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Holland's Influence on English Language and Literature (1916)

Holland's Influence on English Language and Literature

(1916)–Tiemen de Vries–rechtenstatus Auteursrecht onbekend

Vorige Volgende

Chapter XXXVI Holland's Influence During the Time of William III, King of England and Stadholder of Holland. Daniel de Foe, Matthew Prior, Burnet and Locke.

The time of the glorious English revolution in 1688, was different from that of the Anglo-Dutch wars, during Cromwell's Republic, and after the restoration of the Stuarts. Enmity and hatred between Holland and England gave place to a confederation between the two nations against one foe, Louis XIV of France, who threatened all Protestantism in England as well as in Holland, with extirpation. Protestantism in its last and great struggle for freedom and existence, found in Prince William III a leader, both in politics and on the battlefield, able enough to match the French intrigues as well as the French armies. Married to the noble Mary, daughter of James II, a princess, whose lovely character and great devotion to her husband, and to the cause of Protestantism enabled her to give him the best assistance that anybody could imagine, William was called to a great task, which he notwithstanding all difficulties, in Holland as well as in England, performed in the most splendid way.

The feelings in England towards Holland were now better than during the period of the Anglo-Dutch wars, yet, there remained many malcontents, some of whom were the zealous adherents of Catholicism,

and of the Stuarts, while others exaggerated English patriotism against the Dutch, whom they tried to discredit in the eyes of the English people by calling them ‘foreigners.’ As late as the year 1701 a pamphlet entitled ‘The Foreigners,’ was written by one Mr. Tutchin, in which, says De Foe, ‘the author fell personally upon the king himself, and then upon the Dutch nation. And after having reproached his Majesty with crimes, that his worst enemies could not think of without horror, he sums up all in the odious name of Foreigner’ ‘This,’ says De Foe, ‘filled me with a kind of rage against the book, and gave birth to a trifle, which I never could hope should have met with so general an acceptance as it did.’ This ‘trifle,’ was the famous satire entitled ‘The Trueborn Englishman,’ by Daniel De Foe, 1701, a poem of more than six hundred lines, in which the author of Robinson Crusoe displayed such splendid polemical ability that this poem has maintained itself till the present day as one of the classics of English literature. ‘Possibly,’ says the author in the Preface, ‘somebody may take me for a Dutchman, in which they are mistaken, but I am one that would be glad to see Englishmen behave themselves better to strangers, and to governors also, that one might not be reproached in foreign countries for belonging to a nation that wants manners. I assure you, gentlemen, strangers use us better abroad, and we can give no reason but our ill nature for the contrary here. Methinks an Englishman, who is so proud of being called a good fellow, should be civil. And it cannot be denied but we are, in many cases and particularly to strangers, the most churlish people alive. As to vices, who can dispute our intemperance, while an honest drunken fellow is a character in a man's praise! All our reformations

are banters, and will be so till our magistrates and gentry reform themselves, by way of example; then, and not till then, they may be expected to punish others without blushing.’ ‘As to our ingratitude’ (viz. towards William III in bringing about the Glorious Revolution) ‘I desire to be understood of that particular people who, pretending to be Protestants, have all along endeavored to reduce the liberties and religion of this nation into the hands of King James and his Popish powers, together with such who enjoy the peace and protection of the present government, and yet abuse and affront the king who procured it, and openly profess their uneasiness under him - these, by whatsoever names or titles they are dignified or distinguished, are the people aimed at; nor do I disown but that it is so much the temper of an Englishman to abuse his benefactor, that I could be glad to see it rectified.’

So he did not write as a Dutchman, but as himself a true Englishman, trying to rectify some wrong ideas among his own people.

As to the main argument, against which he wrote, viz.: that William III was a foreigner, and that therefore he was to be rejected, the author explains in his Explanatory Preface: ‘True-born, in the sense of being not mixed up with foreign blood, hardly exist in England and may be could be found only among the Welsh, the Irish or the Scots. The whole English nation is a mix-up of Romans, Danes, Saxons and Normans, Welsh and Scots. ‘From hence I only infer that an Englishman, of all men, ought not to despise foreigners, as such; and I think the inference is just, since what they are today, we were yesterday, and tomorrow they will be like us.’

‘But when I see the town full of lampoons and

invectives against Dutchmen, only because they are foreigners, and the king reproached and insulted by insolent pedants, and ballad-making poets, for employing foreigners, and for being a foreigner himself, I confess myself moved by it to remind our nation of their own origin, thereby to let them see what a banter is put upon ourselves by it; since, speaking of Englishmen ab origine, we are really all foreigners ourselves.’

‘I could go on to prove it is also impolitic in us to discourage foreigners; since it is easy to make it appear that the multitude of foreign nations who have taken sanctuary here, have been the greatest additions to the wealth and strength of the nation; the essential whereof is the number of its inhabitants - nor would this nation ever have arrived to the degree of wealth and glory it now boasts of, if the addition of foreign nations, both as to manufactures and arms, had not been helpful to it. This is so plain, that he who is ignorant of it, is too dull to be talked with.’

‘The Satire therefore I must allow to be just, till I am otherwise convinced; because nothing can be more ridiculous than to hear our people boast of that antiquity, which if it had been true, would have left us in so much worse condition than we are now; whereas we ought rather to boast among our neighbours that we are part of themselves, of the same origin as they, but bettered by our climate, and, like our language and manufactures, derived from them, and improved by us to a perfection greater than they can pretend to.’

‘This we might have valued ourselves upon without vanity; but to disown our descent from them, talking big of our ancient families, and long originals, and stand at a distance from foreigners, like the en-

thusiast in religion, with a “stand off. I am more holy than thou,” this is a thing so ridiculous in a nation derived from foreigners, as we are, that I could not but attack them as I have done.’

Thus far I quote from the author in his Explanatory Preface. This poem which is published in pamphlet form was enormously successful.

About four years after its first appearance, the author tells us that he himself had published nine editions, besides which it had been printed twelve times by others without his concurrence. Of the cheap editions no less than 80,000 were disposed of, in the streets of London.1

Finally to give some specimen of what the poem really is, since it is too long to reprint in full, I quote a few passages:

How Foreigners Came to England
 
The Romans first with Julius Caesar came
 
Including all the nations of that name
 
Gauls, Greek and Lombards and by computation
 
Auxiliaries or slaves of ev'ry nation.
 
With Hengist, Saxons; Danes with Sweno came,
 
In search of plunder, not in search of fame.
 
Scots, Picts and Irish, from the Hibernian shore;
 
And conq'ring William brought the Normans o'er.
 
All these their barb'rous offspring left behind,
 
The dregs of armies, they of all mankind;
 
Blended with Britons, who before were here,
 
Of whom the Welsh ha' blest the character.
 
From these amphibious, ill-born mob began
 
That vain, ill-natured thing, an Englishman.
The English Nobility
 
The great invading Norman let us know
 
What conquerors in aftertimes might do.
 
To every muskateer he brought to town
 
He gave the lands which never were his own;
 
When first the English crown he did obtain
 
He did not send his Dutchmen home again.1
 
No reassumptions in his reign were known,
 
Davenant might there ha' let his book alone.
 
No parliament his army could disband;
 
He raised no money, for he paid in land.
 
He gave his legions their eternal station
 
And made them all freeholders of the nation.
 
He canton'd out the country to his men,
 
And every soldier was a denizen
 
The rascals thus enriched he called them Lords,
 
To please their upstart pride with new-made words
 
And here begins the ancient pedigree
 
That so exalts our poor nobility.
 
'Tis that from some French trooper they derive,
 
Who with the Norman bastard did arrive;
 
The trophies of the families appear;
 
Some show the sword, the bow, and some the spear,
 
Which their great ancestor, forsooth, did wear.
 
These in the herald's register remain,
 
Their noble mean extraction to explain;
 
Yet who the hero was, no man can tell,
 
Whether a drummer or a colonel;
 
The silent record blushes to reveal
 
Their undescended dark original.
The Men That Despise the Dutch
 
These are the heroes that despise the Dutch
 
And rail at new-come foreigners so much;
 
Forgetting that themselves are all derived
 
From the most scoundrel race that ever lived;
 
A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drones,
 
Who ransack'd kingdoms and dispeopled towns.
 
The Pict and painted Briton, treach'rous Scot,
 
By hunger, theft and rapine, higher brought;
 
Norwegian pirates, bucaneering Danes,
 
Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains;
 
Who, joined with Norman French, compound the breed
 
From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed.
Ingratitude of England Towards the Dutch
 
If e'er this nation be distressed again
 
To whomsoever they cry, they'll cry in vain;
 
To heaven they cannot have the face to look
 
Or, if they should, it would but heaven provoke;
 
To hope for help from man, would be too much,
 
Mankind would always tell 'em of the Dutch:
 
How they came here our freedom to maintain,
 
Were paid, and cursed, and hurried home again;
 
How by their aid we first dissolved our fears,
 
And then our helpers damn'd for foreigners -
 
'Tis not our English temper to do better,
 
For Englishmen think ev'ry one their debtor.
Why King William Made Some Foreigners His Intimate Friends
 
We blame the king, that he relies too much
 
On strangers, Germans, Huguenots and Dutch,
 
And seldom does his great affairs of state
 
To English counsellors communicate.
 
The fact might very well be answered thus:
 
He had so often been betrayed by us,
 
He must have been a madman to rely
 
On English gentlemen's fidelity;
 
For, laying other arguments aside,
 
This thought might mortify our English pride,
 
That foreigners have faithfully obeyed him,
 
And none but Englishmen have ever betrayed him;
 
They have our ships and merchants bought and sold,
 
And bartered English blood for foreign gold;
 
First to the French they sold our Turkey fleet,
 
And injured Talmarsh next at Cameret;
 
The king himself is sheltered from their snares,
 
Not by his merits, but the crown he wears;
 
Experience tells us 'tis the English way
 
Their benefactors always to betray.
The Conclusion
 
Then let us boast of ancestors no more,
 
Or deeds of heroes done in days of yore,
 
In latent records of the ages past,
 
Behind the rear of time, in long oblivion placed;
 
For if our virtues must in lines descend
 
The merit with the families would end
 
And intermixtures would most fatal grow.
 
For vice would be hereditary too;
 
The tainted blood would of necessity
 
Involuntary wickedness convey.
 
Vice, like ill-nature, for an age or two,
 
May seem a generation to pursue;
 
But virtue seldom does regard the breed:
 
Fools do the wise, and wise the fools succeed.
 
What is 't to us what ancestors we had?
 
If good, what better? or what worse, if bad?
 
Examples are for imitation set,
 
Yet all men follow virtue with regret.
 
Could but our ancestors retrieve their fate,
 
And see their offspring thus degenerate;
 
How we contend for birth and names unknown,
 
And build on their past actions, not our own;
 
They'd cancel records, and their tombs deface,
 
And openly disown the vile degenerate race;
 
For fame of families is all a cheat,
 
It's personal virtue only makes us great.

Everybody who reads these fragments, which do not amount together to a third part of the poem, must recognize that there is a naive power, combined with a charming reality, in the language of Defoe, which made him dreadful for his enemies, and a not-to-be-neglected help for his friends. During several years Defoe used his great abilities as publicist in serving the party of the glorious revolution, which was also the party of all Protestants, both in England and in Holland. In the midst of the great spiritual struggle between all kinds of factions, conflicting opinions, con-

spiracies, secret and confessed hatred, noble tendencies and selfish aspirations, Defoe on his own personal responsibility, without power or protection back of him, fought like a lonely lion for the great cause, and consequently the better part of the English nation, the common citizens admired and loved him. Defoe takes suo jure not only an honorable place in English literature, but also a more honorable one in that important and most critical period of the world's history, and in the history of Protestantism, which is called the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Defoe was a born writer, and his influence was a considerable one with the masses of the English people, and of course, made him many enemies among the Roman Catholics and the secret adherents of the Stuarts. For his True Born Englishman he was amply rewarded. ‘How this poem was the occasion,’ he says in later time, ‘of my being known to his Majesty, how I was afterwards received by him, how employed abroad, and how, above my capacity of deserving, rewarded, is no part of the present case, and is only mentioned here as I take all occasions to do, for expressing the honour I ever preserved for the immortal and glorious memory of that greatest and best of all princes and whom it was my honour and advantage to call master as well as sovereign, whose goodness to me I never forgot and whose memory I never patiently heard abused and never can do so; and who, had he lived, would never have suffered me to be treated as I have been in this world.’1 After the death of King William, Defoe continued to defend liberty and toleration for many years, but missing his noble protector and persecuted in every way that was possible by his many and powerful

enemies, he died in 1731, a poor man. Satisfied with, and totally absorbed in, the sovereignty over his own field as a writer,1 as an author of polemics, and as a poet; inspired to the bottom of his soul by the highest principles of Protestantism and Democracy; a staunch defender of liberty and toleration and one-sidedly attached to this great task of his life, like most geniuses in history, he could not succeed in any other business, and with pity we see that after the death of King William, a protector to shield his domestic life, and to guarantee to this great man even a decent living was lacking. At the time when William and Mary came to the throne in 1688, Defoe, born in 1661, was still a youth, but was nevertheless attached already with his whole heart to the great cause, and in all his life he never alludes to King William but in language of deep gratitude and intense attachment. Scarcely had the king breathed his last, when his enemies vented their hatred in the most indecent manner, by malignant speeches, toasts and lampoons. This roused Defoe's indignation, and urged him again to dip his pen into bitter ink, and produce: The Mock-Mourners, by way of elegy on King William, 1702. In a few weeks it passed through five large editions. Defoe was a man with a character - a splendid, magnificent character. The transition from John Dryden to Daniel Defoe, is that from darkness to the light; from the hireling to the sovereignty of a man with sacred principles; from a spiritual prostitute to the martyr of a holy cause; from a devilish dividedness against himself, dissolving itself in sarcastic mockery with every cause, to the serene heavenly steadfastness of a man fighting for principles which were dear to him, to his people, to his sovereign and to all Protes-

tantism. Dryden followed the example of the man who betrayed his Master, after having eaten his bread, and after he saw that suffering for his Master's sake were coming; and he did this not once but repeatedly; he did it, as far as we know even with some remorse though with a brazen forehead confessing himself shamelessly, ‘O gracious God! how far have we profaned thy heavenly gift of poetry,’ which words remind us, without willing it, of those other words: ‘I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.’ Defoe followed in the footsteps of the Apostles and Prophets, in the footsteps of his Master and in those of all the heroes and martyrs of Christendom, sacrificing all his cares and abilities, to the higher ideals of life, suffering scorn and disdain, persecution and poverty, standing for the honor and name of his protector, not only so long as he enjoyed his favor, but during half a lifetime, after the death of his king had made all protection impossible. It is not till in our time that the researches of William Lee1 have brought to light how important a part Defoe played in bringing forth and maintaining the blessing results of the Glorious Revolution. A star of such brilliancy could not escape attracting again and again, the attention of the astronomer until its real value and greatness should be fixed forever.

Quite another character from Defoe, was Matthew Prior. More a poet than a hero, he served King William III during the whole time of his reign, was for several years attached to the English Embassy at the Hague, and during the deliberations followed by the treaty of peace at Ryswyck, 1697, he was secretary to the Embassy. At the Hague he wrote his witty English Ballad on the taking of Namur in 1695, a

parody of Boileau's Ode on the capture of Namur by the French three years before. In 1698 he was sent to Paris as secretary to the English Embassy. In one of his letters to Lord Halifax he tells how he saw the exiled English King James II at the court of the French King: ‘I faced old James and all his court the other day at St. Cloud. Vive Guillaume. You never saw such a strange figure as the old bully is, lean, worn, and rivelled, not unlike Neale the projector. The queen looks melancholy, but otherwise well enough: their equipages are all very ragged and contemptable.’1 But after the death of King William, when the influence of the Tories was in the ascendant, Prior joined their ranks and later became a close friend of Lord Bolingbroke. During his early days in the political business at the Hague he tells us, ‘he had enough to do in studying French and Dutch.’ Prior was not a man after the heart, either of Defoe or of Burnet. To please those ironsides of King William a stronger and more heroic character was required than that of Prior. His devotion to the cause of King William and Queen Mary was nevertheless an honest one, as the spirit of his poems abundantly show. Some of these poems are really beautiful, and full of tender feelings and noble thoughts. By his diplomatic career he had the best opportunity to learn the policy of William III, an opportunity, such as was given to very few. Prior was secretary to Lord Dursley, but that nobleman's gout gave the young man many opportunities for personal communication with his sovereign. His readiness and address caused William to give him the half-serious nickname of ‘Secretaire du Roy’ and his appointment of ‘Gentleman to the King's

Bedchamber.’1 And his verses bear witness of the intimate information, which he by his position had daily opportunity to acquire.

In his famous ‘Carmen Seculare for the year 1700’ he wrote about William III, Prince of Orange, for instance these lines:

 
Whither wouldst thou further look?
 
Read William's acts, and close the ample book;
 
Peruse the wonders of his dawning life:
 
How, like Alcides, he began;
 
With infant patience calm'd seditious strife,
 
And quell'd the snakes which round his cradle ran.
 
 
 
Describe his youth, attentive to alarms,
 
By dangers form'd, and perfected in arms;
 
When conq'ring, mild; when conquer'd, not disgrac'd;
 
By wrongs not lessen'd, nor by triumphs rais'd:
 
Superior to the blind events
 
Of little human accidents;
 
And constant to his first decree,
 
To curb the proud, to set the injur'd free;
 
To bow the haughty neck, and raise the suppliant knee.
 
 
 
His opening years to riper manhood bring;
 
And see the hero perfect in the king:
 
Imperious arms by manly reasons sway'd,
 
And power supreme by free consent obey'd;
 
With how much haste his mercy meets his foes:
 
And how unbounded his forgiveness flows;
 
With what desire he makes his subjects bless'd,
 
His favours granted ere his throne adress'd:
 
What trophies o'er our captiv'd hearts he rears,
 
By arts of peace more potent, than by wars:
 
How over himself as o'er the world, he reigns,
 
His morals strengthening what his law ordains.
 
 
 
Through all his thread of life already spun,
 
Becoming grace and proper action run:
 
The piece by Virtue's equal hand is wrought,
 
Mixt with no crime, and shaded with no fault;
 
No footsteps of the victor's rage
 
Left in the camp where William did engage:
 
No tincture of the monarch's pride
 
Upon the royal purple spied;
 
His fame, like gold, the more 'tis tried,
 
The more shall its intrinsic worth proclaim;
 
Shall pass the combat of the searching flame,
 
And triumph o'er the vanquish'd heat,
 
For ever coming out the same,
 
And losing nor its lustre nor its weight.

This is just as true to history, as it is beautifully told and reminds us of those other lines, intended to describe King William's character:

 
When certain to o'ercome, inclined to save,
 
Tardy to vengeance and with mercy brave

or those others:

 
Serene yet strong, majestic yet sedate,
 
Swift without violence, without terror great.

That Prior understood something of William's great task, the following lines may show:

 
Europe freed, and France repelled,
 
The hero from the height beheld;
 
He spoke the word, that war and rage should cease;
 
He bid the Maas and Rhine in safety flow;
 
And dictated a lasting peace
 
To the rejoicing world below;
 
To rescued states, and vindicated crowns,
 
His equal hand prescribed their ancient bounds;
 
Ordained whom every province should obey;
 
How far each monarch should extend his sway;
 
Taught them how clemency made power revered;
 
And that the prince beloved was truly feared.
 
Firm by his side unspotted Honour stood,
 
Pleased to confess him not so great as good;
 
His head with brighter beams fair Virtue decked
 
Than those which all his numerous crowns reflect;
 
Established freedom clapped her joyful wings;
 
Proclaimed the first of men, and best of kings.

In the phrase ‘unspotted Honour,’ the poet alludes to Queen Mary, who was William's wife, and here too, indeed, he does not tell anything more than the simple truth, although far less than the whole truth. Whatever thousand-fold crimes may have been committed by the Stuarts, and whatever horrible characters the House of Stuart may have produced, there is at least one glorious spot in its bloody and scandalous history, and that glorious spot is Queen Mary. Whoever has read the secret diary and the letters of Mary, in which she from day to day expressed her sorrows and her joy, her unmatched love for her William, her devotedness to him, her clear understanding of his great task, her piety and at the same time her womanly strength to assist her husband, - whoever has looked through those precious pages full of the most tender affections, must confess that neither Holland nor England ever saw a princess at the side of a sovereign, with a character superior, or even equal to that of Queen Mary. Prior did not know these sacred pages, because they did not become accessible to the public until more than 150 years later, but Prior knew the Prince and the Queen personally, and his personal impression gives a testimony not differing from the truth as discovered in her secret papers. In his Ode, presented to the King on his Majesty's arrival in Holland after the death of the Queen, 1695, the poet sings:

 
For her the wise and great shall mourn;
 
When late records her deeds repeat;
 
Ages to come, and men unborn
 
Shall bless her name and sigh her fate.
 
 
 
Fair Albion shall, with faithful trust,
 
Her holy Queen's sad reliques guard;
 
Till Heaven awakes the precious dust,
 
And gives the saint her full reward.

And in another place in the same Ode, he writes:

 
She was instructed to command,
 
Great king, by long obeying thee;
 
Her sceptre, guided by thy hand
 
Preserved the isles, and ruled the sea.

As William married Mary when she was only sixteen years of age, while he was twenty-six, and took her out of her English life to Holland, the development of Mary's beautiful character is certainly no little credit for the Prince. To this probably the poet alludes when he says:

 
From Mary's glory, Angels trace
 
The beauty of her partner's soul.

But not only do the names of King William and Queen Mary connect the name of Prior with Holland. During his years of abode in Holland, Prior studied the Dutch language, and made himself acquainted with Dutch literature, as, for instance, he shows in one poem, entitled:

A Passage in the Moriae Encomium of Erasmus Imitated
 
In awful pomp, and melancholy state
 
See settled Reason on the judgment seat;
 
Around her crowd Distrust and Doubt and Fear,
 
And thoughtful Foresight, and tormenting Care:
 
Far from the throne, the trembling Pleasures stand
 
Chained up, or exiled by her stern command
 
Wretched her subject, gloomy sits the queen;
 
Till happy Chance reverts the cruel scene:
 
And apish Folly with her wild resort
 
Of wit and jest desturbs the solemn court.
 
See the fantastic minstrelsy advance
 
To breathe the song, and animate the dance.
 
Blest the usurper! happy the surprise!
 
Her mimic postures catch our eager eyes;
 
Her jingling bells affect our captive ear;
 
And in the sights we see, and sounds we hear,
 
Against our judgment she our sense employs;
 
The laws of troubled Reason she destroys;
 
And in their place rejoices to indite
 
Wild schemes of mirth, and plans of loose delight.

Still another little poem of Prior reminds us of Dutch influence, it is as follows:

A Dutch Proverb
 
Fire, water, woman, are man's ruin;
 
Says wise professor Van der Bruin.
 
By flames a house I hired was lost
 
Last year, and I must pay the cost.
 
This spring the rains overflowed my ground;
 
And my best Flanders mare was drowned.
 
A slave I am to Clara's eyes;
 
The gipsy knows her power and flies.
 
Fire, water, woman, are my ruin;
 
And great thy wisdom Van der Bruin.

How well Prior understood the character of his great master, King William, and how well he represented him, he showed for instance at Paris, where he was for a time a secretary to the Earl of Portland, the English ambassador. ‘While he was in that kingdom, one of the officers of the French king's household, showing him the royal apartments and curiosities at Versailles, especially the paintings of Le Brun, wherein the victories of Louis XIV were glorified, asked him whether King William's actions were to be seen in his palace; “No sir” replied Mr. Prior; “the monuments of my master's actions are to be seen everywhere, but in his own house.”’1

Another famous English author, whose name is

closely connected with Holland, who lived several years in the Netherlands, learned there the practice of toleration, married a Dutch lady, and even became a naturalized Dutch citizen, was the well known chaplain of William and Mary at the Hague, the clergyman and historian, scholar and polemic, Gilbert Burnet. Born in Edinburgh in 1643, Burnet got his education in Scotland, and after having finished his studies for the ministry at Glasgow, went to England, stayed for six months in Oxford and Cambridge, and then took a voyage to Holland and France in 1674. ‘At Amsterdam by the help of a Jewish Rabbi, he perfected himself in the Hebrew language, and likewise became acquainted with the leading men of the different persuasions tolerated in that country; as Calvinists, Arminians, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Brownists, Papists and Unitarians, amongst each of which, he used frequently to declare, he met with men of such unfeigned piety and virtue, that he became fixed in a strong principle of universal charity, and an invincible abhorrence of all severities on account of religious dissensions.’1 The practice of toleration, as he saw it in Holland, and nowhere else at that time, was for Burnet a new light shining in the darkness of persecution and narrow-mindedness. It changed the whole system of his thoughts. As a man thoroughly converted to the principles of toleration, Burnet returned from Holland to England, the England of the Stuarts. After that time he could not help trying to bring over from Holland a tolerant spirit into the minds and the hearts of his own nation. He looked now from another angle upon the tyranny of every predominant party, and the persecution of every party in minority. Conflict and trouble was unavoidable, as a great part

of his compatriots did not see things as he had seen them in the Netherlands. Soon after he was appointed professor of divinity at the University of Glasgow the Royalists took offense at his opinions, and brought accusations against him, by which he saw himself forced to quit his position and to move, first to London, where also after some years it became intolerable for him, until, with the accession of King James II to the throne, he obtained leave to go out of the kingdom in 1685. Burnet then visited Paris, went through Italy, and stayed at Rome for a while, but his intention was to settle down in the Netherlands.

‘In 1688, he came to Utrecht, with an intention to settle in some of the Seven Provinces. There he received an invitation from the Prince and Princess of Orange, to whom their party in England had recommended him, to come to The Hague; which he accepted. He was soon made acquainted with the secret of their counsels and advised the fitting out of a fleet in Holland sufficient to support their designs and encourage their friends. This and the account of his travels in which he endeavored to blend popery and tyranny together and represent them as inseparable, with some papers, reflecting on the proceedings of England, that came out in single sheets and were dispersed in several parts of England, most of which Mr. Burnet owns himself the author of, alarmed King James, and were the occasion of his writing twice against him to the Princess of Orange; and insisting, by his ambassador, on his being forbid the court; which, after much importunity, was done, though he continued to be trusted and employed as before, the Dutch ministers consulting him daily. But that which gave, he tells us, the crisis to the king's anger, was

the news of Burnet's being married to a considerable fortune at The Hague.’

‘To put an end to his frequent conferences with the ministers, a prosecution for high treason was set on foot against him both in England and in Scotland; but Burnet receiving the news thereof before it came to the States, he avoided the storm, by petitioning for and obtaining without any difficulty, a bill of naturalization in order to accomplish his intended marriage with Mary Scot, a Dutch lady of considerable fortune, who, with the advantage of birth, had those of a fine person and understanding.’

‘After his marriage with this lady, being legally under the protection of Holland, he undertook, in a letter to the Earl of Middleton, to answer all the matters laid to his charge and added, that, being now naturalized in Holland, his allegiance was during his stay in these parts, transferred from his Majesty to the States-General; and in another letter, that if, upon non-appearance a sentence should be passed upon him, he might, to justify himself, be forced to give an account of the share he had in affairs, in which he might be led to mention what he was afraid would not please his Majesty.

‘These expressions gave such offense to the English court that, dropping the former prosecution, they proceeded against him as guilty of high treason, and a sentence of outlawry was passed upon him and thereupon the king first demanded him to be delivered up and afterwards insisted on his being banished the Seven Provinces; which the States refused, alleging, that he was become their subject; and if the king had anything to lay to Dr. Burnet's charge, justice should be done in their court.

‘This put an end to all farther applications to the

States; and Dr. Burnet, secured from any danger, went on in assisting and forwarding the important affair of the revolution.

‘He wrote also several pamphlets in support of the Prince of Orange's designs and assisted in drawing up his Declaration and when the Prince undertook the expedition to England, Dr. Burnet accompanied him as his chaplain.’

‘After his landing at Exeter he proposed and drew up the association and was of no small service on several occasions by a seasonable display of pulpit-eloquence, to animate the Prince's followers and gain over others to his interest.

‘Nor did his services pass unrewarded; for King William had not been many days on the throne before Dr. Burnet was advanced to the seat of Bishop of Salisbury, in the place of Seth Ward who died; Dr. Burnet being consecrated May 31, 1689. He distinguished himself in the House of Lords by declaring for moderate measures with regard to the clergy, who scrupled to take the oaths and for a toleration of the dissenters.’1

Besides many pamphlets, Burnet wrote two great works, the History of my own time and The History of the Reformation which are standard works among the literature of English history, and in all his pamphlets and works we feel the same spirit of freedom and toleration, for which he, at so early a time in his life, received an inspiration in the Netherlands.

Another man, belonging to the same cycle of brilliant stars that shine around the two grand figures of William and Mary, and who was inspired by the spirit of the glorious Republic of the Low Countries, was John Locke, who after having lived in Holland

for years, came back to England with the Revolution of 1688. His main task lay in the field of Philosophy, the results of his researches may in some respects be doubtful, but his love for liberty and toleration, as well as the brilliance of his genius are unquestionable, while his personal character, and even his piety, have aroused the admiration and love of all who have belonged to the intimate circle of his relatives and friends. John Locke was born at Wrington in Somersetshire in the year 1632; was very carefully educated under the severe leadership of his father; studied physics and philosophy at Oxford; was for many years under the protection of Lord Ashley, Earl of Shaftesbury, and being of a weak physical constitution, he went in 1675 to Montpellier in France to restore his health.

From Montpellier he went to Paris where he met Mr. Guenelon a celebrated physician from Amsterdam, ‘who held anatomical conferences there with great reputation,’ and when in 1682 his protector Shaftesbury, prosecuted by the Stuart government for high treason, escaped and fled to Holland, John Locke followed him thither.’1 ‘He had not been a year in Holland, when he was accused at the English court of having written certain tracts against the government; and though another person was afterwards discovered to be the author, yet being observed to join in company with several English malcontents at The Hague, this conduct was communicated to our resident there, to the Earl of Sunderland, then Secretary of State, who accompanied the king therewith, and his Majesty ordered the proper methods to be taken for expelling him from the College,’ Locke being a member of Christ Church College at Oxford. Since that time it

was dangerous for Locke to return to England. ‘In May, 1685, after accession of James II to the throne, the English envoy at The Hague demanded him to be delivered up by the States-General, upon suspicion of having been concerned in the Duke of Monmouth's invasion. This obliged him to lie concealed nearly for twelve months, till it became sufficiently known that he had no hand in that enterprise. During this privacy, which, by the assistance of some friends, was rendered very secure from any danger of a discovery, he composed his first letter upon Toleration, which being translated from the Latin original into English and Dutch was printed in London.’1

‘Towards the latter end of 1686 he appeared again in public, and, in the following year he formed a weekly assembly at Amsterdam, with Messieurs Limborch and LeClerc, who were joined by some others in the view of holding conferences upon subjects of learning. These two divines were among our author's first friends in Holland and he held a correspondence with both of them till the day of his death; not long after which there came out several letters that had passed between him and the former, whereby it appears, that Mr. Limborch was very serviceable to our author as well with respect to some improvements in his Essay on Human Understanding as to his Reasonableness of Christianity and on the other hand these favors were repaid by Mr. Locke in procuring him Archbishop Tillotson's assistance in his History of the Inquisition which was afterwards dedicated by that author of his grace. As to Mr. LeClerc, the dedication of his Ontologia to our author shows the profound esteem he had for him.2

In 1689 Locke returned to England in the fleet which conveyed the Princess of Orange to her consort.

King William recognized and appreciated Locke, as one of the powerful defenders of toleration, and ‘left it to his choice, whether he would be envoy at the court of the emperor, that of elector of Brandenburgh, or any other, where he thought the air most suitable to him’ as he was suffering from asthma and the king himself knew what that meant. ‘But he waived all these on account of the ill state of his health, which disposed him gladly to accept another offer that was made him by Sir Francis Masnam and his lady, of an apartment in their country-seat at Oates in Essex. This situation proved in all respects so agreeable to him, that he spent a great part of the remainder of his life at it. Locke died at that same hospitable home in 1704, while Mrs. Masman was reading to him out of the Psalms, which he asked her to do during the last hour of his life.’1

From the facts, mentioned above, we see that Locke spent no less than six years in Holland; that he lived there mostly in the circle of the Arminians - the Arminian professors, Limborgh and LeClerc being his intimate friends. In the Netherlands he found refuge, friendship and scholarly learning. There he wrote his treatise on Toleration; there he continued the researches laid down in his Essay on Human Understanding; there he wrote the substance of his later published Thoughts concerning Education; and he published his Two Treatises of Civil Government in defense of the Revolution of 1688 in England shortly after he left Holland. The influence which Holland with its republican institutions, with its freedom, with

its many scholars and famous universities, with its generally high standard of education, had on the development of so subtle and tender genius as Locke was, can hardly be over-estimated.

At the time when William of Orange came to England to deliver the English people from oppression and persecution, and to save all Protestantism from being annihilated, he had with him a splendid army; an army in which served the flower of the Huguenot nobility, of German and English refugees and Dutch soldiers trained in the struggle for liberty, an army of men, whose slaughtered relatives and devastated properties, called them to the long desired opportunity of facing their persecutors on equal terms, and who found their happy day in Ireland on the banks of the Boyne. But there was still another army with William and Mary; an army equipped with more decisive weapons than sword and musket; an army of unlimited spiritual strength, whose victory was to be won in the very heart and soul of the English nation, and that should defeat its enemies far beyond the borders of the British Isles; an army in whose ranks a Burnet served, whose thundering voice from the pulpit sounded through Great Britain from the Channel to the Highlands of Scotland; an army in which a John Locke fought with his two-edged sword of logic, human understanding, lifting up the standard of toleration, and smashing the arguments of pious tyranny in such a way that further discussion could be met with a smile; an army in which Daniel Defoe, with never-matched satire scourged the folly and corruption of the tyrants, pointing out to the nation that, while at the Stuart's court under cover of pretended ‘divine right’ the most frivolous debauchery of every kind was raging, at the same time the masses

of the most honest citizens all over the country were crying from the depth of their misery to Heaven, because they saw their dearest ones either murdered on the scaffold or sighing in the darkness of the dungeon; an army in the midst of which the lyric voice was heard of a man like Prior, who saw, and therefore praised in his songs, the virtues and piety, the modesty and the God-given strength of both William and Mary in leading the nation to safety and liberty; an army not of foreigners, but of the best English patriots, trained however in the school of freedom and toleration at the other side of the Channel. Here we observe the influence of Holland on all the most edifying parts of English literature.


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