Author: admin (Page 14 of 21)

By this pass, having obtained another from the Prince of Orange, upon the 24th of September I departed through Dort; but met with very bad tempestuous weather, being several times driven back, and obliged to lie at anchor off Keele ((possibly the Dordtsche Kil – a tidal creek connecting Dort (Dordrect) with Hollands Diep -GS)) , other vessels lying there waiting better weather.

I went again to Rotterdam to receive a pass which I expected from Brussels, securing me through Brabant and Flanders, designing to go into England through those countries. The Cardinal Infante, brother to the King of Spain, was then governor.

The next morning, the 19th, we arrived at Dort, passing by the Decoys, where they catch innumerable quantities of fowl.

I went to see that most impregnable town and fort of Hysdune ((Heusden -GS)), where I was exceedingly obliged to one Colonel Crombe, the lieutenant-governor, who would needs make me accept the honor of being captain of the watch, and to give the word this night. The fortification is very irregular, but esteemed one of the most considerable for strength and situation in the Netherlands. We departed toward Gorcum. Here Sir Kenelm Digby, traveling toward Cologne, met us.

I was permitted to walk the round and view the works, and to visit a convent of religious women of the order of St. Clara ((Order of the Poor Clares perhaps- GS)) (who by the capitulation were allowed to enjoy their monastery and maintenance undisturbed, at the surrender of the town twelve years since), where we had a collation and very civil entertainment. They had a neat chapel, in which the heart of the Duke of Cleves ((Arnold, Duke of Guelders, had his heart buried within a silver casket in the choir of the St Gertrude’s convent in ‘s-Hertogenbosch.  He was married to Catherine of Cleves, daughter of Adolph IV, Duke of Cleves – perhaps he is the Duke mentioned. Source: In the Shadow of Burgundy: The Court of Guelders in the Late Middle Ages by Gerard Nijsten p281 -GS )) their founder, lies inhumed under a plate of brass. Within the cloister is a garden, and in the middle of it an overgrown lime tree, out of whose stem, near the root, issue five upright and exceeding tall suckers, or bolls, the like whereof for evenness and height I had not observed.

The chief church of this city is curiously carved within and without, furnished with a pair of organs, and a most magnificent font of copper.

I went toward Bois-le-Duc, where we arrived on the 16th, at the time when the new citadel was advancing, with innumerable hands, and incomparable inventions for draining off the waters out of the fens and morasses about it, being by buckets, mills, cochleas ((The spiral water-screw of Archimedes. –AD)), pumps, and the like; in which the Hollanders are the most expert in Europe. Here were now sixteen companies and nine troops of horse. They were also cutting a new river, to pass from the town to a castle not far from it. Here we split our skiff, falling foul upon another through negligence of the master, who was fain to run aground, to our no little hazard. At our arrival, a soldier conveyed us to the Governor, where our names were taken, and our persons examined very strictly.

I took a wagon for Dort, to be present at the reception of the Queen-mother, Marie de Medicis, Dowager ((widower – GS)) of France, widow of Henry the Great, and mother to the French King, Louis XIII., and the Queen of England, whence she newly arrived, tossed to and fro by the various fortune of her life. From this city, she designed for Cologne, conducted by the Earl of Arundel and the Herr Van Bredrod ((Possibly refers to a member of the Van Brederode family – a noble family from the Netherlands -GS)) . At this interview, I saw the Princess of Orange, and the lady her daughter ((I believe this to be the Countess Louise Henriette of Nassau – GS)) , afterward married to the House of Brandenburgh. There was little remarkable in this reception befitting the greatness of her person; but an universal discontent, which accompanied that unlucky woman wherever she went (([In 1638 she had come to England from Holland. But the popular hatred of popery drove her back again in August, 1641. Lilly, the astrologer, thus speaks of her at this time:—“I beheld the Old Queen Mother of France departing from London, in Company of Thomas Earl of Arundel; a sad Spectacle of Mortality it was, and produced Tears from mine Eyes, and many other Beholders, to see an Aged lean decrepid poor Queen, ready for her Grave, necessitated to depart hence, having no Place of Residence in this World left her ” (Life and Death of King Charles, 1715, p. 49). Holland declined to harbour her, and she sought an asylum in the electorate of Cologne, where she died, 3rd July, 1642. There is a portrait of her by the younger Pourbus at Hampton Court, apparently painted subsequent to the assassination of Henry IV. by Ravaillac in l6l0.]. –AD))

Returned to Rotterdam, through Delftshaven and Sedan ((Identified as Schiedam by Eric Soons)), where were at that time Colonel Goring’s winter quarters. This town has heretofore been very much talked of for witches ((Five women were executed as witches in 1585 in Sedan/Schiedam. Source: Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Volume 4: The Period of the Witch Trials  By William Monter))

I went to Delft and Rotterdam, and two days after back to the Hague, to bespeak a suit of horseman’s armor, which I caused to be made to fit me. I now rode out of town to see the monument of the woman, pretended to have been a countess of Holland ((Margaret of Holland, Countess of Henneberg)), reported to have had as many children at one birth, as there are days in the year ((The legend of the 365 children)). The basins were hung up in which they were baptized, together with a large description of the matter-of-fact in a frame of carved work, in the church of Lysdun ((Loosduiden – GS)), a desolate place.

As I returned, I diverted to see one of the Prince’s Palaces, called the Hoff Van Hounsler’s Dyck ((Huis Honselaarsdijk -GS)) , a very fair cloistered and quadrangular building. The gallery is prettily painted with several huntings, and at one end a gordian knot, with rustical instruments so artificially represented, as to deceive an accurate eye to distinguish it from actual relievo ((Sculpture consisting of shapes carved on a surface so as to stand out from the surrounding background -GS)).. The ceiling of the staircase is painted with the “Rape of Ganymede,” and other pendant figures, the work of F. Covenberg ((Christiaen van Couwenbergh -GS)), of whose hand I bought an excellent drollery, which I afterward parted with to my brother George of Wotton, where it now hangs. To this palace join a fair garden and park, curiously planted with limes.

I went to see the college and schools, which are nothing extraordinary, and was complimented with a matricula by the magnificus Professor, who first in Latin demanded of me where my lodging in the town was, my name, age, birth, and to what Faculty I addicted myself; then, recording my answers in a book, he administered an oath to me that I should observe the statutes and orders of the University while I stayed, and then delivered me a ticket, by virtue whereof I was made excise-free; for all which worthy privileges, and the pains of writing, he accepted of a rix-dollar ((English term for silver coinage used throughout the Europe at the time – GS)).

Here was now the famous Dan. Heinsius, whom I so longed to see, as well as the no less famous printer, Elzevir’s printing-house and shop ((printing-house and shop: Bonaventura (1583-1654), and Abraham Elzevir or Elzevier (1592-1652), established the Officina Elzeveriana at Leyden in 1626; and it was continued by their descendants. –AD)), renowned for the politeness of the character and editions of what he has published through Europe. Hence to the physic-garden, well stored with exotic plants, if the catalogue presented to me by the gardener be a faithful register.

But, among all the rarities of this place, I was much pleased with a sight of their anatomy-school, theater, and repository adjoining, which is well furnished with natural curiosities; skeletons, from the whale and elephant to the fly and spider; which last is a very delicate piece of art, to see how the bones (if I may so call them of so tender an insect) could be separated from the mucilaginous parts of that minute animal. Among a great variety of other things, I was shown the knife newly taken out of a drunken Dutchman’s guts, by an incision in his side, after it had slipped from his fingers into his stomach. The pictures of the chirurgeon ((Surgeon -GS)) and his patient, both living, were there.

There is without the town a fair Mall, curiously planted.

Returning to my lodging, I was showed the statue, cut in stone, of the happy monk, whom they report to have been the first inventor of typography, set over the door; but this is much controverted by others, who strive for the glory of it, besides John Gutenberg.

I was brought acquainted with a Burgundian Jew, who had married an apostate Kentish woman. I asked him divers questions: he told me, among other things, that the World should never end; that our souls transmigrated, and that even those of the most holy persons did penance in the bodies of brutes after death,—and so he interpreted the banishment and savage life of Nebuchadnezzar: that all the Jews should rise again, and be led to Jerusalem; that the Romans only were the occasion of our Savior’s death, whom he affirmed (as the Turks do) to be a great prophet, but not the Messiah. He showed me several books of their devotion, which he had translated into English, for the instruction of his wife; he told me that when the Messiah came, all the ships, barks, and vessels of Holland should, by the power of certain strange whirlwinds, be loosed from their anchors, and transported in a moment to all the desolate ports and havens throughout the world, wherever the dispersion was, to convey their brethren and tribes to the Holy City; with other such like stuff. He was a merry drunken fellow, but would by no means handle any money (for something I purchased of him), it being Saturday; but desired me to leave it in the window, meaning to receive it on Sunday morning.