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SOURCE MATERIAL FOR UTRECHT POWER BROKER
[MANUSCRIPT - UTRECHT & OUDMUNSTER CHURCH]. STRICK VAN LINSCHOTEN, Johan. [Fair Copies of and Extracts from Official Documents, from 1605 to 1635, concerning Johan Strick van Linschoten (1583-1648), initially Canon and finally Secretary of the Oudmunster chapter church in Utrecht, and influential member of the States Assembly of the province of Utrecht].
[Utrecht], ca. 1621-ca. 1635. Folio (31 x 20 cm). Manuscript in brown ink on paper containing fair copies of and extracts from about 200 official documents from the Oudminster chapter church, the Utrecht provincial assembly, Prince Maurits of Orange and Nassau, notarial documents, etc. Contemporary sheepskin parchment.
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A remarkable and extensive contemporary manuscript, in Dutch and Latin, comprising more than five hundred written pages, from the family of one of the most influential figures in Utrecht in the first half of the seventeenth century. It not only brings together a wealth of official documents about Strick and his circle of acquaintances, but no doubt provides transcriptions of many documents that would otherwise have been lost, making it an essential source for the history of the city, province and church of Utrecht in the turbulent period 1605 to 1635. Son of the Secretary of the States Assembly of the province of Utrecht, Johan Strick (known as "Van Linschoten" after he acquired an estate near Linschoten in 1633 and was granted arms by King Louis XIII of France) was appointed Canon of the Oudmunster chapter church in Utrecht in 1605 and steadily attained higher posts there, becoming Secretary in 1637. In 1621, after suppressing Oldenbarnevelt and the Remonstrants at the Synod of Dortrecht (1618/19), Maurits, Prince of Orange and Nassau, appointed Strick bailiff of Utrecht in place of Johan van Suylen vande Haer, who came from a Remonstrant family. Strick had already gained a seat in the provincial assembly in 1620 and soon became "a man of the greatest influence in Utrecht" (Van der Aa).
The documents transcribed in the present manuscript begin in the year Strick was appointed Canon, and include the official record of his 1609 law degree (which we have not found noted elsewhere) from the University of Orléans, where Hugo de Groot had taken his law degree a decade earlier. Most of the documents, however, come from the years 1620 to 1635, when the manuscript includes many resolutions of the States of Utrecht and of the Oudmunster Chapter, Maurits's appointment of Strick as bailiff of Utrecht, records of the purchase of land, documents about the inheritance of Strick's parents' estate on the death of his mother in 1632, documents concerning Linschoten and Strick's estate there, notarial documents from Utrecht, Delft and elsewhere, and much more. Among the figures who appear, besides Prince Maurits and the others noted above, are Philips van Merode (1594-1638), Marquis of Westerlo; Adriaen Ploos van Amstel (1585-1639), Lord of Tienhoven; Johann Albrecht (1563-1623) Count of Solms; Bartholomeus van Bloys van Treslong; and the Utrecht notary Willem van Duysen, to mention only a few.
The documents are neatly transcribed in a clear early-seventeenth-century hand. They are not in chronological order and one from 1621 begins on the verso of leaf 4, so work on the manuscript is unlikely to have begun before that. The latest document transcribed dates from 1635. Some are transcribed twice. The collation is straightforward: thirty-four quires of eight leaves each, followed by a quire of four leaves, with the first and last quires blank and with no leaves removed, but there are three repeated leaf numbers: 197, 223 and 253. The paper is consistently watermarked: -- = cockatrice with a house, with a Basel crosier above the house, a mark of Heusden near Basel. It follows the general style of Laurentius 6-11 (used in The Hague, 1610-1632). Work on the manuscript is therefore unlikely to have begun later than 1635 and could have begun as early as 1621.
In fine condition, with only 2 small wormholes through the first 50 leaves and minor water stains in the upper outside corner in the second half. The binding is somewhat worn and two of the original four leather ties are gone. A treasure trove of documents about one of the most influential figures in seventeenth-century Utrecht and the many people in his circle of acquaintances.
