The Diary of John Evelyn (Volume 1 of 2). Evelyn John
the day following, I went to view all the trenches, approaches, and mines, etc. of the besiegers; and, in particular, I took special notice of the wheel-bridge, which engine his Excellency had made to run over the moat when they stormed the castle; as it is since described (with all the other particulars of this siege) by the author of that incomparable work, "Hollandia Illustrata." The walls and ramparts of earth, which a mine had broken and crumbled, were of prodigious thickness.
Upon the 8th of August, I dined in the horse-quarters with Sir Robert Stone and his lady, Sir William Stradling, and divers Cavaliers; where there was very good cheer, but hot service for a young drinker, as then I was; so that, being pretty well satisfied with the confusion of armies and sieges (if such that of the United Provinces may be called, where their quarters and encampments are so admirably regular, and orders so exactly observed, as few cities, the best governed in time of peace, exceed it for all conveniences), I took my leave of the Leagure and Camerades; and, on the 12th of August, I embarked on the "Waal," in company with three grave divines, who entertained us a great part of our passage with a long dispute concerning the lawfulness of church-music. We now sailed by Teil, where we landed some of our freight; and about five o'clock we touched at a pretty town named Bommell, that had divers English in garrison. It stands upon Contribution-land, which subjects the environs to the Spanish incursions. We sailed also by an exceeding strong fort called Lovestein, famous for the escape of the learned Hugo Grotius, who, being in durance as a capital offender, as was the unhappy Barneveldt, by the stratagem of his lady, was conveyed in a trunk supposed to be filled with books only. We lay at Gorcum, a very strong and considerable frontier.
13th August, 1641. We arrived late at Rotterdam, where was their annual mart or fair, so furnished with pictures (especially landscapes and drolleries, as they call those clownish representations), that I was amazed. Some of these I bought and sent into England. The reason of this store of pictures, and their cheapness, proceeds from their want of land to employ their stock, so that it is an ordinary thing to find a common farmer lay out two or three thousand pounds in this commodity. Their houses are full of them, and they vend them at their fairs to very great gains. Here I first saw an elephant, who was extremely well disciplined and obedient. It was a beast of a monstrous size, yet as flexible and nimble in the joints, contrary to the vulgar tradition, as could be imagined from so prodigious a bulk and strange fabric; but I most of all admired the dexterity and strength of its proboscis, on which it was able to support two or three men, and by which it took and reached whatever was offered to it; its teeth were but short, being a female, and not old. I was also shown a pelican, or onocratulas of Pliny, with its large gullets, in which he kept his reserve of fish; the plumage was white, legs red, flat, and film-footed, likewise a cock with four legs, two rumps and vents: also a hen which had two large spurs growing out of her sides, penetrating the feathers of her wings.
17th August, 1641. I passed again through Delft, and visited the church in which was the monument of Prince William of Nassau, – the first of the Williams, and savior (as they call him) of their liberty, which cost him his life by a vile assassination. It is a piece of rare art, consisting of several figures, as big as the life, in copper. There is in the same place a magnificent tomb of his son and successor, Maurice. The senate-house hath a very stately portico, supported with choice columns of black marble, as I remember, of one entire stone. Within, there hangs a weighty vessel of wood, not unlike a butter-churn, which the adventurous woman that hath two husbands at one time is to wear on her shoulders, her head peeping out at the top only, and so led about the town, as a penance for her incontinence. From hence, we went the next day to Ryswick, a stately country-house of the Prince of Orange, for nothing more remarkable than the delicious walks planted with lime trees, and the modern paintings within.
HAGUE
19th August, 1641. We returned to the Hague, and went to visit the Hoff, or Prince's Court, with the adjoining gardens full of ornament, close walks, statues, marbles, grots, fountains, and artificial music. There is to this palace a stately hall, not much inferior to ours of Westminster, hung round with colors and other trophies taken from the Spaniards;12 and the sides below are furnished with shops. Next day (the 20th) I returned to Delft, thence to Rotterdam, the Hague, and Leyden, where immediately I mounted a wagon, which that night, late as it was, brought us to Haerlem.
AMSTERDAM
About seven in the morning after I came to Amsterdam, where being provided with a lodging, the first thing I went to see was a Synagogue of the Jews (being Saturday), whose ceremonies, ornaments, lamps, law, and schools, afforded matter for my contemplation. The women were secluded from the men, being seated in galleries above, shut with lattices, having their heads muffled with linen, after a fantastical and somewhat extraordinary fashion; the men, wearing a large calico mantle, yellow colored, over their hats, all the while waving their bodies, while at their devotions. From thence, I went to a place without the town, called Overkirk, where they have a spacious field assigned them to bury their dead, full of sepulchers with Hebraic inscriptions, some of them stately and costly. Looking through one of these monuments, where the stones were disjointed, I perceived divers books and papers lie about a corpse; for it seems, when any learned Rabbi dies, they bury some of his books with him. With the help of a stick, I raked out several, written in Hebrew characters, but much impaired. As we returned, we stepped in to see the Spin-house, a kind of bridewell, where incorrigible and lewd women are kept in discipline and labor, but all neat. We were shown an hospital for poor travelers and pilgrims, built by Queen Elizabeth of England; and another maintained by the city.
The State or Senate-house of this town, if the design be perfected, will be one of the most costly and magnificent pieces of architecture in Europe, especially for the materials and the carvings. In the Doole is painted, on a very large table, the bust of Marie de Medicis, supported by four royal diadems, the work of one Vanderdall, who hath set his name thereon, 1st September, 1638.
On Sunday, I heard an English sermon at the Presbyterian congregation, where they had chalked upon a slate the psalms that were to be sung, so that all the congregation might see them without the bidding of a clerk. I was told, that after such an age no minister was permitted to preach, but had his maintenance continued during life.
I purposely changed my lodgings, being desirous to converse with the sectaries that swarmed in this city, out of whose spawn came those almost innumerable broods in England afterward. It was at a Brownist's house, where we had an extraordinary good table. There was in pension with us my Lord Keeper, Finch, and one Sir J. Fotherbee. Here I also found an English Carmelite, who was going through Germany with an Irish gentleman. I now went to see the Weese-house, a foundation like our Charter-house, for the education of decayed persons, orphans, and poor children, where they are taught several occupations. The girls are so well brought up to housewifery, that men of good worth, who seek that chiefly in a woman, frequently take their wives from this hospital. Thence to the Rasp-house, where the lusty knaves are compelled to work; and the rasping of brasil and logwood for the dyers is very hard labor. To the Dool-house, for madmen and fools. But none did I so much admire, as an Hospital for their lame and decrepit soldiers and seamen, where the accommodations are very great, the building answerable; and, indeed, for the like public charities the provisions are admirable in this country, where, as no idle vagabonds are suffered (as in England they are), there is hardly a child of four or five years old, but they find some employment for it.
It was on a Sunday morning that I went to the Bourse, or Exchange, after their sermons were ended, to see the Dog-market, which lasts till two in the afternoon, in this place of convention of merchants from all parts of the world. The building is not comparable to that of London, built by that worthy citizen, Sir Thomas Gresham, yet in one respect exceeding it, that vessels of considerable burden ride at the very quay contiguous to it; and indeed it is by extraordinary industry that as well this city, as generally all the towns of Holland, are so accommodated with graffs, cuts, sluices, moles, and rivers, made by hand, that nothing is more frequent than to see a whole navy, belonging to this mercantile people, riding at anchor before their very doors: and yet their streets even, straight, and well paved, the houses so uniform and planted with lime trees, as nothing can be more beautiful.
The next day we were entertained at a kind of tavern, called the Briloft, appertaining to a rich Anabaptist, where, in the upper rooms of the
Westminster hall used to be so in Term time, and during the sitting of Parliament, as late as the beginning of the reign of George III.