SOURCE: van Strien, Kees. “Sir John Suckling in Holland.” English Studies 76, no. 5 (September 1995): 443-54.

Sir John Suckling (1609-1642) is one of the numerous British tourists who travelled in the Low Countries in the first half of the seventeenth century.¹ Unlike Sir William Brereton (1634), Peter Mundy (1640) and John Evelyn (1641) Suckling has left no extensive account of his journeys. Only one letter seems to reflect his impressions of Holland and the Dutch.² Suckling appears to have been one of the numerous soldiers and scholars who specifically set out for the United Provinces, where in ‘the Cockpit of Christendome, the Schoole of Armes, and Rendezvous of all adventurous Spirits, and Cadets’,³ experience in warfare could be gained. Moreover there were excellent educational opportunities at Leiden ‘honored with an universitie, and that of the greatest fame of all those of the reformed religion, except those of England’.⁴ Suckling's letter written at Leiden on 18 November 1629, together with a certain amount of additional material has enabled us to piece together a picture of this little-known period of his life as a twenty-one-year-old gentleman-soldier, student and author.

SUCKLING AT DEN BOSCH AND LEIDEN

Suckling, who probably saw military action in France in 1627, went to Holland in 1629 to witness the siege of Den Bosch ('s-Hertogenbosch; Bois-le-Duc), a city which had remained loyal to the King of Spain since the beginning of the Dutch wars. In May 1629, stadholder Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, began the siege which lasted until September, during which time large numbers of visitors came to watch. Suckling's name appears in a list of roughly two hundred officers and gentlemen-volunteers serving with the English regiments; he was in Sir Edward Cecil's company.⁵ No other record of his presence here appears to be extant, but the atmosphere may be conveyed by the notes of another volunteer: William Bagot. After visiting the Queen of Bohemia at her country house at Rhenen in the province of Utrecht, he wrote:

I came to a large bridge of boates over the Rhine [sic for Meuse], where I entered into Brabant. This passage is secured by a stronge fort of the States called St Andrewes sconce. I passed on to Gravicure [Crèvecoeur], another stronge fort of the States and so entered into the trenches of the renowned siege of Shertogenbosh, being the greatest wonder that ever myne eyes beheld. The outworks were of that heith that a man on a high horse could not looke over them, and in compass about thirtie three english miles. I went on to the Princes quarter where I had the honor to kiss the Kinge of Bohemias hand. I passed on into our English trenches, bateries and approaches where most clearely did appeare the valor and industrie of our nation, now being put upon the most desperate attempt; but to see the most excellent order and discipline in every particular was admirable and beyond expression.⁶

Suckling must have returned to England before 22 October 1629 for on that date a pass was issued to him to proceed to the Low Countries to join Lord Wimbledon's (=Sir Edward Cecil) regiment in the States' service. However, in November when he arrived, all military activity for that year had come to a standstill and the four English regiments that had been hired for the duration of the siege, were being paid off.⁷ It was in these conditions that Suckling must have decided to go to Leiden, where, on 26 February 1630, he registered as a student of mathematics. Clayton's assertion that Suckling applied himself to astrology here is rather puzzling. It is true that the arabist-mathematician Jacobus Golius taught astronomy from 1629 onwards,⁸ but it is far more likely that Suckling and his friend Nicholas Selwyn, possibly a fellow-volunteer in Wimbledon's regiment at Den Bosch,⁹ and like Suckling an ardent Royalist during the civil war, came to Leiden for private tuition with Frans van Schooten, who apart from mathematics also taught the art of constructing fortifications.¹⁰ In the summer Van Schooten, as a military engineer, accompanied the army on its campaigns and during the winter he taught ‘Duitsche Mathematicque’, a university course set up on the initiative of Prince Maurice. Another soldier who came to study with him was René Descartes (enrolled 27 June 1630), who may have arrived at Leiden before Suckling's departure at the end of April, since many students failed to register immediately on arrival.¹¹

Since the matriculation album also records students' addresses we can discuss some aspects of Suckling's social life. His lodgings were on the Rapenburg, the most fashionable street in Leiden, shaded by two rows of fine elms on each side of a canal, and only a two or three minutes' walk from the Academy building in the same street.¹² His landlord was Jean Gillot, a fervent Huguenot, whose son, later a distinguished engineer, was then a student of mathematics as well. Between 1623 and 1649 more than a hundred students stayed with Gillot, most of them foreigners. At the beginning of 1630 Suckling shared his lodgings with some Frenchmen and Germans and at least four Britons. They were Nicholas Crisp and Nicholas Selwyn, both mathematicians, and also seventeen-year-old Sir Francis Fane K.B. and his governor Thomas Ball, who enrolled on 23 April 1629 and who were still at Leiden in September 1630.¹³ Possibly also Nathaniel Fiennes (9 July 1629), later a colonel in the parliamentarian army.¹⁴ Other English students stayed with Gillot's neighbour at Rapenburg 23, André Rivet, professor of theology (1620-1632)¹⁵ and with the French minister, Mr Maurice Agache, who had two English lodgers in the years 1628-29. One of Rivet's guests, Thomas Coppin (inscr. 24 August 1627) wrote to his uncle: ‘I have good content here in all things, but I find it extraordinarye chargeable for one who would live in good fashions (you told me so much before I came)’. At this time there were relatively few English students in Leiden: in 1628-1631, years with over four hundred enrolments each, there was an annual average of only ten.¹⁶

Being a wealthy gentleman, with a decent education behind him (Cambridge and briefly in 1627 at Gray's Inn with its court connections), Suckling must have devoted only part of his time to study at Leiden, where in Bagot's words the ‘cheife thinges of note’ were ‘the Annatomie schole and the Garden of Simples […] hardly to be paraleled in Christendome’. French lessons, fencing and riding will have cost him far more than his professor and his books. There were also the right people to mix with, principally in The Hague, ‘the prime place of Holland for pleasure’, only three hours distant.¹⁷ During the academic holidays but possibly on other occasions as well, he may have been friendly with other British noblemen looking for commissions in the next year's campaign, as for instance Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland.¹⁸ Here Suckling had ample opportunity for his favourite pastime, gambling, and may well have known young Charles Killigrew, another volunteer at Den Bosch, who according to Constantijn Huygens, the very virtuous secretary to Frederick Henry, frequented ‘the vilest and most infame company The Haghe affords, as players, lackeys, and the like with whom he ran headlong after all kinds of debauching’.¹⁹ Many Britons of Suckling's social rank in The Hague were in one way or another connected with the court of Elizabeth Stuart (1596-1662), the eldest daughter of James I, who together with her husband Frederick, Elector Palatine and titular King of Bohemia, lived in exile in The Hague and Rhenen. Numerous visitors, among them James Harrington, Sir William Brereton and William Lithgow, came to pay their respects.²⁰ In fact Suckling's lodgings in Leiden were just opposite the ‘Prince's Court’, the residence of the Queen of Bohemia's children, three of whom enrolled as students at the university on 16 March 1628 (Charles Louis, b. 1617, Rupert b. 1619, and Maurice, b. 1620). Bagot wrote: ‘Here I had the honor to kisse the hands of Kinge of Bohemias children, who are here educated in arts and sciences worthy of their birth and dignitie.’ Several of the princes' attendants also matriculated at Leiden, among them the Queen's chaplain, Griffin Higgs, whose name appears at 6 February 1630, only three weeks before Suckling's.²¹

There is nothing to suggest that the royalist Suckling had more than superficial contacts with British dissidents²² or members of the Established English church at Leiden, whose minister, from 1617 to 1661 was the staunch Puritan Hugh Goodyear. Suckling, who must have spoken French with his Dutch and Huguenot friends at Leiden and The Hague, may well have preferred to accompany his landlord to the more fashionable French church instead.²³ Here he may occasionally have listened to his neighbour professor Rivet, ‘pasteur extraordinaire’, a good friend of Constantijn Huygens, and later governor to Prince William II (1632-1646). It is not known whether Suckling did any extensive touring in the United Provinces, but it is difficult to imagine that he omitted visits to Amsterdam (an eight-hour journey from Leiden) and other major towns. When he travelled to Brussels in April or May 1630, he may have sailed direct from Rotterdam to Antwerp or made the more costly and uncomfortable journey by land via Breda, where there was the additional danger of being held up for ransom by badly paid Spanish soldiers.

SUCKLING ON HOLLAND AND THE DUTCH

As we have seen Suckling wrote the letter to his friend William Wallis just after his arrival in Leiden, following his short career as a gentleman-soldier at Den Bosch. Although on the face of it the letter deals with Suckling's crossing to Holland and his subsequent impressions of the country and its inhabitants, it hardly looks like a factual account of what happened to him or a description of what he actually saw. On the contrary, it is an almost completely facetious piece consisting of a long succession of jokes. Suckling writes:

It is reported here a Shipboard, that the winde is as weomen are, for the most parte bad! That it altogether takes parte with the water, for it crosses him continually that crosses the Seas. […] That soe much Rope is a needeles thinge in a Ship, for they drowne here altogether, not hange. That if a Wench at Land, or a Ship at Sea, spring a leake, tis fit and necessary they should be pumpt. That Dunkirke is the Papists Purgatorie, for men are faine to pay money to be free'd out of it! […] That lying foure nights a shipboard, is almost as bad as sitting up, to loose money at threepenny Gleeke, and soe pray tell Mr. Brett; and thus much for Sea newes.

A less animated version of this could have been: Dear Will, after a four-day crossing in stormy weather, always in danger of attacks by privateers, I have safely arrived in Holland. Yours, as witty as ever, John Suckling.

The letter goes on in the same vein, discussing the country that many Britons knew from personal experience, its inhabitants and some of their customs. It is not unlike a picture postcard showing a caricature of a Dutchman and his wife in their national costumes with in the background their flat boggy country, in continual danger of being flooded or being taken by the Spaniards:

Since my coming a shoare, I finde, that the people of this Cuntry, are a kinde of Infidells, not beleiving in the Scripture for though it be there promist, there shall never be another Deluge; yet they doe feare it daily, and fortifie against it. […] Their auncestors when they begott them thought on nothing but Munkeys, and Bores, and Asses, and such like ill favor'd creatures; for their Phisnomyes are soe wide from the rules of proportion, that I should spoyle my prose to let in the discription of them […] Their habits are as monstrous as themselves, to all strangers …

Clearly this has little to do with the reality as Suckling may have seen it; it is pure stereotype, a stylistic device typical of the ‘character’ literature of this period, in which representatives of all social classes, trades and nationalities are briefly, wittily and critically described.²⁴ Two other characters by Suckling are his letter from Brussels (5 May 1630), also addressed to William Wallis and one he sent to the Earl of Middlesex. These literary exercises may have been a welcome change for Suckling, who in long prosaic letters also kept his patron informed of political news.²⁵ Although, like most writers of literary characters Suckling did not slavishly copy his models,²⁶ it would appear from the letter that he did remember some of the jokes he had come across in his reading. In fact the first part of the letter is reminiscent of ‘Newes from Sea’ in the Overbury collection of characters (1614¹), where we can read: ‘That it's nothing so intricate and infinite to rigge a ship, as a woman, and the more either is fraught, the apter to leake. That to pumpe the one, and shreeve the other, is alike noysome’.²⁷ Other echoes may come from Sir Anthony Weldon's A Perfect Description of the People and Country of Scotland (written 1617; publ. 1647), the earliest known character of nations, which was easily available in manuscript. Weldon remarked on the Scottish climate that ‘The air might be wholesome but for the stinking people that inhabit it’. This comment possibly sparked off Suckling's jibe on Holland: ‘The Ayre what with their breathing in it and its owne naturall Corruption, is soe unwholesome, that a man must resolve to be at the Charge of an ague once a Moneth’. Suckling's observation that the country is ‘too good for the inhabitants’ looks like a standard remark in texts of this nature. Weldon wrote about Scotland: ‘First, for the country I must confess it is too good for those that possess it, and too bad for others to be at the charge to conquer it’.²⁸

Although there may be borrowings from other texts as well, it is perhaps more relevant, for a fuller appreciation of the letter, to try and locate the sources that provided Suckling with material for his more specific remarks on Holland and the Dutch. Two kinds of publications on the subject seem to qualify, each yielding a different picture. Firstly there were the scholarly compilations like Sir Thomas Overbury's Observations upon the State of the Seventeen Provinces as they stood A.D. 1609, published in 1626 but available in manuscript long before that time, and the equally popular The Politia of the United Provinces (c. 1620), which only circulated in manuscript. Both were used by James Howell for his remarks on Holland in his Familiar Letters (1645).²⁹ A third text is the section on Holland in John Barclay's Icon Animorum (1614), which provided the tourist Sir John Reresby in 1657 with much material for his ‘Description of the Low Countries, Commonwealth, and its People’.³⁰ A fourth text is Fynes Moryson's Itinerary, a large encyclopedic work dealing with most countries of Europe (1617). The picture that an educated British reader might have gathered from texts like these is that Holland is a low-lying country, protected by banks against the sea just as their cities are surrounded by fortifications, a reminder of the Spaniards they have chased away. The people, who have become rich by trade, are diligent and pay high taxes to the States. The rich as well as the poor live soberly, except perhaps for an occasional drinking bout. They love their freedom and tolerate all religions. A very popular political tract which did much to reinforce this picture was The Belgicke Pismire (1622), written by the Rev. Thomas Scott (1580-1626), English minister at Utrecht and an indefatigable pamphleteer in the Puritan cause, who presented the Dutch as models of ‘labour, providence, and prevention’.³¹

However, many travelling British gentlemen belonging to the Established Church perceived the republican Dutch very differently and emphasized the reverse side of the coin. The ordinary people did not always treat them with respect, and consequently were seen as boorish. Then there were the dull skippers and waggoners unable to understand English, Latin or French, and even well-to-do people went about in plain black clothes! The way the Dutch were lax in keeping the sabbath, together with their excessive toleration of all sorts of religions was looked upon as indifference, and their diligence was proof of the fact that they were only interested in making money.³² Such people could of course not live in an ordinary country, so all sorts of jokes were made about that too. Something must have gone wrong at the creation, for it was neither water nor land. The Low Countries were a sort of underworld, a Hades or Hell, a fitting place for irreligious people.³³ This is also the picture of the Dutch that emerges from English character literature, in which the Dutch are invariably an object of scorn.³⁴

Two texts seem to be immediately relevant here, since Suckling may well have known them. The first is Richard Verstegan's Observations concerning the present Affayres of Holland and the United Provinces (St Omer, 1621; 1622²),³⁵ an anti-Dutch pamphlet which begins with a satirical ‘character’ of Holland. This text was mentioned in the House of Commons on 27 November 1621 as ‘a book […] by an Englishman (as himselfe saith, Hispanised) … dishonorable to us and the old Queen and our nation’.³⁶ Thomas Scott also referred to it,³⁷ and additional echoes can be found in other contemporary references to Holland or the Dutch, such as Ben Jonson's The Masque of Augurs (1622)³⁸ and James Howell's A Character of Itelia [=Holland] (1640) as well as his Familiar Letters (publ. 1645).³⁹ Verstegan (c.1550-1640), who was born as Richard Rowlands in London and who later in Antwerp became the first author of ‘characters’ in the Dutch language (1619),⁴⁰ states that the inhabitants of the Republic would be a lot better off under the King of Spain. He blames them for breaking away from the Catholic church but more particularly for their endless toleration of all other religions. In point of fact they are so selfish that they neither care about God nor their fellow creatures: ‘They had rather heare blasphemy uttered against God, then any word of the abridging of any of their priviledges.’⁴¹

A second text which may have influenced Suckling when writing his letter was itself heavily indebted to Verstegan and Scott, and possibly even better known. From around 1623 Three Months/Weeks Observations of the Low-Countries Especially Holland by Owen Felltham (c. 1604-1668) circulated widely in manuscript, and its first edition of 1648 was followed by at least sixteen more in the course of the century.⁴² Felltham did not only criticize, but writing in the tradition of Joseph Hall's Characters of Virtues and Vices (1608),⁴³ he presented two sides of the coin, trying to strike a balance between derision and praise, especially of the diligence so characteristic of the Dutch, which was held up as a mirror to the English readers.

Unlike Felltham Suckling took the usual approach of English character writers, and chose only to criticize. The passage on Holland is divided into three sections each containing four statements, after which the text is neatly concluded. The people are dealt with first; we have already been told that they live in fear of another deluge and why they look so ugly. Now we learn what made them stupid:

They are Nature's youngest Children, and soe consequently have the least portion of Witt, and Mannors or rather that they are her Bastards and soe inherite none at all.

A similar passage in Felltham reads: ‘For their conditions, they are churlish, and (without doubt) very ancient: for they were bred before manners were in fashion’. The antiquary Verstegan also uses the ancient past for a better understanding of the present, although he refers to it in connection with the country: ‘Holland at the creation of the world was no Land at all, and therefore not at the first intended by God or Nature for a dwelling place of men.⁴⁴

The country is Suckling's second subject: ‘The water and the King of France [sic for: Spain], beleagre it round; sometymes the Hollander getts ground upon them, sometymes they upon him; it is soe even a Level, that a man must have more then the quantity of a graine of Mustard-seede in faith, to remove a Mountaine here, for there is none in the Cuntry’. After this second biblical joke (cf. deluge), Suckling comes up with a remark also found in Verstegan and Felltham: ‘their owne Turfe is their fyring altogether, and it is to be feared, that they will burne up their Cuntry before Doomesday’. Verstegan wrote: ‘[they] are faigne to make use of that little [dry land] they have for their fuell, and so begin to burne up their Countrey before the day of Iudgment’. This is Felltham's version: ‘they burn Turffs […] As if […] they would prove against Philosophy the Worlds Conflagration to be natural, even shewing thereby that the very Element of Earth is Combustible’.⁴⁵

The final section deals with a variety of subjects: taxes, learning, religion and trade (wealth). Following a mention of the ague, a disease due to the humid climate, the first item is metaphorically introduced as the plague. In 1629 there was an outbreak of the plague at Amsterdam and Gouda and in 1624-25 the disease claimed about ten thousand victims in Leiden alone.

The plague is here constantly, I mean Excise; and in soe greate a manner, that the whole Cuntry is sick on't. Our very Farts stands us in I know not how much Excise to the States, before we let them.

Learning, of course, is something impossible in the given context: ‘To be learnd here is Capitall Treason of them, beleiving that Fortuna favet fatuis; and therefore that they may have the better successe in their Warrs, they chuse Burgomasters, and Burgers, as we doe our Maiors, and Aldermen, by their greate Bellyes, little witts, and full Purses’. Aldermen were proverbial dunces in character literature, for instance in John Earle and Samuel Butler. Owen Felltham wrote in connection with those in authority in Holland: ‘They are all chosen, as we chuse Aldermen, more for their wealth than their wit’.⁴⁶

Finally Suckling brings up the sensitive issue of which comes first with the Dutch, religion or their love of money. Felltham wrote: ‘Marry with a Silver hook you shall catch these Gudgeons presently. The love of gain being to them as naturall as water to a Goose, or Carrion to any Kite that flies. […] They place their Republick in higher esteem than Heaven it self: and had rather cross upon God than it. For whosoever disturbs the Civil Government is lyable to punishment; But the Decrees of Heaven, and Sanctions of the Deity, any one may break uncheck'd, by professing what false Religion he please’.⁴⁷ This is Suckling's version:

Religion they use as a stuff Cloake in summer, more for shew then any thing else; their summum bonum being altogether wealth. They wholly busie themselves about it, not a man here but would doe that which Judas did, for halfe the money.⁴⁸

After this very scornful remark, which in another context might almost be taken seriously, Suckling suddenly seems to remember that Sir Anthony Weldon was removed from court for having been too critical of the King's native country. He briefly concludes by stating that Holland is not really a country at all, an idea which by Verstegan was presented in a complicated cluster: ‘Had it been meant for a habitation of men […] the foure elements would not have conspired togeather to be there all naught, and by being naught unto men, to shew their dislike of usurpers that deprive fishs [sic] of their due dwelling places’.⁴⁹ Suckling prefers to use unambiguous language and brings the flow of his disparaging wit to a halt in a phrase combining the country, the people and his own prospects:

To be short the Cuntry is stark nought, and yet too good for the inhabitants; but being our Allyes, I will forbeare their Character, and rest, Your humble servant J. Suckling.

CONCLUSION

When in November 1629 Suckling found himself studying mathematics in Leiden in pursuance of his career as a soldier and courtier, one of his occupations was to entertain a friend with a humorous description of Holland and the Dutch. The contents were determined by common stereotypes and by the conventions of the literary character; by Suckling's sense of humour and not necessarily his personal experiences. The French-speaking Dutch upper classes with whom Suckling mixed never become the target of his satire, but he made fun of the picturesque-looking, uncouth boors who were depicted in prints made after the genre scenes by Van de Venne and Pieter Brueghel.⁵⁰ His immediate literary models appear to have been Richard Verstegan and Owen Felltham, from whom he borrowed some material in a context of his own making. In England copies of the letter were presumably passed around in literary circles,⁵¹ but its modest scope and the popularity of Owen Felltham's Brief Character probably prevented it from becoming very well-known. However, it is thanks to one of those copies that we are still able to enjoy Suckling's critical, witty and very brief character of Holland.

Notes

1. C. D. van Strien, British Travellers in Holland during the Stuart Period, Edward Browne and John Locke as Tourists in the United Provinces (Leiden/New York/Köln, 1993).

2. The Works of Sir John Suckling, ed. Th. Clayton (Oxford, 1971), I, pp. xxxi-xxxiii; letter, pp. 112-14. Clayton does not discuss Aubrey's assertion that Suckling made a Grand Tour before he was eighteen years old, cf. Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. O. L. Dick (Harmondsworth, 1962), 343.

3. James Howell, Instructions for Forreine Travell (London, 1642, repr. E. Arber, London, 1869), p. 60.

4. William Bagot, Journal of a Tour in the Low Countries and France, Stafford, Staffordshire Record Office, MS D 3259/10, 2 (1629).

5. Henry Hexham, A Historical Relation of the Famous Siege of the Busse (Delft, 1630); in an Amsterdam edition (1630) the name is spelled ‘Stuckling’.

6. Bagot, fols. 6-7. He was possibly Mr ‘Bagshot’, one of the ‘gentlemen of qualitie’ in colonel Harwood's company.

7. Cf. F. G. J. ten Raa and F. de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, 1568-1795, 8 vols. (Breda, 1911-56), IV, pp. 28, 241ff. and 280.

8. University Library Leiden, MS ASF 8: 26 February 1630: Johannes Suckling, Nobilis Anglus, studiosus matheseos, annorum XXI, by Jean Gillot. The published Album does not indicate the address. Cf. The Works, I, pp. xxvii-xxxv. G. van Herk et al., De Leidse sterrewacht, [Leiden, 1983], pp. 12-14; Golius (1596-1667; Nieuw Nederlands Biografisch Woordenboek (Leiden, 1911-1937)) was also responsible for the first observatory, constructed in 1633.

9. Nicholas Selwyn, Leiden, 28 February 1630 (aged 22, Math.). Since the ages found in university registers are not always correct (cf. n. 13 under Crispe), he may possibly have been Sir Nicholas Selwyn, Oxford, 1621 (aged 17; B.A., 1625), a known royalist (cf. B. D. Henning, The House of Commons 1660-1690, 3 vols., London 1983, under Edward Selwyn MP for Seaford); I am grateful to Mr Roger Davey of the East Sussex Record Office for information on the Selwyn family. Hexham mentions a ‘Mr Solwin’, who together with Suckling served in Cecil's company.

10. Frans van Scho[o]ten (c.1581-1645; NNBW; also Leids Jaarboekje, 1969, pp. 55-56 and P.J. van Winter, Hoger beroepsonderwijs avant-la-lettre (Amsterdam, 1988), Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, N.R., vol. 137, pp. 21-27). Van Schooten then lived at Rapenburg 38, cf. Th. H. Lunsingh Scheurleer et al., Het Rapenburg, geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, 6 vols. (Leiden, 1986-1992), V, p. 251 ff. The other professor of mathematics at that time was the arabist, who was appointed in 1629.

11. Cf. F. Alquié, Descartes, l'homme et l'oeuvre (Paris, 1956), pp. 37-38. Descartes had been at Franeker university (inscr. 16 April 1629) and at Amsterdam in 1629. Registration, cf. C. D. van Strien and H. H. Meier, ‘John Berry: A Leiden Student as a Tourist in the Low Countries, 1649-50’, LIAS, 18 (1991) 2, pp. 173-220.

12. Gillot lived at Rapenburg 21, which he bought in 1629, from 1627 till his death in 1650 (Het Rapenburg, I, pp. 359-61). For his son, cf. H. J. Witkam, ‘Jean Gillot (Een Leids ingenieur)’, in: Leids Jaarboekje, 59 (1967), pp. 29-54 (list of lodgers, pp. 43-44) and Leids Jaarboekje, 61 (1969), pp. 39-70.

13. Sir Nicholas Crispe (c.1608-c.1657) of the Isle of Thanet, Kent, matr. Oxford, 23 June 1626 (aged 18), Leiden, 5 March 1630 (aged 20, Math.), knighted 1 Jan. 1640. Sir Francis Fane (d.1680, DNB), younger son of the first Earl of Westmorland, Leiden 23 April 1629 (‘eques Balnei, Anglus, annorum xvii’), M.A. Cambridge 1631. Thomas Ball (aged 28; possibly Th. Ball 1590-1659, DNB, M.A. Cambridge 1625, rector of St George, Northampton, 1629). A letter was addressed to Fane at Leiden by his mother on 15 September 1630 (The Works, I, p. 296).

14. Nathaniel Fiennes (1608-1669; DNB), son of the first Viscount Say and Sele, matr. Oxford 19 Nov. 1624, Leiden, 9 July 1629 (aged 21, Jur.), Franeker, 24 May 1630 (with his brothers, cf. S. J. Fockema Andreae and Th.J. Meyer, Album Studiosorum Academiae Franekerensis (Franeker, 1968), back in Leiden, 20 May 1631 (aged 23, Phil.) together with his brothers Joseph (20) and John (14), once again staying with Gillot.

15. André Rivet (1572-1651; NNBW), at no. 23, cf. Het Rapenburg, I, pp. 390-91 and 401-02. French church, cf. Leids Jaarboekje, 47 (1955), p. 128. Among his numerous correspondents were the English theologians Griffin Higgs, the high Anglican Stephen Goff (chaplain to Sir Horace Vere 1632-34) and John Forbes, minister at Delft, whose sympathies were with the Puritans, cf. P. Dibon, Inventaire de la correspondance d'André Rivet (La Haye, 1971). Relatively few English students stayed with him. Coppin, cf. The Oxinden Letters, ed. D. Gardiner (London, 1933), p. 32.

16. Number of English students enrolled at Leiden according to the Album, total number of inscriptions between brackets: 1628: 7 (441); 1629: 17 (430); 1630: 5 (438); 1631: 11 (422).

17. Cf. W. R. Prest, The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts, 1590-1640 (London 1972), pp. 53, 140, 156. Riding etc., cf. K. van Strien and M. Ashmann, ‘Scottish Law Students in Leiden at the End of the Seventeenth Century, The Correspondence of John Clerk, 1694-1697’, LIAS, 19 (1992) 2, p. 301; also M. F. Moore, ‘The Education of a Scottish Nobleman's Sons in the Seventeenth Century’, in The Scottish Historical Review, 31 (1952), p. 1-15 (on the studies at Leiden of the Earl of Lothian's sons, 1651-53). Quotations, Bagot, fols. 1-2.

18. Falkland (1610?-1643) failed to find service in the States' army, c. 1629-30 (DNB).

19. Cf. De Briefwisseling van Constantijn Huygens (1608-1687), ed. J. A. Worp, 6 vols. ('s-Gravenhage, 1911-17), I, pp. 280-83, letter in English (30 March 1630), to Sir Robert Killigrew. Charles served in Harwood's company (Hexham).

20. James Har[r]ington (1611-77), joined her court c. 1630-31 (cf. DNB). Bagot ‘kissed her hands’ at Rhenen. Lithgow ‘presented the Majesty of Bohemia with some of my former workes’ (William Lithgow, A True and Experimentall Discourse upon … this Last Siege of Breda (London, 1637), p. 53). Brereton saw the Queen at supper and had a long conversation with her (Sir W. Brereton, Travels in Holland, the United Provinces, England, Scotland and Ireland, ed. E. Hawkins (Chetham Society, 1844), pp. 33-34.

21. Prinsenhof, at present nos. 4-10, cf. Het Rapenburg, I, pp. 26-27; II, p. 203 ff. Brereton visited them in June 1634, when there were seven boys (‘Gustavus so little as not able to sit at table’) and four girls (Travels, p. 39). Cf. P. S. Morrish, ‘Dr. Griffin Higgs, 1589-1659’, Oxoniensia 31 (1966), pp. 117-138.

22. Thomas Raymond (in Holland in 1632-33) wrote in his memoirs: ‘This mynds me of the trouble we then had with the Brownists of Amsterdam, amongst whom and our other countrymen, the Presbyterians (as most of the English Church were) were ever some pestilent rayling bookes printed and writed against the Church of England and the Bishops.’ cf. Autobiography of Thomas Raymond and Memoirs of the Family of Guise, ed. G. Davies, Camden 3rd ser., vol. 28 (London, 1917), pp. 32-33.

23. On the English church in Leiden, cf. K. L. Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, A History of English and Scottish Churches of the Netherlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Leiden, 1982), pp. 123-34.

24. Cf. J. W. Smeed, The Theophrastan ‘Character’ (Oxford/New York, 1985).

25. The Works, vol. I, pp. 116-118. In the letter from Brussels Suckling emphasizes the poverty of the inhabitants and makes many jokes in connection with the Catholic religion (I have not identified the literary sources). Ibid., pp. 121-23 (date uncertain). For a factual report to the Earl of Middlesex, 3 May 1630, cf. pp. 114-16.

26. Cf. Smeed, p. 10.

27. Cf. The Miscellaneous Works of Sir Thomas Overbury, ed. E. F. Rimbault (London, 1890), 181 (first complete edn. 1622). Cf. also his ‘Newes from Venice’, ‘From Germanie’, ‘From the Low-Countries’ (pp. 186-87).

28. References to the reprint in J. Nichols, The Progresses of James I (London, 1828; repr. New York, 1973), III, pp. 338-43; quotations p. 338. For a discussion of characters of nations, cf. B. Boyce, The Polemic Character 1640-1661 (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1955), pp. 44-46, and T.-L. Pebworth, Owen Felltham (Boston, 1976), pp. 71-73.

29. Sir Thomas Overbury's Observations upon the State of the Seventeen Provinces as they stood A.D. 1609, reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany (London, 1810), III, pp. 97-100. The Politia of the United Provinces (c.1620?), in: J. Somers, A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts (London, 1809-1815), III, pp. 630-35. Epistolae Ho-Elianae: the Familiar Letters of James Howell, ed. J. Jacobs, 2 vols. (London, 1891-92), I, pp. 25-129. For these and other contemporary works on Holland, cf. Van Strien, British Travellers, pp. 41-49.

30. English edition: J. Barclay, The Mirror of Minds (London, 1631), 175 ff.: on ‘Belgia’ (also in later editions of his Satyricon). Memoirs and Travels by Sir John Reresby, Bart., ed. A. Ivatt (London, 1904), pp. 130-37.

31. On Scott, cf. Sprunger, pp. 214-16 and 294-96. Letter to J. Mead, 7 February 1622 O.S., cf. T. Birch, Court and Times of James I (London, 1848), II, p. 361. In the library of Robert Burton, no. 1451, cf. N. K. Kiessling, The Library of Robert Burton (Oxford Bibliographical Society Publications (1988), N.S., xxii).

32. Cf. Reresby, Memoirs and Travels, p. 136: ‘Gentlemen have there the least respect in any place, especially strangers, they paying treble rates for everything they have occasion for as they travel, and being pursued and pointed at by the rabble, until they refuge themselves in their inn’. John Ray, Observations Made in a Journey Through Parts of the Low-Countries, London 1673, p. 43: ‘The common people of Holland, especially inn-keepers, waggoners […], boatmen and porters are surly and uncivil’.

33. Cf. Observations, p. 3: ‘I do not know any benefits peculiar to themselves wherof they may boast, except […] that by reason of the great lownes of their dwelling, they are the neerest neighbours to the Divell’.

34. Smeed, p. 39.

35. Reprinted in English Recusant Literature, 1558-1640, vol. 7, ed. D. M. Rogers (Menston, 1970). The text is a translation of his Spieghel der Nederlandsche Elenden [Mirror of the Low Countries' Woes] (1621).

36. Cf. Commons Debates 1621, ed. W. Notestein et al. (New Haven, 1935), III, p. 465.

37. The Belgicke Pismire, p. 70: ‘… whereas one saith wittily but not well, How all the elements conspire there together to be naught, to shew their dislike of the naughty people, I may truly say, All the naughty Elements are forced there to do good, to shew the vertue and diligence of the good people, who conspire together in honest labor and artificiall industrie’. Cf. text preceding n. 49.

38. Cf. Ben Jonson, eds. C. H. Herford, P. and E. Simpson (Oxford, 1925-1952), VII, pp. 632-33, lines 100-08, spoken by a character Vangoose: ‘Dey have noting, noting van deir own, but vat they take from the eard, or de zea, or de heaven, or de hell, or the rest van de veir elementen, de place all dat be so common as de vench in the bordello’. Cf. Observations, pp. 1-2, quoted in the text before n. 49.

39. James Howell, A Character of Itelia in: Dodona's Grove, or the Vocall Forrest (London, 1640); Howell (p. 26) quotes from a ‘Satyre […] out of Elaiana’ [=Spain], which has many of Verstegan's jokes. Familiar Letters, I, pp. 25-27, a letter to his brother, dated Amsterdam, 1 April 1617 [sic for 1619]. Many of its witticisms were probably only inserted when the Familiar Letters were prepared for publication. The following seems to come from Verstegan: ‘the Ground here […] lies not only level but […] far lower than the Sea; which made the Duke of Alva say, That the Inhabitants of this Country were the nearest Neighbours to Hell (the greatest Abyss) of any People upon Earth, because they dwell lowest’. (cf. n. 33).

40. Cf. E. Rombauts, Richard Verstegen, een polemist der contra-reformatie (Brussel, 1933).

41. Verstegan, p. 6. Cf. also: ‘Hell is nothing so odious unto this people, as is the Spanish Inquisition, albeit they live in more danger of hell then of it. […] almost every Cobler is a Dutch-Doctour of Divinity, and by inward illumination of spirit understandeth the Scripture as well as they that wrote it’. (pp. 4-5).

42. Its best known title is A Brief Character of the Low-Countries. Thirty manuscript copies have been traced, cf. Kees van Strien, ‘Owen Felltham's A Brief Character of the Low Countries. A Survey of the Texts’, to be published in English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700, ed. J. Griffiths and P. Beal (London, 1995), VI. References are to the 1648 (William Ley) and the 1652 (Henry Seile) edition. A critical edition is in preparation by the author. Cf. also Pebworth.

43. Cf. Smeed, pp. 19-24.

44. Felltham, 1652, par. 40. Verstegan, p. 1.

45. Verstegan, p. 3. Felltham, 1652, par. 15.

46. Plague, cf. L. Noordegraaf and G. Valk, De Gave Gods. De pest in Holland vanaf de late middeleeuwen (Bergen 1988), pp. 230-31. Alderman, the joke also occurs in John Earle's ‘A Mere Alderman’, cf. Microcosmography (1628), ed. H. Osborne (London, n.d.), p. 18, and Samuel Butler's ‘Alderman’, cf. Characters (1759), ed. C. W. Daves (Cleveland/London, 1970), pp. 159-60. Felltham, 1648, par. 60.

47. Felltham, 1652, par. 41 and 65. Cf. par. 46: ‘Nothing can quiet them but money and liberty, yet when they have them they abuse both.’

48. Cf. Weldon's Scotland, p. 339: ‘had Christ been betrayed in this country […], Judas had sooner found a tree of repentance than a tree to hang himself on’.

49. Verstegan, pp. 1-2. Cf. notes 37 and 38.

50. Cf. L. J. Bol, Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne Painter and Draughtsman (Doornspijk, 1989), p. 112 ff. He illustrated the very popular works of Jacob Cats and Johan de Brune.

51. Clayton has located one copy; the original has not been found.