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CHAPTER 1
Dutch in Early Modern England: An Introduction
1.1 Introduction
In the prologue I sketched out some themes that provide the framework for
this book. One of these is the distinction between the knowledge and the use
of Dutch. In this chapter detailed consideration will be given to the question of
who knew Dutch in early modern England. In the subsequent chapters a com-
prehensive analysis will be provided of the social domains in which those who
knew Dutch used the language. We can divide those who knew the language
into three groups.
First, we have those who settled in England and their descendants, who
formed separate Dutch (Nederduytsche) or Flemish communities in some
twenty towns and cities in England. During the early years of these communi-
ties in particular Dutch was the mother tongue of their members. They typi-
cally established separate churches where they could practise their Reformed
faith; they often married others from within own their community or other
Dutch communities; worked apart from local English workers, often restricted
to working in certain trades; and had their own elders and deacons and in
some cases also politicke mannen. Collectively, these leaders were responsible
for keeping order within the communities, looking after the poor and orphans
and dealing with the local authorities on behalf of the communities.
Secondly, there were many Dutch people who visited England on a tem-
porary basis. Fishermen, seafarers, and merchants from the Low Countries
frequently sailed into various ports on the East and South coast of England
during this period. To these we can add Dutch people who went to England
on diplomatic missions such as the poet and statesman, Constantijn Huygens
(1596–1687), and his son, Lodewijck. Their correspondence was typically in
Dutch, although they also used other languages in their diplomatic activity.
A third group of people who knew Dutch were Englishmen and women who
learnt the language for various reasons. This group includes English merchants
who learnt Dutch in order to trade with the Low Countries; English men and
women married to Dutch spouses, who had sometimes lived on the Continent
for a while; and individuals such as the scientist Robert Hooke, who learnt the
language in order to be able to read texts concerning scientific developments
written in Dutch.
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Some individuals do not easily fit into just one group. A prime example of
this is King William iii. He was born in The Hague to a Dutch father and an
English mother, Mary Henrietta Stuart, the eldest daughter of King Charles I.
William visited England in 1670–1671 and again in 1677 to marry Mary Stuart,
before leading the invasion of 1688 which resulted in the Glorious Revolution.
During his reign, from 1689–1702, he spent much time outside Britain defend-
ing the interests of the United Provinces of which he remained the stadholder.
As well as Dutch he also spoke French and English. Special consideration will
be given to the extent and manner of his use of Dutch in Britain.
However, before providing a more detailed account of who belonged to
each of these three groups, we need to discuss two other matters that will help
to complete the framework for this book. The first of these is terminology and
the second is the range of sources that will be used in this study. Let us now
consider each of these in turn.
1.2 Terminology
In the prologue I discussed the use of the term ‘Dutch’ to describe the object
of this study, even suggesting that the term ‘Dutches’ might provide us with
a more accurate picture of the heterogeneity of the varieties of the language
under discussion. Here, we need to say a little more about this.
In the early modern period there were a number of Germanic dialects
spoken in an area stretching, roughly, from Arras (Atrecht) to Groningen and
beyond. In the Southern Netherlands dialects such as Vlaams (Flemish) and
Brabants (Brabantic) can be identified, whilst northern dialects included
Hollands and Zeeuws (Zeelandic). These dialects can be further divided. For
example, reference is made to West-Vlaams as a sub-dialect, or variety, of
Flemish; to Antwerps as a sub-dialect of Brabants, and to Haags Delflands
and Zaans as sub-dialects of Hollands (Willemyns 2013: 87; Joby 2014f). Whilst
some commentators used the general term Nederduytsch, lit. ‘Low German’,
to describe these dialects and sub-dialects, others simply used the shortened
form, Duytsch (Johannes Radermacher refers to onse Duitsche tale (‘our Dutch
language’) in his 1568 grammar mentioned in the prologue (Bostoen 1985: 42)).1
We also need to account for the varieties of Dutch outlined in the prologue
such as the language of Jan Utenhove’s New Testament, heavily inflected with
Germanisms such as aver (‘but’), and the language of King William iii, which
1 He contrasts this with the language of the Hoochduitschen, i.e., (High) German (Bostoen
1985: 43).
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was replete with loanwords and modified loanwords from French, in particular
verbs ending in -eren (e.g., pardonneren from the French pardonner).
In his recent account of the history of the Dutch language Roland Willemyns
introduces a discussion on the language in the early modern period with the
term ‘Early New Dutch’ and then abbreviates this to ‘Dutch’ (Willemyns 2013:
78–109). In secondary Dutch literature we find a term equivalent to that used
by Willemyns: Vroegnieuwnederlands (lit. ‘Early New Dutch’), although once
introduced it is typically shortened to Nederlands (e.g., Van Leuvensteijn et al.
1997: 227). Yet, Nederlands or ‘Dutch’, whilst succinct, is a term that is not
without its problems. First, it is slightly anachronistic, for it only really gained
currency in the nineteenth century. Secondly, it conceals the ‘Early New’
dimension, although context tells us that this is the type of Dutch under dis-
cussion. Thirdly, it hides the fact that many of those who used the language
came from the Southern Netherlands, a problem created by the association
of the term ‘Dutch’ with the Northern Netherlands in late modern English.
Fourthly, related to the previous point, it does not do justice to the diversity of
forms under consideration in this book. Peter Burke addresses this concern by
suggesting that we should talk of ‘Dutches’ rather than of one ‘Dutch’ (Burke
2005: 5).2 It might be going too far to talk of an ‘imagined notion of homogene-
ity’, but such an idea is not without foundation (cf. Burke 2004: 166). Despite all
of these concerns, for the sake of simplicity and ease of reading, I shall use the
term ‘Dutch’, whilst encouraging the reader to bear them in mind.
We face a similar problem of terminology, when discussing the people in
early modern England whose mother tongue was Dutch and the communities
that they formed. Many of these, particularly those who left the Low Countries
in the middle of the sixteenth century, came from the southern provinces of
Flanders and Brabant. Sometimes the communities they formed were called
Flemish or Vlaams (spelt in a number of ways), whilst at other times they were
called Dutch or (Neder)duytsch. In accounts of these communities written in
English they are often referred to as ‘Dutch communities’ (e.g., Grell 1996).
I shall adopt this practice whilst acknowledging that this term is not ideal.
Where it is necessary to state that a person or people came from the southern
Netherlands, this will be made clear. However, as with the language, we should
remember that the term ‘Dutch’ derives from Nederduytsch, which covers peo-
ple from both the northern and southern Netherlands, who spoke varieties of
Dutch.
2 See also Willemyns (2013: 4–6) for the origins of the word ‘Dutch’, and a similar argument on
the problems involved in trying to find an appropriate name for this language.
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A brief word is also in order here about terminology used in contemporary
sources. In relation to language, it is very occasionally difficult to establish
whether writers are referring to (High) German or Dutch. Although authors
typically distinguish between these linguistic varieties with terms such as
Hooghduytsch (‘High German’) and Nederduytsch (‘ (Low) Dutch’), sometimes
they simply speak of Duytsch. An early modern linguist, Abraham Mylius
(1563–1637), clearly saw a distinction between these two forms, but did not
necessarily consider it that important (Metcalf 1953). Where possible ambi-
guity in the sources exists, this will be made clear. Similarly when reference
is made to the people who spoke these varieties of language, writers do not
always distinguish between those from the Low Countries and others who
spoke Germanic dialects. Again for some this distinction did not seem impor-
tant. The playwright Thomas Dekker (c. 1572–1632) has a character named Hans
(not Jan) from Augsburg in Bavaria speaking a mixture of English and Dutch,
not High German, in his play ‘Northward Ho!’ (1607). The situation is made
worse in regard to people in that some authors used a catch-all term. In 1548
Bernard Ochino stated that there were more than 5,000 Germans (Germani)
in London at the time (Robinson 1846: 336). It is likely that most if not all of
these ‘Germans’ spoke varieties of High German and Dutch (Nederduytsch),
although Scandinavians may well be included in this number.3 A century ear-
lier those ‘Germans’ who voted at the Council of Constance (1414 and 1418)
included Slavs as well as Scandinavians (Burke 2004: 161).
1.3 Sources
In comparison to the number of sources available for the study of the Dutch
language in the Low Countries during the same period, those available for this
study are quite limited in number. They are, no doubt, at least in part, exam-
ples of what William Labov described as ‘fragments . . . that . . . are the result of
3 In 1605 there was a dispute between the French and Dutch Stranger churches in London
about the foundation charter. This established an ecclesia Germanorum, which, the French
argued, meant ‘High Germans’, not the Dutch. The Dutch replied: Te willen seggen, dat bij het
woord Germanis souden verstaen worden de Hoogduytsche ende niet eygentlijck de Neerlanders,
sulcx is tot nu toe ongehoort gheweest, want het woord Germani, ghemeyn zijnde, begrijpt zo wel
de nederduytsche, als die van de hooghe sprake (‘To want to say that with the word Germani
should be understood the High Germans and not in fact the Netherlanders; such a thing has
never been heard before, for the word Germani, being a common word, includes both Low
German (i.e., Dutch) as well as those who speak the high language (i.e., German)’) (Ruytinck
et al. 1873: 203).
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historical accidents beyond the control of the investigator’ (Labov 1982: 20).
This may be another reason, to add to those discussed in the prologue, for the
lack of a previous study on this subject. Nevertheless there are sufficient sources
to make such a study worthwhile. The most extensive source is a collection
of several thousand letters currently preserved in the London Metropolitan
Archives (lma), which were published by J.H. Hessels towards the end of the
nineteenth century (Hessels 1887–97 (henceforth H 87)).4 Although the early
letters in this collection were typically written in Latin, most of them were
written in Dutch by leaders of one Dutch church in England to their counter-
parts in another Dutch church in England. Some of these will be discussed
in more detail in Chapter 2. Some of the letters in this collection concern the
work domain, whilst others have to do with the government of the Dutch com-
munities by politicke mannen. They are discussed in Chapter 3. Several of these
letters were written by private individuals to church leaders and might be clas-
sified as what Dutch scholars call ‘ego documents’. In some sense these belong
to the domestic sphere (discussed in Chapter 4), although they also have some-
thing to do with the church domain, and so transgress the domain boundaries
that we have set ourselves.
Another collection of letters written by private individuals consists of 61
letters, the vast majority of which were addressed to people in Ieper in the late
1560s. Most of these letters were written in England, including 32 sent by recent
immigrants to Norwich. In the middle of the nineteenth century parts of these
letters were published by Hendrick Janssen (Janssen 1857). Unfortunately the
originals were destroyed in the First World War. As they are ‘ego documents’,
these letters offer us a rare insight into the Dutch language spoken in England
at this time and also, given the background of some of their authors, allow
us to begin constructing a ‘language history from below’ of the use of Dutch
in England, to use the phrase coined by Stephan Elspaß (e.g., Elspaß 2007; cf.
Nobels 2013: 9–14). To these we can add more formal letters such as those writ-
ten in Dutch by King William iii to Raadpensionaris, Anthonie Heinsius (Van
der Heim 1867–80: passim; Van ’t Hoff 1950: 45–8); by diplomats such as Jacob
Hop (Japikse 1927–37);5 and by commercial correspondents, such as Nicholas
Corsellis, a Dutch merchant living and working in London in the mid-1660s.
The lma and other archives in England contain other documents writ-
ten in Dutch which are useful sources for this study. These include church
4 The manuscripts are preserved in bound volumes at the London Metropolitan Archives
(henceforth lma): clc/180/MS07428.
5 See Japikse vol. 1, which includes a number of letters written at Westminster by Hop to
Anthonie Heinsius.
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documents such as minutes of meetings; records of baptisms, marriages and
deaths of members; membership lists; and attestations, which confirmed the
identity of those who had worshipped at another church. We also find regula-
tions governing the activities of Dutch immigrant workers, such as a Book of
Orders Concerning Wool and Bayes for weavers in Norwich dated 1582;6 records
of the activities of the politicke mannen, such as those written in Norwich;7
household inventories and wills.
Books were written in Dutch, too. These include books for use in church such
as a psalter and a catechism for children; a book attacking Roman Catholic
traditions and practices; and a number of collections of verse. Though some
of these were printed in England, others came from presses on the Continent.
Here again the question of boundaries emerges. To confuse matters further,
the imprint addresses of some books from the early part of our period are
clearly invented to circumvent censorship in England and the Low Countries.
In other cases it is not always clear where a book was written, and indeed some
may have been written both in England and the Low Countries, and so caution
will need to be exercised when making claims about whether certain books
were written and published in England. A case in point is the vast history of
the Dutch people, Commentarien ofte Memorien van-den Nederlandtschen
Staet, Handel, Oorloghen (‘Commentaries or Records of the Netherlandish
State, Trade, Wars’), compiled by the mercator sapiens, Emanuel van Meteren
(d. 1612), and published in 1608.8 The place of publication of an early edition
is given as Schotland buyten Danswyck (lit. ‘Scotland outside Danzig’), which
is clearly concocted. It may be that the book was in fact published either in
London, where Van Meteren lived from 1583 until his death in 1612, and where
in all likelihood he wrote most if not all of the book, or a town in the Low
Countries, such as Amsterdam.9
6 Norfolk Record Office (nro), document ncr 17d.
7 See, for example, nro mc 189/1.
8 Despite the fact that the date 1608 is mentioned in the publishing details (see the follow-
ing note), there is disagreement over precisely when Van Meteren’s Commentarien was first
published. The Nederlandse Centrale Catalogus gives this date, and the place of publication
as London and Amsterdam. However, these details are by no means beyond dispute. I thank
Karel Bostoen for providing these details.
9 E. van Meteren, Commentarien ofte memorien van-den Nederlandtschen staet, handel, oor-
loghen ende gheschiedenissen van onsen tyden, etc. mede vervattende eenige haerder ghe-
bueren handelinghen, beschreven door Emanuel van Meteren; ende by hem voor de tweede ende
leste reyse over-sien, verbetert ende vermeerdert; oock soo verre ghebrocht totten af-standt van
wapenen ende vrede, in’t jaer 1608.
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Journals kept by Dutchmen who visited England are less problematic
in this regard. Not only do they provide further evidence of the written use
of Dutch, but also often tell us something about the spoken use of Dutch
(Frank-van Westrienen 1983; Lindeman et al. 1994). Lodewijck Huygens kept a
detailed account of his stay in London as a member of a diplomatic mission in
1651–1652, and later his brother, Constantijn jr., would keep an extensive diary
in Dutch during his time as secretary to King William iii. Abraham Booth of
Utrecht, the secretary to a Dutch East India Company delegation to London in
around 1630; the church minister, Joannes Vollenhove; and the artist, Willem
Schellinks, are three other Dutchmen whose journals are useful sources for
this study. Some may wonder, though, why such journals are included in this
book. In response, I would repeat that the book is more about the use of the
language rather than those who used it; in this regard, these journals pro-
vide interesting examples of language usage. Furthermore, it is by no means
self-evident that Dutch people would write their journals in Dutch. Part of
Lodewijck Huygens’ journal in England is written in French; and his father,
Constantijn, kept a journal in French on a diplomatic visit to Venice in 1620.
Cornelis Booth, Abraham’s elder brother, wrote a journal in Latin during his
visit to London in 1635–1636.
Another history written in Dutch in England was one concerning the Dutch
people in Britain, in particular in London, commenced by Simeon Ruytinck
(d. 1621), a minister of the Dutch church in London, and continued after his
death by two of his successors, Cesare Calandrini and Aemilius van Culemborg
(Ruytinck et al. 1873). A number of poets wrote Dutch sonnets in London,
including Emanuel van Meteren, mentioned above. To his name we can add
those of Jan van der Noot ( fl. 1539–1595), who also published two of his col-
lections of poetry in London, Marnix van St.-Aldegonde (1540–1598), and Joris
Hoefnagel (1542–1601), the uncle of Constantijn Huygens. Outside London,
the minister of the Dutch church in Colchester, Jan Proost (1572–1668), wrote
sonnets as well as other poems, whilst Jan Cruso of Norwich (1592–fl. 1655)
composed and published 221 Dutch epigrams; and an extensive poem inspired
by Psalm 8, and an elegy to the minister of the Dutch Church in Norwich,
Johannes Elison, both in Dutch alexandrines. Although no play written entirely
in Dutch in early modern England has come to light, a good number of plays
from this period include Dutch words and phrases and indeed entire speeches.
J.H. Huizinga provides a detailed account of the use of Dutch in Elizabethan
and Jacobean drama in his essay ‘Engelschen en Nederlanders in Shakespeare’s
tijd’ (Huizinga 1948–53).
Finally, material artefacts testify to the currency of Dutch in England at this
time: these include inscriptions on tombstones and memorials. The memorial
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plaque in Blackfriars’ Hall, Norwich, to Johannes Elison, just mentioned, is
one such example. The plaque includes two Dutch poems, a quatrain and an
eight-line verse, both in alexandrines. Epitaphs on gravestones were written in
Dutch, although very few survive. In London in 1568 Willem Courten commis-
sioned a large silver drinking-cup with a Dutch inscription. This is now pre-
served at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (Grell 1996: 9; 13). Sometimes we
have to rely on contemporary reports for such sources. For example, we know
that the windows in the London Dutch church contained inscriptions written
in Dutch because one of the members, Cornelius Duyts, wrote to the consis-
tory on 25 April 1644 asking whether the inscriptions were idolatrous, which he
clearly felt they were (H 87: iii, ii, 1928).
Given the fortuitous nature of the evidence that survives, it should not sur-
prise us that there are gaps in the sources. In this male-dominated world, we
have predictably little evidence for the use of Dutch by women in early mod-
ern England. We do, though, have several letters written by women and a num-
ber of other documents which shed a little light on their use of the language.
Most of the extant letters were written by well-educated (male) members of
the upper echelons of society. The letters addressed to relatives and friends
in Ieper in the late 1560s are an exception to this and offer us an insight to the
language of other members of Dutch communities in England. Nevertheless,
those who wrote these letters must have had a certain level of education, and
there will have been less well educated individuals whose use of the language
is hidden from us permanently.
Although we do have plenty of evidence for the spoken use of Dutch in early
modern England, our knowledge of this is by no means complete. In contact
situations such as those between Dutch and English in the period under dis-
cussion pidgins often emerge as speakers try to deal with the fact that they
do not know each other’s tongue. We have no evidence for this in the case of
Dutch in early modern England, although it is possible that the playwright,
Thomas Dekker, presents a pidgin used by workers such as cobblers and sailors
in some of his London plays (see section 6.3.1).
A final point here is that we find almost no comment on the relative status
of the different varieties of Dutch in these sources. We may contrast this with
the situation in the Northern Netherlands in the early years of the seventeenth
century. Plays such as Gerbrand Bredero’s Spaanschen Brabander (1617), and to
a lesser extent Warenar (1617) by P.C. Hooft and Samuel Coster, both written
and performed in Amsterdam, make fun of the Brabant dialect spoken by the
many immigrants from the South who moved to Amsterdam to escape from
the Spanish persecution there. We find no such derision of particular dialects
in British Dutch sources. What we do find, though, in English sources is the
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occasional mocking of the Dutch language in general, but that is a different
matter.
So, although no doubt many useful sources have been lost to us, a sufficient
number remain, which provide evidence of both the written and spoken use of
Dutch in early modern Britain.
1.4 The People Who Knew Dutch in Early Modern England
We now consider in turn the three groups of people who knew Dutch in early
modern Britain; members of the Dutch communities in England; temporary
visitors from the Low Countries; and English people who learnt the language
for a variety of reasons.
1.4.1 Dutch Communities in England
Let us begin with members of the Dutch communities in English towns
(fig. 1). Although it is clearly necessary to distinguish between Dutch church
congregations and the broader Dutch communities, much of the data and
source material that we have concerning these communities relates to the
church congregations and will be adduced as appropriate. Although the mem-
bers of these communities knew Dutch, the extent to which they used the
language will have varied considerably. They may have used Dutch in certain
domains, notably the church, but also other languages, in particular English
and to a lesser extent French and Latin in this and other domains. Questions
of language use are considered in detail in subsequent chapters. Let us now
consider who belonged to each of these Dutch communities and evidence for
their knowledge of Dutch.
1.4.1.1 London
There had been trading links between London and the Low Countries since the
Middle Ages. By the first half of the sixteenth century there was a well-estab-
lished Dutch community in London, which included merchants and labourers
(Pettegree 1986: 9–22). In 1547 Edward vi became King of England, with the
Duke of Somerset as Lord Protector. Their policies were increasingly tolerant
towards Protestantism, and this together with reverses on the Continent, such
as the defeat that Emperor Charles V inflicted on the League of Protestant
Princes at Mühlberg in April 1547, encouraged Dutch and other Protestants
to settle in England (Pettegree 1986: 23–4). By 1549 there was already clearly a
community of Dutch speakers meeting to worship informally on a regular basis
in London, but it was not until the summer of 1550 that the Dutch community
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CHAPTER 1
figure 1 A map indicating where Stranger communities were established in England
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Christopher Joby - 9789004285217Dutch in Early Modern England 23
in the city received a charter and was provided with an officially-sanctioned
place to meet and worship at Austin Friars in London (cf. Pettegree 1986: 9;
24–25).10 Shortly after this the leaders of the church began to produce confes-
sional, liturgical and catechismal documents in the vernacular, some of which
were the first such documents to be produced in Dutch (Joby 2014a). These are
discussed in more detail in the next chapter.
Although the Dutch Protestant community in London suffered a serious
setback during the short reign of the Catholic Queen Mary (1553–1558), their
church provided a model for the establishment of Dutch and Flemish com-
munities in other towns and cities in south-east England in the second half
of the sixteenth century (Pettegree 1986: 25, esp. n. 9). Their numbers were
swelled by the economic and religious troubles in the Low Countries in the
1560s and 1570s, notably the oppressive regime of the Duke of Alba, which
followed the Iconoclastic Fury of 1566. Many of those who went to England
remained there, whilst others returned to the Continent, often going to the
Northern Netherlands, where, after the start of the Dutch Revolt, they could
freely practise their Calvinist faith.
A return of aliens or Strangers living in the City of London was compiled at
Easter 1567. This showed that of the 2730 Strangers living there at the time, 2030
were Dutch (Kirk 1900: xii).11 There were also over 800 Dutch living in parishes
outside the City such as Mile End and St. Martin in the Fields.12 These figures
would have been far higher, but for the plague in 1563 when many Strangers in
London died because of overcrowding in their houses (Boersma and Jelsma
1997: 8). Although the church at Austin Friars in some sense acted as a focus
for the Dutch community, by no means all of the Dutch in London were mem-
bers of the Dutch church. In 1568 there were over 1900 members of the Dutch
congregation at Austin Friars (Pettegree 1986: 77). Other members of the Dutch
community in London told the assessors of the Alien Returns that they either
attended the local parish church or even belonged to no church at all (Duke
2014; Spicer 2012). There were also Dutch Anabaptists in London at this time.
10 In fact in 1550 the Dutch and French formed a single Stranger community in London, and
it was to this community that the charter securing the freedom to worship was given,
and to which the use of buildings on the site of a former monastery at Austin Friars was
granted. Although this community was treated as one until 1559, the Dutch congregation
met separately from its French counterpart from the outset.
11 The Haynes State Papers from the same year, 1567, give a figure of 2993 ‘Duche’ in the City
of London (Kirk 1900: 382).
12 The Haynes State Papers give a figure of 845 ‘Duche’ for these parishes on 15 December
1567 (Kirk 1900: 383). Lindeboom (1950: 33) estimates that in 1567 there were almost 3000
members of the Dutch community in London.
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A return of Strangers taken in May 1571 indicates that 3160 Dutch were liv-
ing in the City of London (Kirk 1900: xv, 479). By the end of the sixteenth cen-
tury it is reckoned that there were some 7000 ‘aliens’ (i.e., persons not born in
England) in London, of whom about half were Dutch. Most of the others were
Walloon or French (Scouloudi 1985: 73–85).13 At the start of the seventeenth
century the London Dutch community suffered heavy losses from the plague
of 1603. Simeon Ruytinck, mentioned above, wrote that 370 Dutch households
were affected by the plague and that about 670 people from the Dutch com-
munity died (Grell 1996: 205). The plague was the subject of one of the most
significant pieces of Dutch poetry written in England, Den Staet van London in
hare groote Peste (‘The State of London during her great Plague’). This poem,
consisting of 900 lines of alternating masculine and feminine rhyming alexan-
drines, was written by Jacobus Colius in 1604–1605 and was first published in
Middelburg in 1606.
Ruytinck and Colius were just two of the well-educated members of the
London Dutch community. For as well as counting many artisans and their
families amongst its ranks, the community also included intellectuals who
made a significant contribution to the cultural history of the Dutch people
and language. Reference has already been made to Johannes Radermacher
(1538–1617), who wrote the first grammar in the Dutch language; Emanuel van
Meteren, who wrote poetry as well as prose; and Joris Hoefnagel. The London
Strangers did not, though, always demonstrate complete allegiance to the
community of their mother tongue. Both Radermacher and Van Meteren were
members for a while of the Italian congregation in London. This may have
been for commercial reasons, as it would have helped them to meet Italian
merchants, or because they found the discipline of the Dutch church too strict.
Other well-educated members of the London Dutch community were Lucas
d’Heere (1534–1584), who wrote a guide to the British Isles, Corte Beschryvinghe
van England, Scotland, ende Irland (‘Short Description of England, Scotland
and Ireland’) and a history, Corte beschryvinghe van d’Enghelandsche gheschie-
denissen vergadert uut de beste Chronijcschrijvers (‘Short description of English
history, collected from the best Chroniclers’) in Dutch (see section 6.4.4); and
the poet and artist, Cornelis Ketel (1548–1616).14
13 About half of the aliens who were members of foreign church communities in London
in 1593 were members of the Dutch church. So I estimate that about half of all aliens
were Dutch, although I have to admit that this figure is somewhat speculative (Scouloudi
1985: 75).
14 In Temple Newsam near Leeds, there is a Portrait of a Man (no. 167, code 22.64/48) by
Cornelis Ketel. It has the following Dutch in the top right hand corner of the painting:
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A Dutch community existed in London throughout the early modern period,
although its numbers inevitably dwindled in the first half of the seventeenth
century as some of the descendants of those who arrived in the sixteenth cen-
tury gradually integrated into the local population, and others moved on to the
United Provinces.
English diarists such as Robert Hooke provide useful anecdotal evidence for
the presence of Dutch people in London in the second half of the seventeenth
century. In his diary for the period 1672–1680 he mentions the artist, Abraham
Hondius, on several occasions and ‘a strange Dutchman’, and people whose
names at least suggest a Dutch heritage, including a Mr. van Aerst, Mr. van de
Put and Mr. van Milden. Other entries state ‘Dutch here. They hindred com-
pany’ and ‘with Mr. Fitch to Dutch house in Green Street’ (Hooke 1968: passim).
In 1672 Hooke began to learn Dutch and his engagement with the language is
considered in detail in Chapter 4.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century the number of Dutch in London
increased with the arrival of the Dutch king, William iii. A Dutch Chapel Royal
was established in 1689 in The Queen’s Chapel at St. James’ Palace, London
(Baldwin 1990: 403). It is reckoned that the congregation had some 1000 mem-
bers who were mainly low-ranking officials at William’s court (Wright 2007:
627). Some of the Dutch who arrived in England in William’s wake were skilled
artisans and labourers, who established themselves in Middlesex as well as
in areas of central London such as Soho. There were, unfortunately, periodic
xenophobic uprisings against the new arrivals (Onnekink 2007: 131).
At the start of the eighteenth century the London Dutch community was
replenished by a new generation of Dutch bankers. Another group of people
from the Low Countries who settled in London were Sephardic Jews. The Great
Synagogue in Amsterdam has been described as the mother congregation of
Bevis Marks, the oldest synagogue in Britain, which opened in London in 1701
(Wilson 1946: 18; 25).15
1.4.1.2 Surrey
Although it is now part of Greater London, the village of Mortlake in Surrey
was at this time some distance from the city. In 1619 the Royal Tapestry Works
were established at Mortlake and it initially employed about 50 Flemish
and Brabant weavers (Hefford 2002: 49). A Dutch church was established in
Mortlake for these weavers and their families in about 1621. This continued to
spiegelt u vry // De wyl ghy leeft (‘Let me be an example to you, whilst you live’). Further
research may tell us whether or not Ketel painted this portrait in England.
15 See also http://www.bevismarks.org.uk. Accessed 7 April 2014.
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function until 1664. One concrete reminder of the Dutch presence in Mortlake
is a memorial stone marking the site of ‘the Lower Dutch House, part of the
Mortlake Tapestry Works’. This can be found opposite the church of St. Mary
the Virgin in Mortlake.16
1.4.1.3 Kent
Three Dutch communities were established in Kent in the early modern
period; in Sandwich, Maidstone and Dover. This is to be expected given that
Kent is the closest English county to continental Europe. Let us consider each
of these communities in turn.
There were already some Dutch in Sandwich before 1561, but it was in this
year, when the Dutch community in the town sought and received official rec-
ognition, that their numbers began to increase. There are reports of some two
hundred houses in the town being allocated to the Dutch (Backhouse 1995: 17).
In the next few years their number increased rapidly, in particular after 1567,
when the Duke of Alba arrived in the Low Countries. By 1574 it is estimated
that there were some 2400 Dutch living in Sandwich, predominantly from the
Westkwartier region of Flanders. Given that the local English population num-
bered some 1600, this meant that the Dutch represented about 60% of the total
population of about 4000 in Sandwich at this time (Backhouse 1995: 27–8). As
we shall see, given their numbers, some of the Dutch were encouraged to move
on from Sandwich to other towns in England, where Stranger communities
had been established, such as Norwich and Colchester.
Although the size of the Dutch community in Sandwich gradually dwindled
during the seventeenth century there were still 500 members of the Dutch
church in the town in 1635 (H 87: iii, ii, 1690), and this continued to meet into
the eighteenth century.
One notable member of the Dutch community in Sandwich was the theolo-
gian, Wilhelmus Baudartius (1565–1640), who spent much of his youth in the
town. He would later play an important role in the translation of the States
Bible. We return to Baudartius in Chapter 4.
Two toponyms that owe something to the Dutch presence in Sandwich
are the Delf, the name of the stream, which runs under the town (lnd: delf =
‘ditch’), and ‘poulders’, the name given to fields outside the town.
In 1567 the town of Maidstone petitioned the Crown to allow sixty Stranger
families to be able to make a variety of clothes, as well as paving tiles, pots and
16 A photograph of the stone can be viewed at: http://notesfromcamelidcountry.net/
2014/01/17/wife-swapping-and-summoning-angels-the-supernatural-john-dee/. Accessed
7 April 2014. See also Hefford (2002: 54).
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other wares.17 In 1576 the number of male Strangers, primarily if not exclu-
sively Dutch, reached 200. There may have been a further influx of refugees
from the Low Countries during the 1580s, but by 1622 the Dutch community in
Maidstone numbered only just over twenty, a majority of whom were born in
England.18 In common with other Dutch and alien churches in England, in the
1630s the church at Maidstone came under attack from Archbishop Laud, who
feared that they were harbouring Puritans. The extent to which Laud’s actions
permanently damaged the foreign churches is a matter of dispute. The Dutch
church in Maidstone continued to meet until at least 1655, although clearly
the congregation was small. Other factors such as migration to London and
marriage to local people contributed to the demise of the Dutch community in
Maidstone (Clark and Murfin 1995: 43–4).
In 1571, due to the anxiety about the size of the influx and the fears about
the presence of Anabaptists and political extremists, a closer watch was kept
on the Stranger communities in Eastern England. Consequently, a census was
taken in Dover and it revealed that there were 64 men, 67 women and 137 chil-
dren, who were described as ‘Flemings of the Lawe Contrye of Flanders dwell-
inge here in Dover’ (Overend 1888–9: 111; State Papers Domestic, Elizabeth I).
This reflects a more general trend amongst the early settlers in the Dutch com-
munities in England; that many of them came from the Southern Netherlands
and therefore spoke southern varieties of Dutch, notably Vlaams and Brabants.
When these ‘Flemings of the Lawe Contrye of Flanders’ arrived in Dover is
unclear and there had obviously been long established links between the port
and Flanders due to their geographical proximity, but events such as the fall
of Calais in 1558 may have led to Dutch people crossing the English Channel
(Overend 1888–9: 92; 159–62). Furthermore, some of the privateers (known as
the watergeuzen) who raided the continent and whose attack on Den Briel was
an important landmark in the Dutch Revolt had a base close to Dover (Overend
1888–9: 98–9; Rooze-Stouthamer 1996: 413).
There is evidence for a Dutch church in Dover from at least 1573 until 1586
(H 87: iii, i, 221; 850). It seems that there were still Dutch living in Dover in
17 The term ‘family’ was sometimes understood as a working unit and might therefore
include servants and apprentices. The maximum number of members permitted in each
family (or household) did, though, vary. In the case of Great Yarmouth, up to ten persons
were allowed (Burn 1846: 216), whilst for Southampton the maximum number was twelve
(Spicer 1997: 32). I do not have details of the maximum number permitted in Stranger
families in Maidstone.
18 Although it is not explicitly stated, this figure from Clark and Murfin (1995: 44) probably
refers to heads of households.
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1597 for on 5 September that year the leaders of the Dutch church at Sandwich
wrote to London to say that some of those remaining in Dover had been
stricken by the plague, but it, i.e., the church at Sandwich, had not been able to
help because of its own financial difficulties (H 87: iii, i, 1008).
Dutchmen were involved in the development of Dover Harbour in the 1580s.
One Dutchman to mention in this regard is the engineer, Humphrey Bradley,
who was born in Bergen-op-Zoom. He also lived in London and was involved
in early projects to drain the Fens (Harris 1961: 25). Evidence of Bradley’s use of
Dutch in England is discussed in Chapter 4.
There continued to be a Dutch or Flemish presence in Dover into the sev-
enteenth century. In 1622 a Flemish ship, having plundered a Scottish ship, put
into Dover harbour. It was detained there as a pirate ship, and a Fleming liv-
ing in Dover, Mr. Huguessen, acted as an interpreter in negotiations with the
local authorities (Overend 1888–9: 144). Huguessen was one of a few Dutch and
Flemish listed in the 1622 Return of Strangers (Overend 1888–9: 165). Thereafter
their number clearly grew for on 17 September 1638 Nicholaes Poelenburg
wrote a letter in Latin to Caspar van Nieren in Sandwich, in which he stated
that there were more than a hundred Dutchmen residing in Dover with their
wives and children, a number that was increasing every day (centum et plures
Belgae (quorum numerus quotidie augetur) Doroborniae cum uxoribus et liberis)
(H 87: iii, ii, 1775). Poelenburg was seeking to re-establish a Reformed Dutch
church in Dover, but it was not only Dutch Protestants who lived in the town.
On February 16 1636, a list of Strangers living in Dover was drawn up, in which
the religion of the person named was indicated. Of the 56 people listed, prob-
ably heads of household, 10 were identified as Protestants, but 46 (82%) were
‘Papists’. Many of those listed as Papists had Dutch names such as Van Eele
and Rapaert (Overend 1888–9: 169–71). This may suggest that Poelenburg was
overstating his case, but we cannot be certain of this.
Finally, there was a large Walloon community in Canterbury. Although there
was no separate Dutch community, some of those Strangers living in the city
were Dutch. In her history of the Walloon community in Canterbury, Beate
Magen gives details of marriages between aliens from the registers for 1590 to
1644. 565 of these aliens came from Flanders. Whilst some came from French-
speaking towns such as Armentières, a few came from towns which were pre-
dominantly Dutch-speaking, such as Ieper. Eighteen of these aliens came from
the Northern provinces of Holland and Zeeland. Magen does not provide the
names of these aliens and it is of course possible that the people behind these
figures had originally come from France or other French-speaking territories
(Magen 1973: 43–5). Elsewhere, though, we do find individuals with Dutch
names in Canterbury, and the occasional example of the Dutch language in
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the city. For example, the doctor Israel van der Slaert, described as a medecyn
tot Cantelberg (‘doctor in Canterbury’), received a letter written in Dutch
dated 7 May 1632 from Caspar van Nieren at Sandwich. He was responding to
a request from Van der Slaert by sending him some roots, which were doubt-
less required for medicinal purposes (H 87: iii, ii, 1562).19 In 1670 the Minister
of the Walloon church in Canterbury was a certain Arnoldus Buschirij, who
was born in Holland (H 87: iii, ii, 2572). He was probably bilingual if not multi-
lingual. Other Dutch names do appear in the records such as Pierre van Acker
and Alard van der Woode (Magen 1973: 85, 231). This, though, tells us nothing
about their knowledge of the Dutch language. Finally, in 1575 a civic compact
between the Strangers and the local authorities in Canterbury was, somewhat
surprisingly, written in Dutch. This is discussed in Chapter 3.
1.4.1.4 Norfolk and Suffolk
In common with a number of the towns and cities discussed in this chapter,
Norwich’s links with the Low Countries go back to the Middle Ages. In the
fourteenth century, Philippa of Hainault, the wife of Edward iii, sent for John
Kempe, an expert weaver in Flanders. He came and dwelt in Norwich for a time
before moving to Westmoreland (Hillen 1978: ii, 726). In the fifteenth century
John Asger, a merchant of Brugge, gifted land for the founding of a begijnhof,
one of three in the city.20
During the late 1540s Flemish weavers settled in Norwich (Wilson 2004: 221).21
Towards the end of 1565 Queen Elizabeth issued letters patent, which allowed
the Norwich city authorities formally to invite 30 named incomers, 24 ‘Dutche
Masters’ and up to ten members of their households along with six Walloon
Masters and their households to settle in Norwich. This can be seen as the start
of the officially sanctioned settlement of Strangers from the Low Countries
into the city.22 They formed separate Dutch and Walloon communities, which
persisted in the city throughout the early modern period. The first arrivals
came principally from Sandwich and before that Flanders (Moens 1887–8: 4).
19 The evidence is slightly contradictory, although it seems that Van der Slaert lived in
Ashford, some ten or twelve miles from Canterbury, but was a doctor in Canterbury. See
also H 87: iii, ii, 1576.
20 For further details of links between the Low Countries and Norwich, and the rest of
Norfolk in the Middle Ages, see Alban (2014: 103–8). See also Rawcliffe and Wilson (2004).
21 Moens (1887–8: 17) notes that in 1535, a Stranger, Nicholas Isborn, was admitted to be a
freeman of Norwich, to practise as a goldsmith, although he does not give details of which
language(s) Isborn used.
22 nro ncr Case 17d.
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The number of Strangers in Norwich grew quickly. A return of Strangers
made by the Bishop of Norwich in 1568 showed that there were already 1132
members of the Dutch church in the city (Moens 1887–8: 207–16). Most of
these Strangers came from Flanders, although some came from Brabant and
Zeeland. A very small number came from the province of Holland, and one of
the first ministers of the church, Isbrandus Balkius, was one of only two house-
hold heads from Friesland (Frisia). There were also a few hundred immigrants
in the Dutch community in Norwich who were not at that point members of
the church, although most of these attended services (Rye 1887: 189; 216–19).23
In 1569 the Mayor and Aldermen of Norwich wrote to the Privy Council
informing it that there were 2866 Strangers in the city. Given that in 1568 the
membership of the Dutch church was three times greater than that of the
Walloon or French church, we can tentatively conclude that by 1569 there were
at least 2000 members of the Dutch community in Norwich. A return of 1582
indicates that there were 4679 Strangers in Norwich, a number that would have
been far higher but for the plague of 1578–1579 when it was reckoned that 2482
Strangers perished in part because of the cramped conditions in which many
of them lived (Moens 1887–8: 44–5; Pound 2004: 44). At this time the Strangers
represented about one in three of the population of Norwich (Hunt Yungblut
1996: 30).24 The greatest geographical concentration of the Strangers was in the
wards of Middle and West Wymer in the central area of the city (Morgan 2003:
58). If we apply the same ratio as that used for 1569 we can conclude that there
were some 3500 Dutch in the city in the early 1580s.
After this time the numbers in the Dutch community in Norwich gradu-
ally began to decline. Some returned to the Low Countries, above all to the
Northern Netherlands, where they could practise their Calvinist faith. Some
weavers departed for Edinburgh, where there was a need for the manufacture
of products from Scottish wool (see section 7.4.1.1). There were no new large-
scale waves of immigration into Norwich; others passed away or followed the
general pattern of assimilation into the local population. A return of Strangers
in Norwich made in 1622 lists some 291 Strangers split roughly equally between
those ‘Borne of Parents Strangers’ and those ‘Borne Beyond the Seas’ (Moens
1887–8: 189–93). This total includes Walloons, but as it excludes wives and
23 There is a discrepancy in the figure for those who were not church members at this point.
The total given in the 1568 return is 339, but if one adds up the members of the individual
households, the figure is about 250. The situation is made more difficult by the fact that
some entries are illegible.
24 It is possible that for a few years prior to the plague in 1578–1579 the number of Strangers
in Norwich reached some 7000 constituting about 43% of the city’s population.
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children it is difficult to extrapolate accurately from this figure how many mem-
bers of the Dutch community there were in Norwich at this time, although
their number may have been between one or two thousand. Whatever the true
figure, it would clearly have been smaller than it had been towards the end of
the sixteenth century.
A list drawn up in 1635 states that the number of members of the Dutch
church in Norwich was 363 (H 87: iii, ii, 1690).25 Another list drawn up in
1677 lists more than 170 members. This church community continued to meet
throughout the early modern period and indeed into the twentieth century,
although with decreasing frequency and numbers. Peter Trudgill, whose study
of the Norfolk dialect has led him to conclude that the presence of the Dutch
and Walloon Strangers in Norwich is likely to have led to the emergence of a
third-person singular zero in the dialect (‘he go’, rather than ‘he goes’), states
‘Norwich was a trilingual city for perhaps as much as two hundred years’.26
Although this is right in the sense that three languages were spoken in Norwich
for this period of time, by the second half of the seventeenth century, the size
of the Dutch community in the city had decreased significantly, and perhaps
more importantly, the range of domains in which Dutch was used, was less
than it had been in the second half of the sixteenth century.27
A distinctive toponymic feature of Norwich is that a number of open areas
are called ‘Plains’. These include Bank Plain; St. Andrew’s Plain, the area out-
side the Church of the Blackfriars, where the Dutch congregation used to meet;
and, more recently, Millenium Plain, outside the Millenium Library, named to
commemorate the millennial celebrations in 2000. It has been suggested that
this usage owes something to the presence of the Dutch in the city in the early
modern period, as the Dutch for such places is plein.
In 1570 Queen Elizabeth granted a licence allowing ‘thirty persons [from
Holland, Zealand, and other parts of the Low Countries] with their servants
and families (ten persons to each family) to inhabit [Great Yarmouth] and
carry on their trade of fishing’ (Burn 1846: 216; fig. 2).28 A return of aliens liv-
ing in the town in 1571 tells us that there were one hundred and four families
25 Another list from this time, to which Hessels also makes reference, gives the figure as 393.
26 Quoted in Burke (2004: 112–3). See also Joby (2014b) and Trudgill (2013). The present
author challenges Trudgill’s theory in Joby (2014e).
27 Latin was still spoken on official occasions, taught at Norwich Grammar School, used
extensively in legal and ecclesiatical documents, and read by educated citizens of
Norwich. However, in relation to everyday conversation it is reasonable to describe
Norwich as trilingual.
28 nro col 6/2.
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from the Low Countries, some of whom had been living in the town prior to
1570. Whereas most of the immigrants in Norwich had come from the Southern
Netherlands, most of these families came from the Northern provinces of
Zeeland and Holland (“Aliens at Great Yarmouth in 1571” 1896–98: 291–6).29
Indeed 63 families came from Zeeland, leading Rooze-Stouthamer (1996: 439)
to talk of a ‘Zeelandic colony’ in the town. Burn writes that the number of
aliens in the town increased so quickly and to such an extent that in 1574
the town authorities issued orders including one which stipulated that the
number of Dutch in the town should not increase beyond its present levels
(Burn 1846: 216–17).
In common with other English towns, the number of Dutch in Yarmouth
gradually dwindled during the seventeenth century. A document from the
Yarmouth Dutch church from before 1633 lists 50 members (H 87: iii, ii, 2914).
Ole Peter Grell reckons that the congregations of Norwich and Yarmouth
never exceeded more than half the towns’ Dutch or Anglo-Dutch inhabitants.
However, he does this on the basis that the situation in these towns was simi-
lar to that of London (Grell 1996: 54). This is a bold assumption and perhaps
overlooks the looser relationship between the Dutch congregation and com-
munity in London than that which existed in smaller towns such as Yarmouth.
Nevertheless, we can only speculate on the size of the community in the town
and if we add children, and possibly other household members such as ser-
vants and apprentices, to the number, then we are perhaps talking of several
hundred members of the Dutch community in Yarmouth in the first half of
the seventeenth century. Evidence for the Dutch presence in the town can
be found in the cemetery of the Anglican church, St. Nicholas. Amongst the
more piquant entries in records of the cemetery are ‘John Tills A Dutchman
dead drunk,’ and ‘a Flemish man that died in the street’. The Dutch church in
Yarmouth continued to meet until the 1680s. As I discuss in more detail below,
Dutch fishermen, particularly those associated with the herring fleet, visited
Yarmouth for many years during the seventeenth century.
Finally, like Norwich, Yarmouth has a number of open areas called ‘Plains’,
viz. Brewery Plain, Church Plain, Hall Plain, Priory Plain, Theatre Plain, and
White Horse Plain. Whether these gained their names as a result of the Dutch
presence in the town, or perhaps as a result of Yarmouth following the example
of the larger city, Norwich, is a question, which as yet remains unanswered.
29 Source document: Public Record Office, Kew (pro), State Papers Domestic, Elizabeth I
(sp 12), Vol. 78. In the calendar of the State Papers Domestic the census is recorded as
begin carried out on 12 May 1571.
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figure 2 Letters patent of Elizabeth I, 8 June 1570, granting leave to 30 Dutch and their
families to settle in Great Yarmouth, the total number not to exceed 300. English
(nro col 6/2)
Another Norfolk town, to which Dutch people migrated, was King’s Lynn. The
Lord Mayor, Thomas Bonneel, was originally from Ieper and promoted the
establishment of a colony in Lynn (Van Schelven 1908: 202). Queen Elizabeth
allowed up to 300 families (usque ad 300 familias) to settle in the town (Rye
1887: 228). In his history of the Dutch in England, Simeon Ruytinck wrote that
some of those who left Sandwich settled in Lynn (Ruytinck et al. 1873: 43). In
the return of 1568 we learn that 176 Strangers from the Low Countries had set-
tled in Lynn by this time, one hundred and eleven of whom were under the
age of sixteen. By 1571 this number had risen to about 220 Dutch men, women
and children occupying 44 households (Rye 1877: 196–8).30 In Norwich the vast
majority of the Dutch Strangers came from Flanders and Brabant. In Lynn,
30 The reason I say ‘about’ is that Rye gives the number of men as ‘lxvij’ i.e., 67, but the num-
ber of women children and servants as clvix, which seems strange, as the ‘v’ does not tend
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