Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory (11 page)

After Frederick’s death in 1632, the dowager Winter Queen remained in the United Provinces, dividing her time between her home in The Hague and the castle she and Frederick had built together at Rhenen in the province of Utrecht. In both places Elizabeth continued to hold court in her accustomed style, and during and after the Civil Wars, her court became a refuge for English exiles, including the exiled Charles II and close members of his entourage.

She had received a substantial pension from Charles I before the outbreak of civil war in England, which (somewhat surprisingly) the Commonwealth administration had continued to pay right up to the King’s execution – after which the horrified Elizabeth refused to accept financial support from her brother’s murderers. Thereafter she was dependent on the generosity of the States General and the Stadholder. Nevertheless, those who returned to England from her court reported admiringly the continuing sophistication of life in the milieu of the Winter Queen. Accounts survive of court masques and musical performances in the 1650s which in their dramatic and musical conception and execution match those to which she was accustomed in her childhood at the court of her father James I – the court which had formed the social aspirations of the Stadholder’s secretary, Sir Constantijn Huygens.
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There was no shortage of available funds at the Stadholder’s own court, across town from that of Elizabeth of Bohemia. The last project undertaken by Frederik Hendrik and Amalia as part of their carefully-contrived cultural enhancement programme was to design and build one last lavish princely retreat for themselves on the outskirts of The Hague. The Huis ten Bosch was begun in 1647, the year of Frederik Hendrik’s death. Designed by Pieter Post, it was adapted by Amalia van Solms, following the Stadholder’s demise, to become a grand memorial to her husband’s achievements. The entire undertaking was carefully supervised by Huygens and carried out over a period of five years with his customary commitment and dedication – a fabulous integration of architecture and painting, which was finally completed in 1652.

The Huis ten Bosch, uniquely among the seventeenth-century Orange royal palaces, has survived with the interior decoration of its imposing central room virtually intact, and can still be visited today. In close consultation with Huygens and van Campen, Amalia selected a set of themes and designs that showcased the work of an array of Dutch and Flemish painters into an iconographically organised, connected cycle of thirty wall paintings. Van Campen himself contributed several of the painted elements; others were executed by Gerard van Honthorst, Caesar van Everdingen, Jan Lievens, Pieter Soutman, Salomon de Bray, Christiaan van Couwenbergh, Pieter de Grebber, Jacob Jordaens, Gonzales Coques and Theodoor van Thulden. The decoration of the room effects the apotheosis of Frederik Hendrik, who is heroicised throughout – first as a warrior, then a bringer of peace, and finally as the founder of a Golden Age. The largest, most complex and most ‘Baroque’ of the series,
The Triumph of Frederik Hendrik
, was entrusted to the Antwerp Catholic artist Jacob Jordaens – remarkably, in the politically and doctrinally tolerant atmosphere of Flemish Antwerp, a Catholic artist could undertake a large-scale work celebrating the achievements of a Dutch Protestant Prince.
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This extraordinary compilation of celebratory memorial artworks by a wide range of Dutch and Flemish artists marks an important watershed in the fortunes of fine art and artists in the United Provinces in the course of the seventeenth century. Monumental in scale, the project was at once the apotheosis of Frederik Hendrik, and of the simply remarkable talent which could be assembled to mark his passing. The painters involved were drawn from all over the United Provinces, and from Antwerp (where freedom of expression allowed artists of all political and religious persuasions to congregate). But as Sir Constantijn Huygens, the originator and orchestrator of the entire piece, explained to Amalia van Solms in a letter, painters from Brussels had necessarily to be excluded, because, in spite of the artistic enlightenedness of the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm (himself a major collector of Italianate art), the climate of Catholic religious conformity would not allow artists to produce work celebrating the Protestant and Huguenot-sympathising house of Orange. Caspar de Crayer, whom otherwise Huygens would have wished to commission, was obliged to turn down his invitation:

Crayer, the great painter from Brussels, has declined by letter to make his contribution, using a number of pretexts. I think the true reason is that the subject is too Huguenot and Orangist, to be executed in Brussels. It was supposed to have been the expedition of Frederik Hendrik with Prince Maurits to the battle of Flanders. Someone else will have to take it in hand.
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Meanwhile, the two ‘English’ courts at The Hague received an unexpected injection of vitality, and gained significantly in international importance, as a result of the civil unrest and turbulent times in England. By the late 1640s there were plenty of refugees from the continuing civil wars semi-permanently installed at The Hague, who were prepared to accord Princess Mary Stuart all the respect and royal status she required. Throughout the 1650s, too, English Royalist visitors sought refuge in the United Provinces in increasing numbers, transforming it, in spite of its republican government, into one of the great courtly centres of Europe.

On several occasions already we have encountered the figure of the Dutch diplomat and poet Sir Constantijn Huygens (1596–1687), who died eighteen months before the 1688 invasion, in his ninety-first year, having been the foremost, loyal adviser to the House of Orange for almost fifty years. It is no exaggeration to suggest that over the course of his exceptionally long career, Sir Constantijn Huygens carefully shaped every aspect of the affairs of the house of Orange, from diplomacy and dynastic liaisons to interior décor. He was a man of erudition, taste, discernment and diplomatic skill, a poet, musician, art connoisseur and courtier. From his youth he was a passionate lover of England and all things English (not least its monarchy), and the intimate understanding he acquired of the attitudes and mores of the English élite made him an invaluable adviser to three generations of Stadholders.

Sir Constantijn was born at The Hague in 1596. His family on his father’s side came from Brabant, while his mother was one of the Hoefnagels – distinguished artists, displaced from the important mercantile community at Antwerp by political events at the end of the sixteenth century. Constantijn Huygens senior was thoroughly educated in languages, law and social forms and practices, as part of an intensive grooming to equip him to follow a career in public life. He fulfilled this role assiduously, remaining a loyal servant of the house of Orange throughout the long period when it was excluded from political power, between 1650 and 1672.

The extraordinarily pervasive influence of Sir Constantijn across Europe throughout the seventeenth century extended beyond himself, to include the prominent roles played in fields as diverse as politics, garden design and natural science by his children. In my opening chapter we encountered Sir Constantijn’s eldest son, Constantijn Huygens junior, secretary to William of Orange, the future King William III of England, who was a prominent Dutch witness to the events of November–December 1688. His place at the side of Prince William III had been assured over ten years earlier, when he succeeded his father (who had previously succeeded his) in taking up that sensitive and key role. Constantijn junior, though less talented than his father, discharged his duties as secretary to the Stadholder-King impeccably, and, via his prolific diary in French and Dutch, is one of the most important sources of information about William’s private thoughts and state of mind at all stages in the unfolding of the story of the Glorious Revolution.

Probably the most renowned (at least in the eyes of posterity) of Sir Constantijn’s sons who lived to maturity was the distinguished scientist Christiaan Huygens, who spent much of his working life in Paris, in the service of Louis XIV, and of whom we shall hear more.
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Sir Constantijn’s only daughter Susanna married well, and with her husband Philips Doublet became an influential figure in seventeenth-century Dutch garden design. Son Lodewijk also became a government administrator, though he appears to have been somewhat less reliable in office than his elder brother.

Sir Constantijn Huygens is a pivotal figure in the history of seventeenth-century Anglo–Dutch relations. For three-quarters of a century he was the
éminence grise
behind vital decision-making in political and diplomatic circles, polite society, art connoisseurship and music appreciation on both sides of the Narrow Sea. What history treats as an unexpected agreement in aesthetic matters in the fields of art and music between two supposedly separate nations turns out to be the result of his assiduous taste-formation and opinion-forming within the two cultural communities. Since he plays such a vital part in the story I am telling here, it is worthwhile to look more closely at Sir Constantijn Huygens’s formative early career.
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On 10 June 1618 (new style), in the early hours of the morning, the twenty-two-year-old Constantijn Huygens senior, son of Christiaan Huygens senior, the trusted First Secretary to the Dutch Raad (its governing council), arrived in England for the first time in the entourage of the English Resident Ambassador to The Hague, Sir Dudley Carleton.
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The visitors disembarked, then waited at Gravesend until seven, when coaches were found to take them to King James I’s palace at Greenwich. Arriving there shortly before noon, they discovered that the King had left at short notice, on a whim, to go hunting – they had missed his departure by just a few hours. The ambassador (whose first duty upon arrival was to present his credentials to his royal master) set off again in pursuit with his entourage.

As fast as the ambassadorial party travelled, the King was ahead of them, restlessly looking for entertainment at each of his royal palaces in turn. Thus it was that the party spent their first week in England on the road, lodging each night at a different stately home and engaging in some enjoyable high-class tourism, before they eventually caught up with the King and his court at one of James’s favourite royal residences, Theobalds (’Tibbalts’) in Hertfordshire.
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Here, on Saturday, 16 June, Carleton formally kissed the King’s hand, delivered his credentials and received his royal instructions. Afterwards the party retraced its steps, arriving finally at the ambassador’s London residence.
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For the rest of his extraordinarily long and active life, Constantijn Huygens would recall fondly, with pride and nostalgic delight, this first encounter with England, its topography and culture, and the elaborate, baroque lifestyle of the English court. The magnificence of the parks and houses he visited, the displays of wealth in the form of works of art, statuary and collections of exotica, the ostentation of the dress and entertainment, were in striking contrast to the way of life he had grown up with in the Low Countries – both because of the far greater formality and flamboyance of English aristocratic life in the early decades of the seventeenth century, and because the fifty years since the beginning of the Dutch Revolt had scarred the landscape, and damaged homes and countryside across the flat, featureless landscape of the United Provinces.

A few days after his first fleeting encounter with King James, Constantijn left Carleton’s household and took up more settled residence in London. As had been carefully arranged by his father before he left home, he went to lodge with the elderly Noel de Caron, Lord of Schoonewalle, Dutch Resident Ambassador in London and long-term servant of the house of Orange. Caron occupied an elegant mansion, Caron House, on the south bank of the Thames, built for him by the English Crown.
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From this palatial residence the young Huygens proceeded to experience London life to the full, taking full advantage of Caron’s excellent connections to further frequent the court circle, though in his letters home he complained to his parents about the distance from Caron House to central London, and the exorbitant cost of transport.

The Huygens name (pronounced ‘Huggins’ by the English) opened doors: his father was considered to wield considerable political power. Constantijn did some enthusiastic sightseeing, commenting expertly on elegant locations and new buildings in and around London, visited friends of his father and of his host across the city, dined and partied. He also made great strides with his English – the main purpose of the trip as far as his father was concerned, aimed as it was at grooming him for an international diplomatic career. Huygens’s absolute fluency in English, together with his fond memories of the glamour and glitter of his first encounter with the country, contributed to his lifelong commitment – even in times of war – to fostering strong bonds of friendship between England and the United Provinces.

In Huygens’s later reminiscing – some of it in elegant, celebratory Latin verses – one of the high points of his stay at Caron House was a private visit there by the King himself, accompanied only by his son Charles, Prince of Wales (the future Charles I), and his closest favourites, the Earls of Arundel and Montgomery, and the Marquesses of Buckingham and Hamilton. The King was apparently anxious to spend some time in Caron’s garden, picking and tasting recently ripened Dutch cherries (which James harvested himself by means of ‘a ladder, specially carpeted for the purpose’). Afterwards the visitors stayed on for a light meal and a tour of Caron’s picture gallery, ‘to give serious attention to the paintings’ (’
à spéculer aux peintures
’).
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