The Low Countries. Jaargang 2

The Dutch Church in London
Past and Present

‘Only few church communities possess such a wealth of written documents bearing on their past history, or

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have been the centre to the same extent of so many varied activities.’ With these words, the Dutch church historian Lindeboom summed up the long, rich and continuing history of the Dutch Reformed Church at Austin Friars in the City of London.

The history of this Church goes back to 24 July 1550, when King Edward vi granted to the Dutch community in London the church which had been taken from the Augustinian Friars by his father Henry viii. In King Edward's Charter, the Mayor, Sheriffs, Aldermen and Bishop of London are commanded to permit the Dutch ‘freely and quietly to practice, enjoy, use and exercise their own rites and ceremonies, and their own ecclesiastical discipline, notwithstanding that they do not conform with the rites and ceremonies used in our Kingdom, without impeachment, disturbance or vexation’.

The Dutch community at that time was the largest foreign community in London. By 1570 it numbered 5,000 people, out of a total population of 100,000. About half of these had come to London as religious refugees, fleeing the persecutions in the Low Countries. Others had come for economic reasons, bringing valuable skills to the expanding City. There were brewers, glassblowers, potters and tile makers; master weavers who produced luxury goods such as woven silk and tapestries; craftsmen who made fine leatherwork, jewelry, stained glass, paintings and sculpture; drainage experts and instrument makers; and mapmakers, printers and engravers, who all made prominent contributions. If Shakespeare was no Fleming, it is at least a Flemish engraver, Martin Droeshout, to whom we owe his most authentic and best-known portrait.

A second Dutch wave came to London towards the end of the seventeenth century, when William and Mary brought with them Dutch noblemen and courtiers, bankers and merchants, artists, architects and garden designers from the Dutch Republic. In later centuries, London again and again offered a safe haven to refugees from the continent: at the time of the Batavian Revolution towards the end of the eighteenth century, and in the present century, after Hitler's invasion of the Low Countries.

In October 1940 the Church was destroyed during the London Blitz. But the Dutch services continued almost without interruption in the Church of St Mary near Berkeley Square in the West End, which functioned as a focus for the Dutch refugee community throughout the war. The present Dutch Church was built between 1950 and 1954, and contains paintings, memorial plaques, stained-glass windows and tapestries symbolising the key elements of its history: the Christian religion and the Reformation, the history of the Dutch nation, and the relationship with the House of Orange.

The Church also has a small but fine collection of old books which miraculously escaped destruction in October 1940: early Dutch Bibles, works by the Fathers of the Reformation, books by Dutch historians from the Golden Age, atlases and encyclopedic descriptions of newly discovered continents. Among the highlights

Stained-glass windows with the pictures of William and Mary (Dutch Church, London).

of the collection are a beautiful Polyglot Bible published by Plantin of Antwerp in 1569-1571, and a magnificent Atlas of all the cities in the Low Countries, both in the North and in the South, published by Blaeu in 1649.

In the Library there is a case full of books on the history of this, the Mother of all Reformed Dutch Churches: volumes of Church correspondence, minutes of Church meetings, and monographs on the Church's role in the early Reformation both in the Low Countries and in London. The Church archives form a rich source of information, and there is a longstanding and ongoing tradition of scholarly publications, the latest example of which is the publication, in December 1993, of the Acta of the Church Council of the Dutch community in London from 1569 to 1585.

Today, the Dutch Church offers a place of worship to all who want to celebrate the Christian faith in the Dutch language. Every Sunday there is a Dutch service. And there is a wide range of other activities: discussion groups on Biblical themes, classes preparing for confirmation and confession, visits to the old, the poor, the sick, and the approximately 100 Dutch prisoners in British jails. There is a choir, a women's group, a discussion group on modern Dutch literature, and a weekly Open House for young people in the Church's Social Hall. Various associations in the Dutch community hold regular meetings there, and funds are now being raised to pay for the restoration of the Church organ.

True to its origins as a Refugee Church, members of the Church are active in writing to human rights prisoners and prisoners of conscience abroad, and in collecting money to support refugees and refugee organizations in present-day London. Characteristically, when the Acta just mentioned were presented, it was at a symposium in The Hague about refugees and refugee policies in modern Europe.

Another new initiative, now in its fourth year, is the

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monthly Dutch City Lunch in the Social Hall, where speakers from the Netherlands - opinion leaders, business men and women, politicians, writers and church ministers - come and talk to an audience consisting of Dutch people who live or work in and around London. These City Lunches are quite successful in attracting a new audience to the Church. At the same time, they are an interesting continuation of the old Dutch tradition of the Minister and the Merchant, archetypes of the Dutch national character.

After 444 years in Austin Friars, the Dutch Church is alive and well - a corner of a foreign field that is forever Holland.

reinier salverda

address

Dutch Church

7 Austin Friars / London ec2n 2ej/ United Kingdom

tel. [phone]