historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

Chapter 5. Times of trouble. Taking a stand
Positioned at the end, the declaration of the States General forms the conclusion
of the Metamorphosis Anglorum. 206 One can say that Boxhorn, as a true
patriot, felt the urge to defend his country when it became the victim of new
foreign aggression and that for this reason he constructed the Metamorphosis
Anglorum, a work that blackens the reputation of England’s republican regime,
brands it as illegal, and portrays it as warlike, aggressive and untrusthworthy.
If so, it is but one side of the story. A letter that Boxhorn wrote on November
22, 1652, to Constantijn Huygens can give us a glimpse of how Boxhorn
must have felt in those troubled days. 207 What we hear is a whole shopping
list of complaints, of situations Boxhorn ‘would rather not hear’. 208 Throughout
Europe ‘a band of malignant fevers sat upon the lands’. Everywhere
the seas were unsafe for the Dutch because of ‘robbery and piracy’, while
‘in this Republic many were at the helm, who, however, do nothing against
the pirates and king killers, as if they not as yet were spread over the whole
world’. Boxhorn also saw ‘a Republic that is ungrateful towards the offspring
of those ancestors that had, with the greatest persistence and loyalty, brought
forth this freedom for us, this empire for us’. The Organist court was divided
‘into contrary feelings and thrown into confusion by the most important people’.
The churches and the halls of the universities were ‘full of foolish people
and people, who express themselves unsound, and yet these people want to
be seen as skilled in all divine and human affairs and as teachers and masters
of philosophy’. 209
Clearly, Boxhorn was not pleased with the overall situation in November
1652. What stands out is that he especially criticises the new regime that had
taken control of the Dutch Republic after the death of William II. They squandered
Dutch maritime interests by not acting against the threat the English
opprimerent, atque hoc pacto pridem jactatam sibi mari dominationem reapse in Nos, ac deinceps in
reliquas Nationes universas, exercerent, easdemque, si possent, vectigales sibi redderent …’
206 The Metamorphosis Anglorum ends with a long list of political and moral ‘gnomae’. Gnomae or
gnomes are pithy aphorisms, usually in verse, that embody some moral sentiment or precept.
207 That is six weeks after the battle of the Kentish Knock (October 8), where the Dutch, being outgunned
and suffering from internal divisions, were beaten by an English fleet under the command of
Robert Blake (1599-1657).
208 This letter is one of the few we have in which Boxhorn comments on contemporary political issues.
209 Boxhorn, Epistolae et poemata, pp. 312-13. ‘Audio passim per Europam incubuisse terris malignam
febrium cohortem; passim è medio tolli viros & amicos eximios, decora saeculi & ornamenta: malim non
audire. Audio raptu & latrociniis infesta ubique nostris maria & in hac repub. multos ad clavum sedere,
nec tamen in pyratas & Regicidas, haud aliter quam si toto adhuc orbe divisi essent, navigari: malim
non audire. Audio ingratam Rempubl. in posteros eorum majorum, qui summa constantia ac fide hanc
nobis libertatem, hoc nobis imperium peperere, malim non audire. Audio in contraria scissam studia
turbatamque principalis aulae vestrae pacem; malim non audire. Audio (nam de repub. plura mihi
jam non dicenda esse intelligo) & invitus quotidie audio & in templis, & in auditoriis Academiarum
homines ineptissimos, & disserentes ineptissime, qui tamen divinarum humanarumque rerum periti, &
doctores sapientiae ac magistri audiri volunt: malim non audire.’
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