AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN A DUTCH VILLAGE*

ARIE VAN DEURSEN

This is the tale of two men, Mieus and Meynert. Both lived on Schermereilandl some three hundred fifty years ago, one in the village of Graft, the other in neighboring De Rijp. Both were men of wealth who had risen to the highest political positions in their respective communities. And both were prominent members and sometime office- holders in their parish churches. By the standards of the day, therefore, Mieus and Meynert occupied a place in the rural elite of the seventeenth- century northern . But in seventeenth-century Holland's vil- lages and hamlets there were certainly many other men of equal rank and privilege. And yet there is something that does perhaps mark Mieus and Meynert as out of the ordinary: they left behind personal papers in which they tell of the conflicts they encountered in public life. In the case of Mieus, or more properly Mieus Comelisz., all the relevant source material is well referenced and conveniently gathered together in Graft's archival holdings.2 With Meynert, matters are more complicated. I first came across his name while researching the history of Graft. Item 143 in the inventory for Graft was described as: "The report of Meynert Dirksz., magistrate of Graft, concerning the events that took place during his time in office, 1632-1636."? This entry sounded promising, because at the time I was busy researching the history of Graft. Usually, the doings of magistrates and other higher officials appear only in official sources. It is not every day that some- one sets down on paper his own view of events, and so the inventory of Graft raised my expectations. The disappointment that followed my initial discovery that morning in has always remained with 108 me. I did not immediately realize what I was in for, because Meynert gives us the impression he had conceived a special hand to keep the secrets of his life hidden. But once I was accustomed to the script, it became apparent to me that Meynert had never been a magistrate in Graft. He was an inhabitant of nearby De Rijp, and his story had no part in the history of Graft. It did, however, have a connection to De Rijp, but no one had yet noticed this, because his papers had been miscatalogued. Since that discovery, the papers of Meynert Dirksz. have been placed in the appropriate section of the archive, but it still seems hard luck that all Meynert's effort was of no avail. He had spared no pains to pass his opinions on to later generations, but still they came to rest in another village's archival holdings. Meynert also wrote a final install- ment to his tale, and this too has been preserved. It rests in the National Archive of in , forming part of the collec- tion's miscellaneous acquisitions.' These documents too have been overlooked by most of the researchers who have steeped themselves in De Rijp's history. After all, why should you expect to find sources for De Rijp among the miscellaneous acquisitions of the provincial archive in Haarlem? Three years ago, Meynert finally reaped the rewards his work mer- ited. His Haarlem dossier was included in the bibliography of Dutch ego documents edited by R. Lindeman, Y. Scherf, and R. M. Dekker.5 This volume is a survey of all available autobiographies, journals, and personal papers that have been preserved for the early modern period (1500-1800). Very few individuals from the seventeenth century are represented in this collection, and even fewer rural folk. For this rea- son it bears repeating that Meynert's writings-and also those of Mieus, who accomplished something similar-might perhaps single him out from his peers. I say perhaps, again, because whether his actions made him unique is the question that we will ultimately try to answer. Let us first see what our two magistrates have to tell us. We begin with Mieus. In Graft there had for some time been an endowment whose income went to defray the costs of the local school. Such an arrangement was common in villages: instruction was paid for out of