Frederik Hendrik and Architecture’, in Keblusek and Zijlmans, Princely Display, pp.105–25.

  10 Ibid., pp.121–5. See also J. Adamson (ed.), The Princely Courts of Europe 1500–1750 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), p.130.

  11 See L. Worsley, ‘“His magnificent buildings”: William Cavendish’s patronage of architecture’, in Beneden and de Poorter, Royalist Refugees, pp.101–4.

  12 See above, Chapter 3. See also Held, ‘Huygens and Baerle’, p.662.

  13 See P. Geyl, ‘Frederick Henry of Orange and King Charles I’, English Historical Review 38 (1923), 355–83; 364.

  14 15 February 1651. Worp, letter 5100.

  15 To Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. Worp, letter 5323. See also K. van der Leer, Hofwijk: Het gedicht en de buitenplaats van Constantijn Huygens (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2002), p.89.

  16 S. Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (1987).

  17 P. Davidson and A. van der Weel (eds and trans.), A Selection of the Poems of Sir Constantijn Huygens (1596–1687) (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1996), p.137.

  18 Ibid.

  19 Ibid., p.139.

  20 Ibid., pp.151–3.

  21 2 June 1682. Worp, letter 7188.

  22 Cit. Sellers, Courtly Gardens in Holland, p.107.

  23 Huygens to Utricia, Hofwijck, 5/15 September 1653.

  24 R. Strong, The Artist and the Garden (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), pp.183–5.

  25 A.G.H. Bachrach and R.G. Collmer (eds), Lodewijk Huygens: The English Journal 1651–1652 (Leiden: E.J. Brill/Leiden University Press, 1982), pp.132–3.

  26 A. Mollet, Le Jardin de Plaisir, contenant plusieurs desseins de Jardinage tant Parterres en Broderie, Compartiments de gazon, que Eosquers, & autres (Stockholm: Henry Kayler, 1651), fol. D4v (author’s translation).

  27 See L. Pattacini, ‘André Mollet, Royal gardener in St James’s Park, London’, Garden History 26 (1998), 3–18.

  28 Sellers, Courtly Gardens in Holland, p.170.

  29 Cit. J.D. Hunt, ‘Anglo–Dutch garden art’, in D. Hoak and M. Feingold (eds), The World of William and Mary: Anglo–Dutch Perspectives on the Revolution of 1688–89 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp.196–7.

  30 Cit. ibid., p.195.

  31 Cit. Davidson and van der Weel, A Selection of the Poems of Sir Constantijn Huygens, p.199.

  32 J. Evelyn, Sylva (1664), p.115, cit. S.M. Couch, ‘The practice of avenue planting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, Garden History 20 (1992), 173–200; 176.

  33 Evelyn, Sylva (1644), p.13.

  34 Christiaan Huygens, Oeuvres Complètes 4, p.176.

  35 14/24 September 1676. Worp, letter 7032.

  36 This is the distinguished Orangeist diplomatic family, living
in The Hague, into which Alexander Bruce married in 1659. See above, Chapter 5.

  37 See above, Chapter 2.

  38 F.R.E. Blom (ed.), Constantijn Huygens: Journaal van de Reis naar Venetië (Amsterdam: Prometheus publishers, 2003), p.64 (author’s translation).

  39 Ibid., pp.64–6.

  40 J. Cats, Ouderdom, buyten-leven en hof-gedachten, op Sorghvliet (Amsterdam: J.J. Schipper, 1656), pp.14–15, cit. V. Bezemer Sellers, Courtly Gardens in Holland 1600–1650 (Amsterdam: Architectura & Natura Press, 2001), p.12.

  41 Sellers, Courtly Gardens in Holland, p.9.

  9: Paradise on Earth

  1 See Koen Ottenheym, ‘“Possessed by such a passion for building”: Frederik Hendrik and Architecture’, in Keblusek and Zijlmans, Princely Display, pp.105–25; pp.111–16.

  2 See Sellers, Courtly Gardens in Holland, pp.15–59.

  3 Ibid., p.29.

  4 Evelyn, Sylva (1664).

  5 J. Korthals-Altes, Sir Cornelius Vermuyden (The Hague: W.P. van Stockum & Son, 1925).

  6 C. Roberts, ‘The Earl of Bedford and the coming of the English Revolution’, Journal of Modern History 49 (1977), 600–16.

  7 For an account of van Baerle’s relationship with Constantijn Huygens see T. Verbeek, E.-J. Bos and J. van den Ven (eds), ‘The Correspondence of René Descartes 1643’, Questiones Infinitae: Publications of the Department of Philosophy Utrecht University, 45 (2003), 246–7.

  8 C.D. Van Strien, British Travellers in Holland during the Stuart Period: Edward Browne and John Locke as Tourists in the United Provinces (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993), p.149.

  9 Cit. E. Den Hartog and C. Teune, ‘Gaspar Fagel (1633–88): his garden and plant collection at Leeuwenhorst’, Garden History 30 (2002), 191–205; 194.

  10 See Andriesse, Huygens, pp.181–2.

  11 22 April 1660, ‘Aan de Hertogin van Lotharingen’. Worp, letter 5644.

  12 Sellers, Courtly Gardens in Holland, p.175.

  13 Christian Huygens, Oeuvres Complètes 8, pp.86–7.

  14 See e.g. Philips Doublet to Christiaan Huygens, 9 March 1679. Worp, letter 2163.

  15 See V.B. Sellers, Courtly Gardens in Holland 1600–1650 (Amsterdam: Architectura & Natura Press, 2001).

  16 On the precise family connections see M. Sikkens-De Zwann, ‘Magdalena Poulle (1632–99): A Dutch lady in a circle of botanical collectors’, Garden History 30 (2002), 206–20.

  17 E. Den Hartog and C. Teune, ‘Gaspar Fagel (1633–88): His garden and plant collection at Leeuwenhorst’, Garden History 30 (2002), 191–205; 191.

  18 Tachard, Voyage to Siam, p.51. For a fuller account of the VOC’s nursery garden at the Cape see Jardine, Ingenious Pursuits, Chapter 6.

  19 Den Hartog and Teune, ‘Gaspar Fagel’, p.194.

  20 Ibid., p.197.

  21 Cit. Den Hartog and Teune, ‘Gaspar Fagel’, p.201.

  22 Cit. D. Chambers, ‘“Elysium Britannicum not printed neere ready &c”: The “Elysium Britannicum” in the Correspondence of John Evelyn’, in T. O’Malley and J. Wolschke-Bulmahn (eds), John Evelyn’s ‘Elysium Britannicum’ and European Gardening (Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1998), pp.107–130; p.115.

  23 Ibid., p.127.

  24 Sikkens-De Zwann, ‘Magdalena Poulle’, p.216.

  25 See M.A. da Silva and M.M. Alcides, ‘Collecting and framing the wilderness: The garden of Johan Maurits (1604–79) in North-East Brazil’, Garden History 30 (2002), 153–76.

  26 H.S. van der Straaten, Maurits de Braziliaan: Het levensverhaal van Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, stichter van het Mauritshuis, gouverneur-generaal van Nederlands-Brazilië, stadhouder van Kleef 1604–1679 (Amsterdam: van Soeren & Co., 1998)

  27 Cit. da Silva and Alcides, ‘Collecting and framing the wilderness’, p.158.

  28 Cit. ibid., p.166.

  29 Cit. ibid., p.172.

  30 Cit. ibid., p.158.

  31 See W. Diedenhofen, ‘“Belvedere”, or the principle of seeing and looking in the gardens of Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen at Cleves’, in J. Dixon Hunt (ed.), The Dutch Garden in the Seventeenth Century (Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1988), pp.49–80.

  32 For the definitive account of the ‘tulipmania’, see Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2007).

  33 Ibid., p.2.

  34 See above, Chapter 5.

  35 Goldgar and Montias have shown that paintings and tulip bulbs were both traded and bought by the same people. For the moral dilemma of disposable wealth in the United Provinces in the seventeenth century, see Schama, Embarrassment of Riches.

  36 On Blathwayt’s career see S. Saunders Webb, ‘William Blathwayt, imperial fixer: From Popish Plot to Glorious Revolution’, William and Mary Quarterly 25 (1968), 3–21; ‘William Blathwayt, imperial fixer: muddling through to empire, 1689–1717’, William and Mary Quarterly 26 (1969), 373–415.

  10: Anglo–Dutch Exchange and the New Science

  1 Journaal van Constantijn Huygens, den Zoon, p.103.

  2 Ibid., p.114.

  3 See L. Jardine, Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution (London: Little, Brown, 1999), for a full bibliography.

  4 Cit. Strien, British Travellers in Holland, p.264.

  5 Ibid.

  6 A coiled spring was a standard feature of a traditional clock, incorporated as a driver of the mechanism (wound up with a key to drive the clockwork as in any modern clockwork toy); Huygens’s original idea was to move it to act as a regulator of the balance.

  7 Oldenburg, Correspondence 11, 186 (translation from the French taken from the version published by Oldenburg in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in November 1676).

  8 BL Sloane MS 1039, f.129.

  9 Moray and Bruce were related by marriage, I believe (there are too many Morays/Murrays and Bruces to be able to prove this). They were both probably prominent Speculative Freemasons.

  10 On the English community at Maastricht during the Commonwealth years see J.P. Vander Motten, ‘Thomas Killigrew’s “lost years”, 1655–1660’, Neophilogus 82 (1998), 311–34.

  11 For the text of the correspondence between Sir Robert Moray and Alexander Bruce, Earl of Kincardine, see now D. Stevenson, Letters of Sir Robert Moray to the Earl of Kincardine, 1657–73 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). On Moray’s laboratory see e.g. ibid., p.82.

  12 Ibid., p.190. See J.H. Leopold, ‘Christiaan Huygens, the Royal Society and Horology’, Antiquarian Horology 21 (1993), 37–42; 37.

  13 Stevenson, Letters of Sir Robert Moray, p.197.

  14 Parts of the escapement mechanism in clocks.

  15 Stevenson, Letters of Sir Robert Moray, pp.198–9.

  16 The first surviving communication between Moray and Christiaan Huygens is a letter dated 22 March 1661 (o.s.), shortly before Huygens arrived in London for the first time from Paris. Oeuvres Complètes 3, pp.260–1. However, it is clear that the two already know one another well.

  17 Huygens, Oeuvres Complètes 2, p.209.

  18 Lodewijk Huygens writes to his brother Christiaan in this period saying that the van Aerssens’ house is the most fashionable and most frequented house in The Hague.

  19 Hume was chamberlain to Maria (Mary), Princess of Orange. See Oldenburg, Correspondence 2, p.477.

  20 Stevenson, Letters of Sir Robert Moray, p.211.

  21 Moray had played a prominent role in negotiations in Scotland during events preceding the arrest and execution of Charles I. Charles II recompensed handsomely those who had stood by his father right up to his end. See David Stevenson’s introduction to his edition of the Kincardine correspondence.

  22 E.L. Edwardes, The Story of the Pendulum Clock (1977), p.41, interprets this as a reference to a type of ‘crutch’ (a fork-like device through which a clock pendulum runs) that Huygens had introduced.

  23 A projection that engages on the teeth of a wheel, converting reciprocating into rotary motion (or vice-versa) in a clock.

  24 Edwardes, Story,
p.58, believed Moray wrote ‘Chopes’, which he identified as ‘chops’ or backcocks, parts of the suspension system for pendulums in clocks. But the first letter of the word is certainly ‘s’.

  25 Stevenson, Letters of Sir Robert Moray, p.217.

  26 On Culross, the Bruce family home, see Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments and Constructions of Scotland: Fife, Kinross and Clackmannan (Edinburgh: HMSO, 1933), pp.69–87. See also Dutch-style water landscape of Culross (across the Forth of Firth) by John Slezer (1693).

  27 Culross, 15 September 1668. Worp, letter 6677.

  28 Moray was delayed in Paris, negotiating the terms of Charles II’s return with the French, until summer 1660.

  29 See references in G.E. Scala, ‘An index of proper names in Thomas Birch, “The History of the Royal Society” (London, 1756–1757)’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 28 (1974), 263–329. See also M. Hunter, Establishing the New Science: The Experience of the Early Royal Society (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1989), p.81.

  30 See D.S. Landes, ‘Hand and mind in time measurement: The contribution of art and science’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 43 (1989), 57–69; 61.

  31 See L.D. Patterson, ‘Pendulums of Wren and Hooke’, Osiris 10 (1952), 277–321.

  32 Huygens was given a commission in Paris 14 March 1661 to convey to Mme Bruce (Veronica van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck) – Oeuvres Complètes 22, p.561.

  33 Ibid., pp.569–70.

  34 Ibid., p.576.

  35 Ibid., p.606.

  36 Diary of John Evelyn 3, pp.285–6.

  37 24 July 1661. See D. Stevenson, Letters of Sir Robert Moray to the Earl of Kincardine, 1657–73 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).

  38 Huygens to Moray, 14/24 June 1661. Oeuvres Complètes 3, p.284.

  39 Huygens to Moray, 22 July/1 August 1661. Ibid., p.307.

  40 Huygens to Lodewijk Huygens, 31 October/9 November 1662. Oeuvres Complètes 4, p.256.

  41 This version of events is confirmed in Hooke’s 1674–75 Cutlerian lecture.

  42 A description of this clock is to be found in Huygens’s Horologium Oscillatorium (1673). See M. Mahoney, ‘Christian Huygens: The measurement of time and of longitude at sea’, in Studies on Christiaan Huygens, ed. H.J.M. Bos et al. (Lisse: Swets, 1980), pp.234–70. In an unpublished Cutlerian lecture of 1674–75, rewritten (I believe) around 1678, Hooke describes the various clocks used in these trials.