Chapter Two
A Dutch Education
The Scottish Infrastructure
The Scottish community was fundamental to the students’ time in the United Provinces and the Scottish-Dutch exchange that resulted from it. Most Scottish students relied on an almost exclusively Scottish net- work of sailors, merchants and bankers for their daily business. In addition, they also had access to a host of wider Scottish, English, Dutch, and, increasingly after 1700, French contacts, which shaped the Scottish-Dutch academic connection. Fellow students and tutors, but also landlords and booksellers, made substantial contributions to the intellectual development of the Scottish students in the United Provinces and were an integral part of the Republic of Letters’ schol- arly systems of exchange. Without the infrastructure for travel set up and maintained by the Scottish community in the United Provinces, and its formal and informal networks, Scotland would not have been able to benefit from its Dutch relationship in the way that it did. The port of Leith, just outside Edinburgh, was the main point of departure for Scots traveling to the United Provinces. It had a long- standing connection with its Dutch counterparts; during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries ships sailed from Leith to the Dutch provinces on an almost daily basis. It has been calculated, for example, that between 1680 and 1686, over 1,500 ships sailed from Scotland to the Dutch ports, especially to Rotterdam in Holland.1 Many of the smaller towns along the east coast of Fife, East-Lothian and the Borders, as well as places such as Glasgow, Ayr and Dumfries on the west coast, also regularly sent ships across the North Sea.2 This active trade ensured a relatively easy crossing to the United Provinces, as travelers and cargo shared ships. In 1694, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik (1676–1755) sailed to the United Provinces in a fleet consisting of
1 Dunthorne, ‘Scots in the Wars of the Low Countries, 1572–1648’, 109. Cf. Peter G. B. McNeill (ed.), Atlas of Scottish History to 1707 (Edinburgh 1996), 280–281. 2 t. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People 1560–1830 (London, 1985), 155. 50 chapter two ninety merchant ships.3 It took, in fact, less time to reach a Dutch port from Leith by ship than it took a carriage from Edinburgh to reach London. Safety was always cause for concern despite the experience of the Scottish skippers. The weather quite often wreaked havoc on the Scottish ships and on their passengers’ stomachs. In 1688, Sir William Maxwell of Cardoness (1663–1752) took over a week to reach Veere in Zeeland, having to return once to Leith due to the bad weather. Upon his safe arrival, he praised God for having remained unharmed, even if Veere had not been the ship’s intended destination.4 Six years later, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik also had ‘very rugh weather, but what was worst, there being a War with France, 4 French Privateers came upon our fleet’.5 He also landed in Veere, although his ship had been bound for Rotterdam. Perhaps inspired by an acute awareness of the dangers of sea travel, it was not unusual for young Scots to draw up a personal Covenant with God, as did Sir John Clerk three weeks before he left for Holland.6 James Erskine, Lord Grange (1679–1754), the second son of the Earl of Mar, recalled the voyage to the United Provinces in 1699 in his diary: ‘[. . .] we were overtaken with a great storm, and had near perished in the Dutch coast. [. . .] Then I turned my thoughts to God, and promised ammendment, if I got safe ashoar.’7 In good weather the voyage from Leith to one of the Dutch ports took only five days; in bad weather it could take up to two weeks.8 Most Scottish students arrived in one of the ports in Holland and Zeeland, others sailed for the Southern Netherlands, especially soldiers, in order to land closer to their regiments stationed along the southern border.9 By the 1680s, Rotterdam had become the preferred port of entry. It was closer than Veere to the university towns of Leiden and
3 John M. Gray (ed.), Memoirs of the Life of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, Baronet, Baron of the Exchequer, Extracted from his Own Journals, 1676–1755 (Edinburgh, 1892), 12. 4 h. M. B. Reid (ed.), One of King William’s Men: Being Leaves from the Diary of Col. William Maxwell of Cardoness: 1685 to 1697 (Edinburgh, 1898), 123. 5 Gray, Memoirs of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, 12–13. 6 naS, Penicuik Papers, GD18/5194/11. 7 erskine, Extracts from the Diary of a Senator, ed. 81–82. 8 Van Strien, British Travellers in Holland, 68. 9 The Scots Brigade was traditionally stationed in the provinces of Brabant and Guelders, close to the border with the Southern Netherlands. During the War of Spanish Succession a combined British army was stationed near Brussels. See also Joseph Taylor, The Relation of a Voyage to the Army. In Several Letters froma Gentleman to his Friend in the Year 1707, ed. C. D. van Strien (Leiden, 1997).