Poets, Patrons, and Professors Sir Philip Sidney, Daniel Rogers, and the Leiden Humanists J.A. van Dorsten bron J.A. van Dorsten, Poets, Patrons, and Professors. Sir Philip Sidney, Daniel Rogers, and the Leiden Humanists. University Press / Oxford University Press, Leiden / Londen 1962 Zie voor verantwoording: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/dors002poet01_01/colofon.htm © 2006 dbnl / erven J.A. van Dorsten V Prefatory note ALTHOUGH this study was first designed as an attempt to trace a pattern in the general picture presented by the literary connexions between Elizabethan England and the Low Countries in the sixteenth century, the material itself soon suggested a focal point in the relations between Britain and the University of Leiden in the early years after its foundation. This latter relationship has been analyzed in greater detail, both, it is hoped, as a contribution to our knowledge of sixteenth-century literary traffic and for the special cultural-historical information of interest to students of the literatures concerned. In order to do justice to these themes it seemed proper to quote generous selections from some of the documents that have come to light and to supply ample reference material. As a rule no source is given for facts that can be found in the established biographical reference books. In the course of collecting my data I have invariably met with much interest and generosity. I am deeply grateful to the Right Hon. the Marquess of Hertford for allowing repeated inspections of a manuscript of poems by Daniel Rogers in his library. Curators, Keepers, Librarians, and staff-members of the British Museum Library, the Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, the Public Record Office, the Leiden Town Archives, Bibliotheca Thysiana, Print Room, and Archives of the Senate and Curators, the Royal Library at The Hague, and the University Libraries of Leiden, Utrecht, and Amsterdam I wish to thank for many courtesies; and for permission to reproduce materials in their possession the directors of the Bodleian Library, the Royal Library, the Boymans Museum at Rotterdam, and the Leiden Town Archives, Lakenhal Museum, Academical Historical Museum, University Library, and Print Room. I am much obliged to the Netherlands Organization for J.A. van Dorsten, Poets, Patrons, and Professors VI the Advancement of Pure Research (Z.W.O.) and the ‘Leidsch Universiteits Fonds’ for their aid on some occasions when visits to English libraries and archives were requisite, and the former more particularly for subsidizing the publication of the results. I have also every reason to be grateful to the publishers and the printer of this book for their unsparing co-operation. While acknowledging a general debt to all those who have given me the benefit of their advice, I should like to express my special gratitude to Professor A.G.H. Bachrach for so much encouragement and invaluable criticism, and for inviting me to appear in the Publications of the Institute; to Professor J.H. Waszink for very kindly correcting many of the translations; to Dr. R.B.C. Huygens for reading some of the Rogers poems with me; and to Mr. R.C. Strong of the National Portrait Gallery for his stimulating comment. I should like to record my obligations to Mr. C.D.L. Engelbach for editorial advice. Finally, I owe a debt to my wife for much more than compiling the index. J.A.v.D. J.A. van Dorsten, Poets, Patrons, and Professors 1 Introduction An ideal academia ON 8 February 1575, some eight years after the beginning of the Dutch struggle against the tyranny of Spain and at a time so unsettled that few would have risked predicting an ultimate victory, the solemn opening ceremony of the first University of the northern Netherlands took place, little more than a month after the Prince of Orange had urged its foundation1. ‘So great is the confidence of the Gueux’, the politician Hubert Languet wrote to the Duke of Saxony, ‘that now they consider the foundation of a public school or Academy in the Dutch fortress of Leiden which the Spanish have besieged only a few months ago’.2 Perhaps Leiden's loyalty in recent trials had not itself been the immediate occasion for the establishment of this Protestant University, but at least there was an obvious connexion between the University's location and the momentous year of 1574. In that year the city guard under the poet-scholar Janus Dousa (Jan van der Does), and the citizens of Leiden themselves, had successfully endured the hardships of a Spanish siege - assisted only by a handful of others, who happened to be Englishmen3. 1 See Bronnen tot de geschiedenis der Leidsche Universiteit, ed. P.C. Molhuysen, The Hague, I, 1913, pp. 1*-2*. 2 H. Languet to August Duke of Saxony, Prague, 1 March 1575 (Huberti Langueti epistolae secretae, Halle, 1699, I, [ii], p. 75). See Appendix II, no. 1. 3 Avis, 23 August 1574: ‘Within the towne are noe soldiers, but the burgars (saving George Gascoyns lieutenent, named Cromvell, with 30 of his compagnye, whiche, beinge owt to discover, recoverid into the towne, as the reast of theire compagny in Valkenburgh weare invironed by the ennymye)’ (Relations politiques des Pays-Bas et de l'Angleterre, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, Brussels, VII, 1888, no. MMDCCCXV). The poet-soldier Gascoigne himself had had the gates barred against him and was imprisoned by the Spanish (see G. Gascoigne, The fruites of Warre, in Complete Poems, ed. W.C. Hazlitt, London, 1869, I, pp. 147-196). A few documents relating to payments made to these English soldiers are preserved in the Leiden town archives (Secr. arch., nos. 1334, 1335, 1364); among them is a minute description of various goods left behind by ‘Ritsard lasenbe’, servant of ‘Coronnel Chester’. J.A. van Dorsten, Poets, Patrons, and Professors 2 Twelve years later these same citizens were to dramatize their gruesome experience in the ‘seven several shewes’ with which they entertained their English Governor General, the Earl of Leicester, and his retinue on the occasion of his state entry into the University town1. For, then and at all times, the University has never wearied of linking its origin with those perilous months and of considering itself as having been established to commemorate the event and to further the cause of Libertas. During the first few years after the great siege of 1574 the country as a whole was impoverished and badly in need of military and economic support from without2. With England, it is true, a close political relationship was to develop in a not so distant future. But at this stage the Dutch had little immediate hope of succour from abroad, not even from Queen Elizabeth, though Leicester, long before his actual commission - in a letter to William Davison, the Queen's ambassador in the Low Countries - shows that he is conscious of their distress in the following lines written from Norwich, ‘somwhat nere you’, where he could almost hear the oppressed people from the Netherlands ‘crye out uppon such neghboures’. ‘Well,’ he added, ‘God help them and us too, fearing our neede wylbe more than thers.’3 The ‘confidence of the Gueux’ seemed great indeed, but the foundation of an Academia must have been more than either a symbol of optimism or an irresponsible gesture of self-confidence. To at least one practical and urgent problem - the 1 The Third volume of Chronicles... First compiled by Raphaell Holinshed... continued to the yeare 1586, London, [1587], p. 1419. It is worth, observing that the considerable detail with which the Earl's visit is described exceeds any Dutch account (see also p. 77, note 2). 2 Cf. N. Bruyninck to W. Davison, Antwerp, 14 August 1578 (London, Public Record Office, SP 83/8, no. 28) on the critical condition of the Leiden and Haarlem clothtrade. 3 R. Dudley to W. Davison, [Norwich], 18 August 1578 (P.R.O., SP 83/8, no. 36). J.A. van Dorsten, Poets, Patrons, and Professors 3 training of Protestant preachers - it hoped to supply the answer. Thus ‘Sacra Scriptura’, seated in her chariot, led the procession of magistrates and scholars who went to hear the opening address in February 1575. She was, however, not alone, but followed by ‘Justitia’, ‘Medicina’, and ‘Pallas’; and in Neptune's barge, rowed down the Rapenburg canal, ‘Apollo’ plucked the strings of his lute to accompany the nine Muses' singing and playing. It may be worth our while to enquire into the background of the occasion a little further. More than once it has been shown that the guiding principle of the founders of the University of Leiden was simply to provide the Low Countries with a Protestant school of Theology.1 That this motive remained unexpressed until Town Secretary Jan van Hout's speech in 15922 - and then only to an audience of officials assembled for the opening ceremony of a ‘College of Theology’ - is no ground for arguing that it was not the main one, because at the time, certainly before 1581, the year of the ‘Placard of Dismissal’, there was ample reason to disguise so audacious an endeavour. But there is evidence in the foundation-day pageant which makes it desirable to qualify this claim. In accordance with the tradition of the period, this pageant was a tableau whereby ‘secret’ intentions could be displayed without the stricter commitment of the written word. As a testimony, both chronologically and formally, it should surely be given priority over Van Hout's later assertion. The pageant itself was simple, crude almost compared with what Italy, France, and even Flanders would have made of it, but at least it expressed in a ‘modern’ idiom what the University proposed to introduce.