Boer History1704 at the Cape of Good Hope: Kalden’s First Church Service, Van Loon’s Death, Namaqua Friendship, and Thin Wool
First Service in the Table Valley Church — 6 January 1704
On the 6th of January 1704 the first service was held in the church edifice in Table Valley. The preacher was the Rev. Petrus Kalden. By the close of the previous year the building had been finished except the tower; of the fabric then constructed the tower and end walls later remained as part of the side walls of the present church. For the Cape congregation the January opening ended a long interval in which Sunday worship had been conducted in a large hall within the Castle. [3]
The foundation of a church in Table Valley had first been laid in April 1678, after which work had ceased. For another quarter of a century services continued in the Castle. In course of time the poor funds accumulated to a considerable amount, and the consistory consented to apply a sum equal to about £2,200 sterling to the erection of the building. As the original plan was then considered too small, it was enlarged, and a new foundation stone was laid by the governor on the 28th of December 1700. Three years of construction brought walls and roof to completion by the end of 1703; the first public use of that body of the church fell in the opening days of 1704. [3]
The finished Cape church marked Table Valley’s institutional lead over the country congregations rather than a colony-wide building programme. Stellenbosch had had a resident clergyman, the Rev. Hercules van Loon, since his arrival on the 11th of April 1700, after nearly nine years without a settled minister. Drakenstein still worshipped sometimes in a farmer’s front room, sometimes in a barn; the Rev. Hendrik Bek, installed in April 1702, preached in Dutch by the Seventeen’s direction while the sick-comforter Paul Roux continued French ministrations. Kalden’s January service therefore opened a permanent Table Valley sanctuary while the inland parishes remained architecturally provisional. [3]
Van Loon’s Death and the Country Church Vacancies — 27 June 1704
On the 27th of June 1704 the Rev. Hercules van Loon, resident clergyman of Stellenbosch, died by his own hand. The vacancy reopened the problem the Assembly of Seventeen had only lately closed when they appointed him after nearly nine years without a settled minister at Stellenbosch. Before action could be completed on the Drakenstein Huguenots’ memorial asking that Bek preach in French once a fortnight, Bek himself requested to be removed to Stellenbosch as Van Loon’s successor. [3]
The directors then appointed the Rev. Engelbertus Franciscus le Boucq clergyman of Drakenstein, and gave instructions that upon his arrival from Batavia Mr. Bek should be transferred to Stellenbosch. They also gave the council of policy permission to allow the French language to be used alternately with the Dutch in the church services at Drakenstein, if it should seem advisable to do so. That concession answered, in principle, the memorial of the French immigrants, who had stated that they comprised over a hundred adults, not more than twenty-five of whom understood sufficient Dutch to gather the meaning of a sermon, together with an even larger number of children of their nationality. [3]
The newly appointed minister did not reach the Cape until the 30th of March 1707. Bek then took charge of the Stellenbosch congregation, which had been for nearly three years without a clergyman, except once in three months when he had preached and administered the sacraments. Le Boucq should have taken up the duties in the parish to which he had been appointed, but instead got into difficulties at the Cape, and Drakenstein was for several years without a resident clergyman. Calendar year 1704 therefore fixed the personnel plan—Bek for Stellenbosch, Le Boucq for Drakenstein, French alternately if advisable—while the practical effect for the rest of the year and the next two was a thinned country ministry dependent on quarterly sacraments and the continuing Dutch and French sick-comforter work. [3]
The institutional contrast with Table Valley was sharp. Kalden’s congregation now occupied a nearly complete stone church funded from poor-box accumulation; Stellenbosch lost its only resident preacher in mid-year; Drakenstein still had no church building and awaited a minister who would not arrive until 1707. The directors’ wish that French give way to Dutch as speedily as possible among Huguenot families remained policy, tempered only by the conditional leave for alternate-language services and by Paul Roux’s ongoing French ministrations. [3]
Namaqua Captains and the Friendship Agreement — September 1704
In September 1704 several Namaqua captains visited the Cape, when an agreement of friendship was made with them. This tribe, like the others with which the Europeans had come in contact, at once accepted as a matter of course the position of vassals of the Honourable Company. The visit extended formal northern diplomacy beyond the closer Cochoqua and Goringhaiqua networks that had already dealt with the Castle and the military posts at Groen Kloof, Riebeek’s Kasteel, and the Land of Waveren. [3]
That vassal pattern was already visible among Khoikhoi captains who applied for staffs and were termed allies of the Company. The number of such applications was itself an indication that the tribes were more broken up than formerly. Sometimes a clan requested the appointment of a regent because its hereditary captain was a minor; sometimes a brother of a deceased captain was sought in his stead, the applicants always giving as a reason that the dead chief had left no children. Feuds between clans of the same tribe caused frequent disturbances, though those same clans usually acted together against the adjoining tribe. The Namaqua friendship of 1704 fitted this wider practice of Castle recognition rather than standing apart from it. [3]
The northern agreement also sat beside the closed cattle trade. In 1703 the Assembly of Seventeen had withdrawn the free barter privilege opened in 1700, restoring the ban on commercial intercourse between burghers and Khoikhoi after complaints of trading violence. Company military bartering parties remained the exception when draught oxen were urgently needed; ordinary beef and mutton were expected from European graziers. Diplomatic friendship with Namaqua captains did not reopen private inland purchase; it confirmed political recognition while meat supply stayed bound to colonial herds and licensed contracts. [3]
San pressure on both burgher and Khoikhoi stock had eased after the hard patrols of 1702, when large numbers of cattle were recovered for various kraals and many Bushmen were shot, so that the robbers gave less trouble for the next few years, though occasional chastisement was still required. Sergeants and corporals at the outposts were directed to induce the San to keep the peace, to follow and punish depredations, and under no circumstances to attack without provocation. Against that quieter frontier the Namaqua visit of September was a political event more than a military one. [3]
Thin Wool, Continuing Drought, and Settlement Growth — 1704
The directors remained desirous of procuring sheep’s wool from South Africa. Samples sent to Europe had been pronounced of excellent quality; they held that if wool could be produced at about eight pence a pound, the Company might profit and the colonists gain another reliable income. Instructions went to the Cape government to have the industry taken in hand by the burghers. The pursuit did not commend itself to farmers at that time. Although many European sheep had been imported in former years, few of pure breed remained, nearly all having been crossed with the large-tailed native animal. It was commonly believed that woolled sheep were more subject to scab than others; separate herds meant expense; and the carcase of the woolled sheep was less valued by graziers who bred for slaughter. [3]
In 1700 the government had sent home two hundred and eighty-five pounds of wool shorn from sheep belonging to the Company. That consignment was received with favour, but instead of increasing, the quantity fell off in succeeding years. In 1703 one small bale was all that could be obtained; it realised about fifteen pence English money a pound on the Amsterdam market. In 1704 a very small quantity was procured; in 1705 none at all; in 1706 one hundred and fourteen pounds. The calendar year thus continued the trough of the early wool experiment under Wilhem Adriaan van der Stel’s government, before he later collected wool-bearing sheep on a farm of his own as a private speculation and wrote to Europe and Java for better stock. [3]
From 1698 to 1705 the seasons were very unfavourable for farming, and no wheat could be exported. In 1700 it had become necessary to import rice from Java, there being insufficient grain in the country for the people and for fresh bread to ships’ crews. The long drought would break only in 1705, when crops were very good though damaged by heavy rain at harvest, and exportation would resume in 1706 with fourteen hundred muids sent to Batavia. Calendar year 1704 therefore sat still inside that dry stretch: a first service in the new Cape church, a shattered Stellenbosch ministry, a Namaqua friendship at the Castle, and only a trickle of wool outward. [3]
Population nevertheless increased. Burgher families were generally large; they married early; few young women remained single. Every year a few settlers arrived from Europe. A custom had come into vogue of allowing soldiers and convalescent sailors to engage for short periods as servants to burghers, their wages and maintenance being saved to the Company while they remained at hand in case of need—commonly from a hundred to a hundred and fifty of the garrison and seamen out at service. A great many slaves were being introduced from Madagascar and Mozambique. The settlement’s labour and household growth thus continued through the drought even as export agriculture stalled and the wool experiment nearly failed. [3]
Parallel experiments of the same administration—white-mulberry planting and imported silkworms that died, and the more successful placing of partridges and pheasants on Robben Island to breed—showed a governor willing to trial secondary products while the staple grain and cattle economy still dominated. Behind the public ledger his private farming at Vergelegen, granted in freehold by commissioner Valckenier in February 1700 and enlarged by purchase of adjoining ground, was already building toward the scale that later complaints would measure in hundreds of thousands of vines and large cattle and sheep flocks beyond the mountains. Official journals sent to Holland still omitted Vergelegen and the governor’s absences from the Castle. For 1704 the open record was the church opening, the Van Loon vacancy, the Namaqua agreement, the thin wool, and another dry harvest. [3]
Close of 1704 at the Cape
By the end of 1704 the Table Valley congregation had worshipped for nearly a full year in the church opened by Kalden on the 6th of January, still unfinished only in the tower. Stellenbosch had lost its resident clergyman on the 27th of June when Van Loon died by his own hand; the Seventeen had named Bek to succeed him and Le Boucq for Drakenstein, with leave for alternate French and Dutch services if advisable, but neither transfer nor new arrival took effect within the calendar year. In September Namaqua captains concluded a friendship agreement at the Cape and accepted, as other clans had, the position of Company vassals and allies. Only a very small quantity of wool was procured for Europe, while the drought that had run since 1698 still kept wheat from export and left the growing free population—large burgher families, soldiers and sailors out at service, and slaves from Madagascar and Mozambique—dependent on local herds and imported rice rather than on a grain surplus. Those were the calendar facts of a year that opened a permanent Cape sanctuary, broke the Stellenbosch ministry, drew Namaqua captains into formal friendship, and left the wool and wheat experiments still thin. [3]