by Janet Todd
Despite the obvious ties between the two nations there was a great deal of cultural contempt, probably in part due to the similarities. The Dutch, living in the ‘Bogg of Europe’, were regarded by the English as vulgar, ill-bred, and mercenary—though many a travelling Englishman took advantage of their probity in money matters. They were also seen as gluttonous and lewd—though much of the pornography the Dutch printed after the Restoration was for the English market.
Perhaps the most famous insult to the Dutch was penned by Andrew Marvell, a man probably in Dutch pay for a large portion of his life. In ‘The Character of Holland’ (1653), he wrote:
Holland, that scarce deserves the name of Land,
As but th’Off-scouring of the Brittish Sand...
This indigested vomit of the Sea,
Fell to the Dutch by Just Propriety.
In 1664 a pamphlet, ingratiatingly called Dutch Boare Dissected; or, a Description of Hogg-land (1664), described him thus: ‘A Dutchman is a lusty Fat two-legged Cheeseworm. A Creature that is so addicted to eating Butter, drinking Fat Drink and Sliding that all the world knows him for a slippery fellow.’25
Beyond culture, there was much tension and rivalry between the two countries as commercial entities. Both were founding their prosperity on foreign trade, and, as one Englishman put it, ‘the trade of the world is too little for us two, therefore one must down.’26 The rivalry was enacted on a large stage, spreading from the East to the West Indies and stretching down into Africa. It involved the seizing of each other’s colonies and ships, as the records of the King David amply indicate. On occasion throughout the seventeenth century, this rivalry erupted into full-scale war, but these wars were never fought to a conclusion. This time the immediate cause of open hostility between the two seafaring nations was as symbolic as absurd: the English demanded that the Dutch salute their flag when sailing in what they insisted were English waters; the Dutch refused. Beneath such niceties was of course the question of who ruled what waves and who controlled the lucrative Atlantic trade. There was, too, a further cause of English irritation. Because they shared the Protestant religion and republican ideals of the leaders in the Interregnum Commonwealth, the Dutch had become hosts to those who avoided the reprisals of the new Royalist regime in England. Some of these were working for the Dutch directly as spies, agents, advisors, and mercenaries. The expatriate dissidents, old Puritans and new opponents of the royal government, troubled Charles II, who feared their plotting, knowing that he owed his throne to English internal politics rather than to his own conquest by arms. He, and no doubt many of his courtiers, worried that, if these dissidents were armed and aided by the Dutch, his restoration might simply be an interruption in a long exile.
The English fixed on an incident in history to blacken their enemies. The massacre of Amboyna, a clove island of the East Indies, was never forgotten or forgiven. In a century of multiple atrocities, this stood out and it was mentioned whenever anti-Dutch feeling arose.
It had happened in 1623. The Dutch had incited the local population against the English merchants and factors and had then stretched these men out and strung them up, binding their faces with cloth into which they dripped water. Soon the English had to breathe water, which, ‘with long continuance, forced all their inward parts out of their Nose, Ears, and Eyes, till they were almost stifled and choaked; then would they take them down till they vomited the water, and hoyse them up again, till their bodies swelled, to double their own proportion, their eyes stand out of their heads’. The Dutch also set candles on various parts of the English men ‘till their very Inwards might be seen...’. It was, claimed the author of this account, ‘A cruelty unparalleled among Christians’.27 So struck were the English by the incident that, in 1673, during the Third Dutch War, Dryden helped the patriotic effort by staging a play entitled Amboyna: or, the Cruelties of the Dutch to the English Merchants. The prologue urged the English to forget the compatibility of religion and prosecute the war vigorously, since ‘Interest’s the God [the Dutch] worship in their State’.
When the Second Dutch War broke out in December 1664, a large supply of money was granted to the King, but it was ill-managed. Soon the war effort was stymied for want of funds to such an extent that Pepys saw nothing but ‘distraction and confusion’ in the affairs of the navy and misery for the ‘poor seamen that lie starving in the streets for lack of money’. On one occasion, he had been so discommoded by the pleas of the seamen’s wives that he had been frightened to send out his venison pasty to be cooked ‘for fear of their offering violence to it...’.28 Behn was never much attuned to the sufferings of the poor, although she would note the menace in their complaints, but she cannot have failed to worry over the effect of such widespread dissatisfaction on a government she supported. The fear of Puritan return was still very present.
Apprehensive of further Dutch incursions and the subversive activities of dissidents, the English government needed reliable agents and some useful moles. The Dutch themselves were adept at espionage and provocation, and their agents were busy assuring the English ‘that the Dutch will land, headed by the old English officers in the States’s [i.e. Holland’s] service’. This information was in the domestic state papers of England, so must have been taken from an intercepted letter. Since the re-establishment of the old English republic was never on the Dutch agenda, the information was surely disinformation, written to be intercepted. The English were conscious that their government was not well served in spying: ‘how bad we are at intelligence,’ exclaimed Pepys.
So they needed more agents. At this juncture, Thomas Killigrew turned to Aphra Behn with a proposal not for the theatre but for more espionage. He had heard from William Scot, Behn’s old friend from Surinam, now in Holland, and he needed someone to liaise with the man. The proposal was that Behn should go to meet Scot in Flanders or Holland and, with bribes, secure him as an English informant. As she later wrote, it was a mission ‘Unusual with my Sex, or to my Years’.29
Chapter 7
On the King’s Service
‘Memorial for Mrs Affora’
What was Aphra Behn like at this point when she clearly entered recorded history? All those who have left any clue speak of her as beautiful and witty. She was tall, well-built, even chubby perhaps, full-breasted, with bright eyes, flowing brown hair, well-shaped mouth, and a small neck.1 In character she was gregarious, enjoying an evening of sociability; with the practised female ability to work and converse simultaneously, she was rarely alone. She liked a drink, aware that it made one both witty and susceptible to wit in others. To some, her tippling would seem immoderate but, in the circles in which she moved, it was common enough for a woman to ‘drink her bottle’. Competitions in rhyme amused her and, humorous, quick and clever at mimicry, she turned out some respectable verse in company. She played the flute, sometimes with her brother, and was susceptible to music. Probably amorous, she was sensual as much as sexual, interested both in men and women and appreciating beauty in both. She appears to have had intense relationships but mainly to have accepted sexuality as a matter of flirtation and repartee, a sort of excited fencing which had the advantage of avoiding venereal disease and pregnancy.
Although she was adept at role-playing, Aphra Behn was not entirely astute in judging others’ roles. She could be devious herself both about facts and about her attitudes; as a result, she admired openness and tended to be fooled by apparent sincerity more than she ought. In money matters, she could be feckless. As a pretty and clever child, she had probably often been the object of generosity and become generous herself. Indeed she rated generosity highly and was over scornful of the other virtues of thrift and care. She despised mercenariness but she did not despise money. Critical of others, she did not relish criticism of herself and she responded to rejection and withdrawal by falling ill, with the undefined psychosomatic ailments given to her narrator in Oroonoko. With all her abilities, she was inevitably naïve and frequently unaware of her ignoran
ce. Although she had gained the social confidence that comes of being admired when young, she did not have that absolute assurance she would ascribe to the nobly born who did not need to please and counterfeit. It was with this combination of strengths and weaknesses that Aphra Behn proposed again to deal with William Scot, in a far more dangerous environment than Surinam.
Shortly after Aphra and her party left Surinam for London, Scot had himself embarked on another ship for Holland. Mockingly Byam described him to Robert Harley as flying after his ‘faire shoupherdess’, ‘being resolved to espouse all distress or felicities of fortune with her’.
Scot was probably decamping for motives other than love, however. As Byam sarcastically noted, ‘the more certain cause of his flight...was a regimen of protests to the number of 1000 of pounds.’ Since this was the sum owed in England, the warrant must finally have caught up with him, although it is possible that he had run up new debts in the colony and it was to these that Byam was referring. Of Puritan stock, William Scot was none the less as free with other people’s money as any Cavalier.
Whatever the debts in Surinam, the £1000 was still outstanding in England, and Scot needed to avoid his native land. Though he probably made secret visits over the next months, he went first to Rotterdam, travelling in one of those ambiguously flagged ships that brought valued sugar and tobacco directly to the Dutch, without the payment of English duty. Scot had gone to Surinam partly because he had a relative there. He had the same motive in Holland, where a Richard Sykes had married his sister. Sykes’s brother, William, was a merchant and a spy for the Dutch and the English dissidents, as well as being a friend of Scot’s old associate, Bampfield. Like Scot in Surinam, Sykes was watched by Royalist agents.
Scot arrived in Rotterdam in May or June of 1665 when relations between England and Holland were especially fraught. Immediately he wrote to Bampfield, who had come to Holland just after the Restoration, having been released from the Tower to spy on the Dutch. He was now juggling roles; not only was he a Royalist spy but also a colonel of an English regiment in Dutch pay and an informer for the Dutch leader, De Witt, who had been warned against him but had use for him none the less, partly as spy among the English exiles. For each of these roles, Bampfield had to provide a special biography, explaining to the Dutch, for example, his known approaches to Whitehall as a necessary manoeuvre in their service. (Presumably Bampfield was ignorant that Scot was treading the same shady path and that he had already made it known to the Secretary of State, Lord Arlington, that he could give information about a plot for an English rising in Yorkshire aided by the Dutch.2 Scot probably obtained this information from Sykes in an unguarded moment, since Sykes was liaising between the Dutch and the would-be English rebels.) Bampfield replied to Scot at once. He also brought him to the attention of the Dutch as the son of an old Parliamentary politician: Scot was an able man, he wrote to De Witt, ‘esteemed as much for the memory of his father as for his own merit, and I think there is no need to suspect a man whose father was executed and the son deprived his possessions’.3 He also had up-to-date information about the defences of the English colony of Surinam, of some interest to the Dutch.
Bampfleld himself had immediate use for Scot: as agent provocateur, since several Royalist agents were ripe for picking. The first of these was William Corney, a merchant of Amsterdam employed indirectly by Arlington to give intelligence. Like the dissidents’ agent, Sykes, he was a merchant in his own right and could be seen to be following business. He traded in ‘sail duck’, popular in England, and in tobacco, using the ports of Ostend and London. During the Civil War, Corney had been a supplier of arms to the Royalist forces and had held high office in the army, leaving England only when Parliament had seized his estate. He had settled in Holland but kept his Royalist loyalty, revealing it in intelligence reports on the Dutch navy. He loathed both the ‘Phanaticks’ and the disillusioned dissidents.
On 4 June 1665, Bampfield had had news for De Witt. In Amsterdam the agent Corney had been corresponding with a Nicholas Oudart, one of the council of the Prince of Orange in The Hague; he too turned out to be doing Arlington’s business. Together they had penetrated the East India Company and were intending to send much useful information back to the authorities in Whitehall.4 Bampfield’s plan was now to plant Scot among these men to ‘entertain’ them, ‘the better to penetrate the depths of their intrigues and practices and to engage them in a correspondence which would prove this’. Oudart was known to be a timid man and, since his acts were treasonable, he would be a fine example to others when caught. But Scot must be careful not to give himself away or intercept letters until he was sure he had the two men fast.
The naïve Corney was pleased to make the acquaintance of William Scot, a well-known exile in the ‘discontented party’, and excited to learn that Scot was, as he said, eager to come over and serve the King. Indeed Arlington had written to Corney already, suggesting he try to bring in Scot for the royal service. Corney had little time to try his hand, however, for, by 17 July, Scot and Bampfield had enough information to strike. Corney and Oudart were betrayed to the Dutch, who arrested them and seized their papers. According to an unknown correspondent, ‘the latter will die but Corney will be spared’.5
The English quickly realised the truth and, writing back to Whitehall, the ambassador declared that Scot had been working for De Witt all along. Indeed there was not much effort to hide the treachery since ‘John [De Witt] has given Wm. Scott a place of 1,000 rixdollars’ in Bampfield’s regiment. The victims themselves were appalled, and Corney, in particular, had the outrage of a once naïve man suffering betrayal. He was stung hard and never forgot the pain and fright.
In October 1665, Bampfield and Scot made an undercover visit to England, from where Bampfield sent information back to the Dutch, along with an anti-Dutch pamphlet written by Thomas Killigrew. The pair were up to something because Bampfield reported that he ‘spoke to Scot and have given him the necessary directions, which he will soon carry out’. Bampfield had had a lot of close shaves and had grown skilled at counterfeiting, but he was glad to be back in Holland by the beginning of November. Scot was less keen. He was lonely by now—especially since his brother-in-law Sykes had died and he and Bampfield, ostensibly friends and living together, were growing wary of each other. They talked much, probably without listening since both were garrulous. Each suspected the other of being treacherous and Scot was afraid that, when drunk, as he more and more often was, he might be too frank. Without enough money, he could not attract women and, unlike Bampfield, but like his father before him, he could not speak foreign languages. So he was cut off from many of the Dutch.
In January 1666, Corney and Oudart were unexpectedly released. Corney was fined heavily and told to leave the Dutch Republic at once; Oudart had a little longer. Corney left for Flanders, his mind filled with loathing for William Scot.
To control his dissident subjects during a difficult war, Charles II issued a stern proclamation demanding the surrender of those who had
not only remained beyond the seas contrary to former proclamations but have treasonably served in the wars against their native country, to undergo their legal trial under pain of being attainted and forfeited for high treason.6
It was not a tempting invitation. Included in the list of twelve wanted men was William Scot whose father, readers of the proclamation were reminded, was ‘lately executed for high treason’. Bampfield’s name did not appear, although he had been proscribed the year before. Perhaps he was more credible in his double-dealings.
The additional threat concentrated Scot’s mind. He could not be protected from English anger by the Dutch authorities, for English agents were everywhere, and the proclamation implied that he could be executed without trial if captured by any of these agents.7 He responded by approaching Whitehall with greater vigour, indicating that he had a great deal to tell if he would.
The news of Scot’s desire to engage in double-dealing again was wel
comed in London, but it was difficult to know quite what he could tell. At one time De Witt had seemed to value him—he had given useful information about Surinam’s weak fortifications and had helped capture English agents—but his regimental position was not high, and De Witt had not followed through with intimacy; by late 1666 Scot was clearly not in the Dutch leader’s confidence. Perhaps the men in Whitehall did not know of this. In any event Scot could be most useful with the English and Scottish exiles who, under cover of war, might well be hatching plots. Since his betrayal of Corney and Oudart, he would seem trustworthy and he could easily inform on his friends. He could, for example, tell who was genuinely sick of expatriate life and eager to come home.
Mindful of his father’s fate, Scot was cautious in his dealings, intending to save his skin at any price. To the authorities he let it be known that he would provide information both about the Dutch and about the English and Scots in the regiments, but he would not give it away all at once. He had already managed to indicate what his price was for cooperation: money and a complete pardon, which would allow him to return and live in England. He had to be careful: there were not only his fellow dissidents to fear but also their agents whom he did not always know.
Since spies and agents tended to exaggerate their own knowledge when negotiating for payment, someone was needed to go over to the Low Countries to meet with Scot, filter the material and assess his usefulness.8 The charming young woman who had attracted Scot in Surinam, and had possibly already dealt with him, seemed the ideal agent for a man notorious for his ‘lewdness’.