Boer History1708 at the Cape of Good Hope: Van Assenburgh Installed, Recalled Officials Depart, Simons, and Mauritius Evacuation
Council Orders Le Boucq’s Deportation — 17 January 1708
The church quarrel that had opened on the 28th of August 1707 still hung over Table Valley when the new year began. The Rev. Engelbertus François le Boucq had already lost his salary and the Cape pulpit after deposing elder Abraham Poulle and deacon Jan Oberholster, and he had been defeated before the court of justice in a suit against the recalled clergyman Petrus Kalden, with the same result on appeal at Batavia. In the belief that concord could not be expected at the Cape as long as this quarrelsome clergyman remained, the council of policy resolved on the 17th of January 1708 to send him back to Batavia with the first outward-bound ship. [3]
The resolution could not be carried into effect until the 13th of September of the same year. Through the intervening months Le Boucq remained in the settlement while a new governor arrived, the recalled officials prepared to leave, and the Cape church received a freshly appointed minister from Europe. The deportation order of January thus framed the year without closing the disturbance at once: it marked the council’s judgment that the August sermon and its aftermath had become an administrative problem rather than a local pastoral dispute. [3]
Van Assenburgh Arrives and Is Installed — 25 January–1 February 1708
On the 25th of January 1708 governor Louis van Assenburgh arrived in Table Bay. Next morning he presided at a meeting of the council of policy, though he did not at once assume the direction of affairs. He had been eight months on the passage from Holland and had been obliged to put into a port on the coast of Brazil. On the 1st of February 1708 he was formally installed in office, ending the acting administration of the secunde Johan Cornelis d’Ableing, which had run from the 8th of June 1707. [3]
Van Assenburgh had previously been an officer in the army of the German Emperor and was described as a brave and skilful military officer. In the colony he speedily developed a fondness for the pleasures of the table that caused some contemporaries to call him a winebibber, yet he carried out the directors’ instructions in letter and in spirit and won the regard of the burghers. He seldom left the castle; on New Year’s Day and on his birthday the principal burghers with their wives called between ten and eleven in the morning to present compliments, stayed to dinner, and usually left only at nine in the evening. At the yearly muster of the Cape district militia—one company of cavalry and two of infantry—the officers were entertained at the castle. He was friendly at these receptions and easy of access, but he did not court society in the manner of Simon van der Stel’s earlier years. [3]
Clergyman d’Ailly and Henning Huising’s Return — Early February 1708
In the same ship with the governor was the Rev. Johannes Godfried d’Ailly, who had been appointed clergyman of the Cape and who preached here for the first time on the 5th of February. His arrival filled the pastoral gap left by Kalden’s suspension and by the breakdown of the Bek–Le Boucq arrangement of 1707, and it gave the settlement a minister sent out under the new order rather than a temporary covering of pulpits among men already entangled in the late quarrel. [3]
Henning Huising, one of the burghers deported to Europe in the struggle against Wilhem Adriaan van der Stel, was also on board. He had entered into a contract with the directors for the supply of half the meat required by the Company at the Cape during the next three years, the object of dividing the contract being to secure competition. Pieter van der Byl and Ferdinandus Appel, likewise among those who had gone home in the burgher cause, had already reached the colony seven months before. The return of these men in 1708 brought the European phase of the memorial politics of 1705–1706 back into the settlement as living persons with contracts and lawsuits, not only as names in Amsterdam’s sealed letter. [3]
Vergelegen Grapes and Huising’s Suit against Van der Stel — February 1708
When the arrival of the governor was known at Vergelegen, Mr. Van der Stel sent a petition to the council of policy requesting that he might be allowed to retain the estate for a few months longer, as he had hopes that by the next fleet from Europe intelligence would be received that the directors had mitigated their decision. The council refused to comply, and the utmost he could obtain was permission to press the grapes then ripening and dispose of half the wine on his own account, the other half to be for the Company. The quantity pressed was fifty-six leggers. [3]
On the 23rd of February Henning Huising summoned Mr. Van der Stel before the court of justice for £8,056 in addition to the value of nine thousand sheep. The late governor then requested the council of policy to allow him to remain in South Africa for another year, in order to get evidence to defend himself in this case; but upon Huising stating that he preferred bringing the action in the Fatherland to being the means of keeping Van der Stel longer in the colony, the council declined to accede to the request. The February sittings thus closed Vergelegen’s last harvest under its recalled owner and converted the burgher–governor quarrel into a civil claim that would follow the parties to Europe. [3]
Return Fleet Carries Recalled Officials and Burgher Agents — 23 April 1708
On the 23rd of April 1708 the return fleet sailed, taking to Europe the late governor, the secunde Samuel Elsevier, and the clergyman of the Cape, with their families. Nineteen of the burghers empowered Adam Tas and Jacob van der Heiden to continue pressing their charges against the recalled officials, for these, though deprived of authority, were still servants of the Company and in receipt of their salaries. Tas and Van der Heiden therefore left in the same fleet. Another investigation took place in Amsterdam, which resulted in the absolute dismissal of Van der Stel, Elsevier, and Kalden from the Company’s service. They left agents in the colony to dispose of their estates and transmit the proceeds. [3]
Frans van der Stel returned to Europe in the same fleet with his brother and took up his residence in Amsterdam. His wife, Johanna Wessels, daughter of one of the leading burghers of the colony, remained behind with her parents to dispose of the property to the best advantage and did not leave to rejoin her husband until April 1717. The physical breaking-up of Vergelegen into four farms and the sale of buildings would follow in October 1709; what 1708 completed was the embarkation of the recalled household and the despatch of burgher agents to finish the case before the directors. [3]
Commissioner Simons and the Manumission Regulation — 19 April 1708
The return fleet of 1708 was under command of Cornelis Joan Simons, who had been the first independent fiscal at the Cape and had resided here in that capacity from 1690 to 1694. He had recently been governor of Ceylon, and was now empowered by the governor-general and council of India to act as commissioner during his stay in South Africa. He issued a number of regulations, of which the instruction that most shaped later practice concerned the emancipation of slaves. [3]
In his instructions to the Cape government, dated the 19th of April 1708, Simons directed that no slave was to be emancipated without security being given by the owner that the freed person should not become a charge upon the poor funds within ten years, according to the statutes of India. This was henceforth the law in South Africa. There was, however, one notable exception. Ladies returning from India to Europe frequently took slave girls with them as waiting maids, and gentlemen were sometimes accompanied by their valets; these slaves were almost invariably sent back again, as they could be of no service in the Netherlands. The directors ordered that such persons were to be treated as free people, proof of their having been on the soil of the republic to be equivalent to letters of manumission. [3]
The regulation reflected a longer shift in European practice. Early justifications of African slavery had rested on heathen status, and a profession of Christianity had once sufficed to free a person and place him on a level in civil rights with his former masters. As time wore on, emancipation was less readily granted; Simons’s bond requirement and the directors’ exception for slaves who had touched Dutch soil together fixed the Cape rule for the years that followed. [3]
Drakenstein Consistory Nominations Required in Dutch — 1708
This was the last year in which nominations from the Drakenstein consistory were sent in the French language. Upon the receipt of the usual documents, written in French, the council of policy directed that in future the nominations of church officers and letters to the government must be in Dutch. The order closed a generation of French administrative paper in the Huguenot district and aligned Drakenstein’s formal correspondence with the language already dominant in Cape and Stellenbosch church business. [3]
Wheat Export and the Notice against Rye and Beans — 1708
In 1705 a series of good seasons had set in, and every year a considerable quantity of wheat was now sent to Batavia. From 1706 to 1711, both years included, the average export was rather over four thousand muids. The Company paid a little less than twelve shillings of English money a muid for it at the magazines. Rye, barley, beans, and peas were also grown in quantities sufficient to supply the wants of the shipping and of the Indian government. There was, however, a very limited market for these products in India. In 1708 the quantity of rye and beans grown was so greatly in excess of the demand that a notice was issued discouraging their cultivation and stating that the Company would not purchase any more of either. [3]
The notice did not reverse the wheat trade that the good seasons had opened; it narrowed the secondary crops the Company was willing to absorb. For free burghers who had expanded rye and bean plantings beyond ship and hospital need, 1708 brought a clear signal that the Batavia market would not underwrite unlimited diversification of grain. [3]
Carthago and Mercurius Begin the Mauritius Evacuation — September 1708
The island of Mauritius, hitherto a dependency of the Cape Colony, was at this time abandoned by the East India Company. It was of hardly any use as a station for refreshment, and beyond a little ebony and ambergris it contributed nothing to commerce. The directors had concluded that it was not worth the cost of maintaining a large garrison, and that with a small garrison it was not secure. Instructions to withdraw had reached the Cape in February 1707; the Company’s premises on the island had been totally destroyed by fire on the 15th of November 1707. [3]
When the intelligence of withdrawal reached the island, the burghers were found to be very averse to break up their homes, but as a matter of necessity nine heads of families elected to come to the Cape, the remainder preferring Batavia. In September 1708 two vessels, the Carthago and the Mercurius, were sent to commence transporting the people and their effects. The Carthago went on to Batavia; the Mercurius would return to the Cape and land her passengers here on the 26th of January 1709, among them Daniel Zaaiman, Gerrit Romond, and Hendrik de Vries with their families. The final embarkation of commander Abraham Momber and the garrison in the Beverwaart still lay in January 1710; what 1708 accomplished was the first organised lift of settlers under the Cape’s evacuation order. [3]
Le Boucq Finally Shipped to Batavia — 13 September 1708
The January resolution against Le Boucq was carried into effect on the 13th of September 1708, when the quarrelsome clergyman was at last sent back to Batavia with an outward-bound ship. Eight months had passed since the council judged that concord could not be expected while he remained; in that interval Van Assenburgh had been installed, d’Ailly had taken the Cape pulpit, and the recalled officials had sailed for Europe. The September deportation closed the open phase of the church crisis that had begun with the Proverbs sermon of August 1707. [3]
Bull-and-Dog Fight at the Castle — 11 November 1708
There was only one recorded instance in which Van Assenburgh’s usual social reserve gave way in a manner that startled the steady burghers of the Cape. When the afternoon service was concluded on Sunday the 11th of November 1708, the governor invited the principal townspeople to the castle and made an effort to entertain them with a fight between bulls and dogs. The episode stood apart from the formal New Year and birthday receptions and from the militia dinner; it was remembered as a singular departure from the habits of a governor who otherwise mixed little with the town outside those set occasions. [3]
Close of 1708 at the Cape
By the end of 1708 the settlement had completed the transfer of power that the Kattendyk letter of 1707 had announced. The council’s order of the 17th of January condemned Le Boucq to Batavia; Van Assenburgh arrived on the 25th, presided the next morning, and was installed on the 1st of February; d’Ailly preached from the 5th; Huising returned with a half-share meat contract while Van der Byl and Appel were already back. Vergelegen’s last vintage under the recalled governor yielded fifty-six leggers shared with the Company; Huising’s February suit for £8,056 and nine thousand sheep drove the civil quarrel toward Europe. On the 23rd of April the return fleet carried Van der Stel, Elsevier, Kalden, and their families, together with Tas and Van der Heiden as agents of nineteen burghers, and Amsterdam’s later investigation dismissed the three officials absolutely from the service. Commissioner Simons’s instruction of the 19th of April bound manumission to a ten-year poor-fund security, with the directors’ exception for slaves who had stood on Dutch soil. Drakenstein’s consistory was told to nominate and write in Dutch; a notice discouraged surplus rye and beans while wheat exports to Batavia continued above four thousand muids a year on average. In September the Carthago and Mercurius began lifting Mauritius settlers, and on the 13th Le Boucq finally sailed. The November bull-and-dog entertainment at the castle closed a year in which the new governor’s household habits, the departure of the Van der Stel circle, and the first Mauritius evacuation ships together marked the practical end of the crisis administration that d’Ableing had held since June 1707. [3]