Boer History1762 at the Cape of Good Hope: Lynn Refused, Hop’s Return, Cloppenburg, and the Stellenbosch Drostdy Fire
Twelfth Year: Castle Continuity — 1762
Calendar 1762 opened in the twelfth year of Ryk Tulbagh in the first chair. He had not been quite fifty-two when, on the 27th of February 1751, he became governor; the public presentation to the burghers and the promise of fidelity from the official boards had followed on the 15th of April. Saturday, the 8th of April 1752, had been a day of thanksgiving for a hundred years of Company possession, looking back to the gardens of 1652. In 1753 his wife Elizabeth Swellengrebel had died after seventeen years of marriage and had left him a childless widower. March 1755 had raised him councillor extraordinary of Netherlands India, a rank higher than governor without adding to his duties. The eleventh year had closed with a thinner second chair: Sergius Swellengrebel had died on the 8th of December 1760, and on the 12th the council of policy had named independent fiscal Pieter van Reede van Oudtshoorn to fill the vacant office until the pleasure of the supreme authorities could be known. The directors confirmed him. Through the opening of calendar 1762 he still sat as secunde and still kept the fiscal’s pen: a new fiscal independent would not reach Table Bay until September. Jan Andries Horak still sat Swellendam. Adriaan van Schoor, appointed in September 1748 after the death of Pieter Lourens, still sat Stellenbosch and Drakenstein. Jan Frederik Kirsten sat the winter port with the new title of resident. The Castle’s ordinary business—open access, fixed fees, no private trading by officers—was a twelfth year’s habit. The sumptuary laws adapted on the 25th of March 1755 still stood: no gilded coach but the governor’s, no livery but a councillor’s coachman, no large umbrella but a senior merchant’s or a board lady’s. [3] [7] [9]
As governor he was accessible without the least difficulty to all who wished to see him. The humblest individual could pour grievances into the ears of the father of the country and be sure of a patient hearing. If the complaints were well grounded, he obtained speedy redress; in any case he was sure of good counsel. That quality more than any other endeared him to the people. His probity was beyond suspicion in an age when probity was hardly looked for in men holding such posts. Company salaries were small, and it was taken almost as a matter of course that officers would supplement their incomes in any way not punishable by law. Tulbagh set his face firmly against that habit. He neither traded on his own account nor would he allow any other officer of the government to do so. The fees they were permitted to receive in certain transactions were fixed, and they were restricted from taking more. He regulated his own expenses so that he lived well within his income and allowances, and used what he had to spare in relieving the wants of others. Under his administration every man was certain of getting his dues. No man was put to unnecessary delay; no bribes were received; no false accounts were rendered. Equanimity and a lack of swashbuckling dash did not mean an uneventful chair. He had never sought popularity for popularity’s sake. Gentle and tolerant he remained; strong when the governor’s authority was defied. The twelfth year tested that strength on a roadstead still paying in wartime cash, on a commodore who took kindness for weakness, on a northern caravan that had to come home through flood and theft, on a four-week wine placaat, on a new fiscal independent, and on fire at the Stellenbosch drostdy. [3] [7] [9]
Continuity of persons was the point of the twelfth year as much as novelty of placaat. The same castle, the same boards, and many of the same officers remained. Europeans and Khoikhoi were living together on friendly terms in the old districts, but occasionally the peace was disturbed by San marauders. Land continued to be allotted to colonists without consulting Khoikhoi clans. Plenty of land still seemed left. Cattle runs in the outward districts were probably never less than five or six thousand acres, for which, when it could be recovered, a yearly rental was paid—£2 10s. until 1732 and £5 thereafter. The eastern hamlet of Swellendam remained a hamlet; the pontoon placed on the Breede in 1757, close to the junction of the Zonder End, was still the public boat on that road. Philippe Jacob Naudé of Berlin, who had arrived in the Company’s service in 1754, was still a Company servant. The Rev. Hendrik Kroonenburg, the Rev. Johannes Frederik Bode, and the Rev. Johannes Petrus Serrurier of Hanau still sat the Cape pulpit three deep, as Amsterdam had ordered in 1761. The Rev. Gerhardus Croeser still sat Zwartland. The Rev. Johannes Appeldoorn still sat Stellenbosch. The Rev. Van der Spuy still sat Drakenstein. Roodezand’s church at Waveren was still under Remmerus Harders. Combined consistories had already ceased in 1759; their travelling charges would not sit on the congregations in the twelfth year. [3] [4] [8]
In the census returns of 1754 the number of colonists of both sexes and all ages had been given as 5,510, and the number of slaves owned by them as 6,279. In those of 1756 the number of colonists is given as 5,128, and of their slaves as 5,787. No later count sat on the Castle table in 1762. In ordinary years the number of deaths stood to baptisms roughly as 100 to 261, and there was a constant accession to the colonial population by servants of the Company taking their discharge. The figures, though they cannot be depended upon as absolutely accurate, still give the idea of the heavy loss of life by the smallpox. Table Valley had buried 963 Europeans and 1,109 blacks between the 1st of May and the 31st of October 1755. With the Khoikhoi the disease had created great havoc, spreading farther inland than in 1713—felt in Great Namaqualand at least to the twenty-sixth parallel, and in the east to the Great Fish. Before midsummer it had entirely died out. The twelfth year therefore still lived inside that shadow: fewer free households, fewer bondsmen, and a colony that sold grain and wine into a paying bay while the capital’s labour force stayed thin. Company books had already closed the quarterly 600 guilders sent since 1747 to Tulbagh’s widowed mother Catharina Cattepoel; she had died in 1757. A childless widower sat the first chair without that Dutch household claim. A confirmed secunde who was still independent fiscal sat the second until September. [3] [9]
Outward, the land regime did not change. Cattle runs of five or six thousand acres still seemed to leave land enough. Yearly rental, when it could be recovered, remained £5 after the fifteen-year quit-rent settlement of 1732. Khoikhoi who still held together in compact bodies retained their own government, with chiefs practically appointed by the Dutch authorities. The greater number had lost old tribal distinctions and lived as dependents of farmers, or wandered and took service as they felt disposed. The courts were open for their protection. Dirk Marx’s report, received in 1756, that he had met Xhosa as far west as the Great Fish, remained the frontier note. Calendar 1762 added no second Beutler-scale trek and no second Roggeveld commando. Among the drought years of Tulbagh’s twenty-one—1755, 1756, and later calendars not yet opened—this twelfth year was not listed. Average exports across those twenty-one years would later be counted at 11,791 muids of wheat, 202 of rye, 68 of barley, 202 of peas, 174 of beans, and 346 leggers of common wine, with butter to India since 1754 averaging 22,322 pounds a year. The twelfth year sat inside that average, not outside it. What it added was a paying bay in which a commodore was refused, a caravan home from the Orange, a four-week wine placaat, a new fiscal independent, and fire at a drostdy. [3] [4] [7]
Commodore Lynn and the Honour of the Flag — January 1762
After Clive’s action against the Dutch armament sent from Batavia to Chinsurah on the Ganges in 1759, the friendly feeling between Great Britain and the United Provinces had been disturbed. England and the Netherlands were at peace, yet Colonel Clive at Fort William had feared that if Dutch forces grew, the nabob Meer Jaffier—raised by English aid—might ally with them against English interests. He had resisted the Dutch fleet on the Hooghly, captured the ships, destroyed the army, and forbidden the factory to fortify or raise troops. Orders had issued from the directors that nothing which could be refused under existing treaties should be supplied to English ships touching at the Cape. The matter was adjusted without a rupture. In 1761 instructions arrived that English visitors were again to be treated in a liberal manner. Swedish colours, first seen in Table Bay in 1759, remained a new flag among the foreigners who obtained whatever they chose to pay for, except when the council thought it necessary to prohibit the sale of articles the Company needed. Liberal treatment did not mean a soft governor. The 1761 instructions restored English access after the Chinsurah scare; they did not erase Tulbagh’s standing rule that the Dutch flag and salute etiquette bound every visitor who wanted Cape beef and wine. In leaner years he had refused supplies to French ships that withheld the customary nine-gun salute until both had fired; only then came watermelons, courtesy and wine. The twelfth year’s roadstead was therefore a paying one with English courtesy restored and the honour of the flag still sitting on every salute. [3] [9]
In January 1762 His Britannic Majesty’s ships of war Chatham and York put into Table Bay, where they were supplied with whatever they needed. Two English warships made their appearance and called for supplies. They were served instantly and efficiently. The commodore, Thomas Lynn, taking Governor Tulbagh to be an obliging, good-natured individual who would do almost anything he was requested to, asked that all the English seamen in Dutch ships in the bay should be sent on board his vessel. Perhaps the alacrity with which the Dutch obliged on beef and water caused him to gain the impression that this Mr Tulbagh at the Castle was a meek, easy-going character prepared to do anything that a representative of Britannia demanded. He wanted English sailors serving in Dutch ships in these waters to report to him for duty. [3] [9]
He met a decided refusal. The governor and council held that the honour of their flag was at stake. Tulbagh needed only one brief word for his reply. It was no. The English nationals stayed where they were. Liberal treatment of English visitors had been restored in 1761 after the Chinsurah scare; it did not extend to stripping Dutch hulls of men in Table Bay. The wartime refreshment trade still filled the roadsteads with ships of both nations, but the Castle would not yield the flag for a commodore’s convenience. The incident occurred soon after relations between the Dutch Republic and Great Britain had deteriorated as a result of Clive’s behaviour toward the Dutch in India. Although the controversy had been settled by the time of Lynn’s arrival, the new bonds of friendship were still delicate. That made the refusal sharper, not softer: courtesy at the jetty, and a hard no on the flag. [3] [9]
The twelfth year’s first test of the restored English courtesy was therefore not a shortage of beef but a demand for men. The Castle could fill English casks and still keep Dutch crews. During the twenty-one years 1751–1771 there would put into Table Bay 988 ships belonging to the Dutch East India Company, 168 English, 147 French, 31 Danish, 13 Swedish, 4 Prussian, 1 Portuguese, and 1 Spanish; into Simon’s Bay, 129 Dutch, 14 English, 11 French, 13 Danish, and 2 Swedish—the whole number at the two ports 1,472, an average of seventy a year. Calendar 1762 sat inside that traffic. English hulls were welcome again. English impressment off Dutch decks was not. The Prussian flag had first been seen in Table Bay in 1755; the Swedish in 1759. Foreigners obtained whatever they chose to pay for, except when the council thought it necessary to prohibit the sale of such articles as the Company needed. Lynn’s January visit drew that line in men rather than in meal. [3] [9]
The Huguenot valleys that had planted vines after 1688 now sold into that same wartime bay. Drakenstein, the Paarl, Fransche Hoek, and Val du Charron—later Wellington—had been agricultural settlements whose fruit and grain had become plentiful while cattle remained scarce. Under the second van der Stel the settlement had been extended beyond the first mountain range to place colonists for cattle farming and stock grazing. The Tulbagh kloof remained the gateway to that inland basin. Piketberg, from which Jacobus Coetsee had ridden north in 1760, sat in that same outward cattle country. Wine from those old French names, and cattle from the outward runs of five or six thousand acres, were what French and English pursers still paid for. The twelfth year did not invent those farms. It paid them—and it refused to pay them in seamen taken off Dutch ships. [4] [7] [8]
Flood on the Great River — 11 January 1762
Captain Hendrik Hop of the burgher militia, who occupied the farm Slot van de Paarl, had turned his caravan south on the 7th of December 1761 after heat, empty river beds and dying oxen stopped the march near latitude 26° 18′ S. Two of the burghers had penetrated some miles further; there was but one opinion in the council he called, that it was impossible to go further. The party had left the Bakoven, near the mouth of the Elephant river, on the 16th of August 1761: besides Hop, the botanist Jan Andries Auge, the surgeon Carel Christoffel Rykvoet as mineralogist, and the surveyor Carel Frederik Brink to determine positions, make a map, and keep a journal; thirteen colonists—Jacobus and Joris Coetsee, Abraham Russouw, Hendrik Kruger, Andries Greef, Jan van Niekerk, Tieleman Roos, Pieter Marais, Casper and Jan Badenhorst, Josua Joubert, Coenraad Scheepers, and Ocker Heyns; fifteen waggons and sixty-eight half-breed Khoikhoi servants. They had passed the copper mountains of Little Namaqualand first visited by Europeans in 1685, crossed the great river on the 29th of September at a ford nearly eleven hundred feet in width, found giraffes soon after the crossing, and kept along the western base of the Karas mountains between the eighteenth and nineteenth meridians. A Joubert sat those northern waggons as Huguenot surnames still sat the Waveren farms behind them. [3] [8] [9]
At the great river some time was spent in refreshing the worn-out cattle, which afforded an opportunity to examine the country around. In the mountains bordering on the river copper was discovered, but the conclusion which Captain Hop and his assistants came to was that it would not pay to extract it. They observed first that there was no wood in the neighbourhood which could be used as fuel, consequently the ore must needs be taken away in its crude state. Next, there were obstructions in the river which would prevent the use of boats to transport the ore to the sea, so that it would be necessary to remove it in waggons. And lastly, the country was not only very difficult to traverse, but it was so parched by the summer heat as not to afford a supply of food for draught cattle. The mouth of the river was too distant to be examined. The Little Namaquas had been found in an impoverished condition, robbed by San of the greater part of their cattle. The Great Namaquas had migrated to the north about twenty years before. Heat, empty beds, and dying oxen had already written the northern limit. Copper without fuel, boats, or pasture wrote the mineral one. [3]
During the night of the 11th of January 1762 the water in the great river rose suddenly. The expedition was encamped on the bank, unsuspicious of danger, and it was with difficulty that the waggons were removed to a place of safety. Summer storms on a sand river do not send a herald. The same bank that had seemed a rest for worn cattle became, in one night, a place to get off. Fifteen waggons, a botanist’s presses, a mineralogist’s samples, Brink’s journal and map, and the giraffe skins already destined for European museums had to be hauled up while the water rose. None of that labour was in the original instruction. The instruction had been to go north from the Bakoven and learn the country of the Damrocquas. The twelfth year’s first inland date was a flood on the way home. [3] [9]
The northern year thus broke in two at the river: organisation and departure in 1761, flood and homecoming in 1762. Coetsee’s ride of 1760 from Piketberg had first put a European across that water; Hop’s fifteen waggons had put a scientific train across it. January’s rise put the same train on the defensive. The Castle still sat hundreds of miles south, waiting for a map, a journal, plant and mineral notes, and a giraffe skin. The river did not wait. It rose in the night, and the twelfth year inland began with wet axles and a higher camp. [3]
Oxen Lost, and What the North Had Taught
One night a little later, thirty of the oxen were stolen by San. The colonists had volunteered to accompany the expedition chiefly with a view of obtaining a large number of cattle in barter, but they had not succeeded according to their anticipations. Fifteen waggons had left the Bakoven with sixty-eight servants and a militia captain’s authority. They came back thinner in cattle than they had hoped. The Little Namaquas, already robbed of the greater part of their stock, had not been a market. The Great Namaquas had moved north. Barter that had drawn volunteers from Slot van de Paarl and the other farms did not fill the spans. Theft on the homeward bank took thirty more. The scientific train still had its notebooks. The burgher train had fewer oxen. [3]
No information of a positive kind was obtained concerning the black people to the north, then called Damrocquas, now Damaras. But the wild stories that had previously been current of their having long hair and wearing linen clothing were found to be incorrect, for the Great Namaquas knew of no people answering that description except Europeans. Coetsee’s report of 1760, which had moved Hop to offer a march, was thus corrected in the field: ten days beyond his farthest point there were not, so far as Namaqua knowledge went, a linen-clad people with long hair. Information was obtained concerning the Betshuana, then called Briquas or Birinas, living east of the Kalahari. And it was ascertained that the smallpox in 1755 had spread into Great Namaqualand and caused the loss of many lives. The twenty-sixth parallel that had stopped Hop’s oxen had already been a smallpox horizon seven years earlier. [3]
Pieter Marais, one of the burghers who accompanied the expedition, understood the Khoikhoi language, and was a man given to inquiry. He and Tieleman Roos drew up a report upon the natives, showing that the different clans which were met were members of one tribe. They had witnessed the method of worshipping the new moon by singing, dancing, and invocations; and they had learned that the Great Namaquas had some faint conception of a supreme being, whom they called Chuyn, but what the nature of this being was supposed to be they had not ascertained. They had seen the natives smelting copper and working it into ornaments by means of a stone hammer and anvil. The great river was called by the Namaquas Chari or Eyn. The last word was the same as that given to Commander van der Stel by the Little Namaquas in 1685. The first word Chari is the same as Gariep of later speech. Copper in Namaqua hands, worked with stone, sat beside copper in the bordering mountains that Hop had judged unpayable for a Company wagon train. The difference was scale: ornaments, not ore ships. [3]
The names given by Captain Hop to places north of the great river have long since been replaced by others, but there is no difficulty in following the route. They passed the hot spring later called Nisbett’s Bath, and kept along the western base of the Karas mountains, between the eighteenth and nineteenth meridians from Greenwich. Giraffes had been found soon after the crossing, and several killed. Governor Tulbagh, who had already enriched the chief museums of the Netherlands with many specimens illustrating the botany and zoology of the colony, sent the skin of one of these giraffes to the museum of the University of Leiden. It was the first taken to Europe from South Africa. Auge’s plant notes and Rykvoet’s mineral judgment travelled in the same homeward train as that hide. Brink’s map and journal would give the Castle a paper north it had not possessed when Coetsee came back from a hunt. [3] [9]
What the north had taught was therefore as much negative as positive. No Damrocqua linen. No payable copper for want of wood, water-carriage, and pasture. No great barter herd. A river that could rise in the night. San who could lift thirty oxen from a sleeping camp. Smallpox that had already walked this far in 1755. Against those blanks: a map, a journal, plant notes, a mineral report, a Namaqua theology of Chuyn and the new moon, stone-hammered copper ornaments, the names Chari and Eyn, word of the Betshuana east of the Kalahari, and a giraffe skin for Leiden. The volunteers had wanted cattle. The Castle wanted knowledge. The twelfth year paid the second bill more fully than the first. [3]
The Caravan Reaches the Castle — 27 April 1762
On the 27th of April 1762 the expedition reached the castle, none of its members having died or suffered serious illness during the journey. By the end of April they were back, and not at all the worse for wear and tear. They came back thinner in cattle than they had hoped, but with a map, a journal, plant and mineral notes, a giraffe skin already destined for Leiden, and a corrected picture of the country north of the Orange. Eight months had passed since the Bakoven. The northern year thus closed at the Castle yard: organisation and departure in 1761, flood, theft and homecoming in 1762. Governor Tulbagh, already a donor of Cape specimens to Netherlands museums, had his first South African giraffe skin for the University of Leiden from this march. [3] [9]
Good rulers attract good officers. Hop was only one of them. Auge, master gardener of the colony and a brilliant botanist, had had special instructions to collect data on plants and trees, a subject in which Tulbagh was deeply interested and about which he knew a great deal. Rykvoet went as mineralogist; Brink as surveyor. The governor had organised several expeditions far into the hinterland, and followed their marches through unknown regions with keen anticipation. This return was the first large scientific homecoming of his twelfth year: not a second Beutler to the Keiskama, but a burgher captain’s train beyond the Orange into the country later called South West Africa, with notebooks full of information. The Castle’s ordinary business—open access, fixed fees, no private trading—now had a northern file to put on the same table as the wartime accounts. [3] [9]
It is almost inevitable that Tulbagh, with his widespread scientific interests, did more for the Cape’s cultural advancement than establishing its reputation as a geological, botanical and zoological treasure house. In 1761 he had authorised a building to accommodate the 3,800 books and numerous manuscripts bequeathed by Joachim Nicolaas van Dessin; Mason and Dixon had observed the transit of Venus from April to October of that year. The twelfth year did not repeat the transit. It delivered the giraffe and the Namaqua notebooks into a town that already had a public library by the church, a sexton as librarian, and a thousand rixdollars—then equal to £208 6s. 8d.—as Van Dessin’s capital for preservation and enlargement. The institution was not much used. The hide and the journal were used at once: one went to Leiden, the other sat the Castle’s northern knowledge. [3] [9]
From Piketberg to the Bakoven to latitude 26° 18′ and back to the Castle yard, the north had been a burgher project under a governor’s warrant. Coetsee had hunted. Hop had surveyed. Marais and Roos had asked about the moon and Chuyn. Auge had pressed plants. Rykvoet had looked at copper and said no. Brink had kept the distances. The volunteers had counted oxen and found them wanting. San had counted them too, and taken thirty. The 27th of April closed that arithmetic without a death in the party. The gardens of 1652 were a hundred and ten years behind. The great river, named Chari or Eyn in the notebooks now on the table, was no longer only a Namaqua rumour. [3]
Wine Placaat and the Paying Roadstead — August 1762
From the arrival of the French men-of-war and transports in December 1758 and January 1759 the farmers had been in a prosperous condition. The war in India between the English and the French had not yet ended. French men-of-war still called to refresh and take in supplies until 1761; after that date ships of both nations came for cattle, meal and wine. Officers of French packets from Mauritius and of English packets from St Helena bid against each other. The empty roadstead of the glut years had become a double auction. What the Castle could not do by placaat in 1756 and 1757—move the surplus—seventeen hulls and the packets that followed them still did in cash. Calendar 1762 sat in the English-and-French half of that wartime boom: both flags crowded the roadsteads while the council still had to fill Company holds. [3] [9]
On more than one occasion in this wartime stretch the government was unable to procure as much provision as was needed for the Company’s own ships, as the burghers were desirous of selling at high prices to strangers. There was a remedy for this. In August 1762 a placaat was issued prohibiting the sale of wine to foreigners under penalty of confiscation of all that was offered and a fine of £66 13s. 4d. This had the desired effect: the Company obtained as much as was needed, and four weeks from the date of its issue the placaat was withdrawn. The same farms that could not move wine in 1756 could not keep it from foreign pursers in 1762 until the Castle posted that short prohibition. Four weeks was enough. The boom itself still had years to run; intelligence of peace between France and England would not arrive until March 1768. [3]
The government, as well as individuals, profited by the strangers. The revenue was increased, a quantity of surplus wheat in the magazines was disposed of, and some shipments of Bourbon coffee were purchased at the low price of twenty-five shillings per hundred pounds for transmission to Europe. Colonial and private interest aligned for once: the revenue rose when strangers bought, magazines could move surplus wheat, and farmers who had faced insolvency held the scarce goods. In 1756 an export duty of £1 per legger had been laid upon all wine and brandy sold to strangers in bulk, in addition to the dues previously levied. The duty was farmed out by auction, and in the first year was sold for no more than £38 6s. 8d. Four years later—calendar 1760—it rose to £400. That farm still paid in 1762, because the bay was buying. For wine farmers the swing remained sharp. India had cut Cape wine intake—exportation to Batavia, which for the five years 1751–5 had averaged 558 leggers, had fallen to 262 on an average during the next ten—and insolvencies had become alarmingly frequent; the fiscal’s fee on foreign wine sales had even been swapped for a grain fee to ease the pressure. By 1762 the roadstead arithmetic had reversed: strangers paid cash, magazines emptied, and the risk was no longer glut but the Company’s inability to secure its own stores when burghers held out for packet prices. August’s four-week placaat was the Castle’s answer in wine. [3] [9]
To Europe were sent yearly rather over 100 leggers of common wine and as much Constantia wine as could be obtained, which was usually not more than 14 or 15 leggers. From 1736 to 1761 the price paid by the Company for red Constantia wine had been £20 16s. 8d. and for white Constantia wine £10 8s. 4d. the legger, the proprietors being obliged under an old contract to sell at that price. In 1761 an agreement had been made with Jacobus van der Spuy, then owner of High Constantia, that he should deliver two-thirds of all the red wine made by him at £31 5s., and two-thirds of all the white wine at £15 12s. 6d. the legger, he to be at liberty to sell the remaining third to whom he chose at the best price he could obtain. A similar agreement was subsequently made with Lambert Myburgh, owner of Great Constantia. The twelfth year therefore sat on that fairer Constantia contract while the August placaat briefly closed the foreign tap on ordinary wine. Company holds first; packet pursers after four weeks. [3]
In 1761 the first aloes had been exported from South Africa: two hundred and eighteen pounds produced by the old burgher councillor Petrus Johannes de Wit. The directors had issued instructions to purchase the drug at the stores at a price not exceeding two shillings and three pence halfpenny a pound. From that date it has been an article of export to Europe, but the quantity in demand being inconsiderable, it has not been of much advantage to the colony. Calendar 1762 did not invent that small new hold-good. It sat beside wine, meal, cattle, and Bourbon coffee as another line on a paying bay. The Huguenot valleys still sold the bulk. Drakenstein, the Paarl, Fransche Hoek, and Val du Charron still poured into a roadstead where French and English packets bid—except for four weeks in August, when the Castle took the wine first. [3] [7] [8]
Cloppenburg Arrives; Stellenbosch Drostdy Burns — September–October 1762
On the 8th of December 1760 the secunde Sergius Swellengrebel had died. On the 12th the council of policy decided that the independent fiscal Pieter van Reede van Oudtshoorn should fill the vacant office until the pleasure of the supreme authorities could be known. Van Oudtshoorn was confirmed in the appointment by the directors, and Jan Willem Cloppenburg was sent out as fiscal. The latter officer arrived in September 1762 and assumed duty as fiscal independent. The senior civil line under Tulbagh was thus settled for the next years: Van Oudtshoorn as secunde, Cloppenburg as fiscal. Van Oudtshoorn had held the fiscal’s office since September 1741; he now laid down that pen and kept the second chair. Cloppenburg took the independent fiscal’s seat that had been doubled with the secunde’s since December 1760. [3]
The fiscal independent was not a clerk. He sat the high court, watched the Company’s rights against burgher and stranger, and took the fees the law allowed—fees Tulbagh had already forced into a fixed schedule. Van Oudtshoorn had even abandoned, in the glut years, his four shillings and twopence on every legger of wine sold to a foreigner, taking instead one shilling and fourpence on every hundred pounds of grain or meal, as the only measure of relief the governor could think of for insolvent wine farmers. That swap still coloured the office Cloppenburg inherited. The August placaat had just shown that the Castle could still close the foreign wine tap when Company ships went short. A new fiscal arrived into a paying bay, a restored English courtesy, and a governor who would not let officers trade. [3] [9]
Continuity of the pulpits matched continuity of the fiscal’s chair. Kroonenburg, Bode, and Serrurier were all in active service at the Cape, as the directors had ordered in April 1761: Serrurier inducted as third clergyman, Bode restored as second with his arrear salary, and upon the first death or removal of either Kroonenburg, Bode, or Serrurier, no successor to be appointed. Appeldoorn still sat Stellenbosch, where he had been stationed since October 1753. Van der Spuy still sat Drakenstein. Harders still sat Waveren under the 1761 instruction that he remain permanently. Croeser still sat Zwartland. Combined consistories still did not meet. The twelfth year did not reshuffle the churches. It reshuffled the fiscal. [3] [8]
Strangers had begun to know the town in Table Valley by the name of Cape Town, though by the colonists it was still termed the Cape. Several new streets were laid out. The parade ground was again levelled, and an oak hedge was planted round it. The artificial fountains from which the inhabitants got water were renewed. The town house—the same that is still in use—was built by the burgher council. The hospital was falling to ruins, and it had been resolved by the directors to build a new one, but the work was not yet commenced, though the materials were being collected. The fortifications were repaired, and a new battery was constructed near the mouth of Salt River. Calendar 1762 did not invent that civic programme. It sat inside it: a capital still thinning from the 1755 graves, still selling dear to two empires, still building, and now with a new fiscal independent in the Castle. [3] [9]
The village of Stellenbosch was considerably enlarged and improved in appearance during Tulbagh’s time. On the 31st of October 1762 the drostdy buildings were destroyed by fire, but they were shortly rebuilt in a handsomer style. Stellenbosch was expanded, and when in 1762 the drostdy burned down, a new and more spacious building arose. The landdrost of Stellenbosch and Drakenstein was still Adriaan van Schoor, appointed in September 1748 after the death of Pieter Lourens. He would be promoted to an office in Cape Town in a later calendar; the twelfth year kept him in the burnt seat while the handsomer walls went up. Appeldoorn still preached in the village that had lost its drostdy in a night. The fire was the village’s sharpest blow of the year. [3] [9]
Not only in town, but also in the country districts, the impact of Tulbagh’s energy was felt. Simon’s Town was enlarged: warehouses were built, a stone pier made, a large hospital erected. The hospital—a square building of 130 feet frontage—had been commenced in 1760 and was still rising; it would be completed in a later year. Substantial storehouses, a slaughter house, a bakery, workshops for smiths and carpenters, and a dwelling house for the officer in charge of the station followed in the same enlargement. The building erected in the time of Governor Swellengrebel—which was 450 feet in length and had previously served for all purposes—was now used solely as quarters for the garrison and workmen. Kirsten still sat as resident, the title given him in May 1761 after De Nys’s death. False Bay was no longer only an emergency winter door. The hospital foundation of 1760, the resident title of 1761, and the stores that followed in these years made Simon’s Town a second built face of Company power—paid for while foreign and Company ships still crowded the refreshment economy of Table Bay. [3] [9]
Swellendam remained a mere hamlet. To facilitate access to it from the Cape, the pontoon of 1757 on the Breede, close to the junction of the Zonder End, still carried the public road. Horak still sat that drostdy. He would not retire from the Company’s service and become a burgher until a later calendar, when Joachim Frederik Mentz, previously secretary of the district, would be appointed landdrost. The twelfth year did not reshuffle Swellendam. It burned Stellenbosch’s drostdy and kept Horak and Van Schoor in their chairs. Cattle runs of five or six thousand acres still seemed to leave land enough beyond both drostdies. Yearly rental, when it could be recovered, remained £5. Khoikhoi clans that still held together retained their own government; the greater number lived as dependents of farmers or wandered and took service as they felt disposed. The courts were open for their protection. San marauders still disturbed the peace occasionally. Land was still allotted without consulting Khoikhoi. Plenty of land still seemed left. [3] [4] [7]
During the administration of Tulbagh the natives gave very little trouble to the colonists. Harsh and unjust treatment of Khoikhoi by colonists occurred, especially on the remote border, but the heavy sentences recorded against European criminals in such cases prove that the law was not a dead letter. The government, being popular, was strong; oppression on any large scale could only take place in times of anarchy. The government was anxious to prevent the Khoikhoi from becoming possessed of guns and horses. Calendar 1762 added no new eastern boundary and no new commando scale. It added a refused commodore, a caravan home with a giraffe skin and a copper no, a four-week wine placaat, a fiscal independent from Europe, and a drostdy rebuilt handsomer after fire. [3] [9]
North and south the year stretched the colony’s reach and then repaired it: a caravan beyond the Orange with giraffe skins, copper judgment, and a flood on the 11th of January; English warships Chatham and York supplied and refused men in January; wine closed to foreigners for four weeks in August; Cloppenburg in the fiscal’s chair in September; Stellenbosch’s drostdy down on the 31st of October and up again handsomer. Under Tulbagh, 1762 was not a year of conquest but of return, refusal, short placaat, new pen, and fire—while farmers still sold dear to the fleets of two empires at a neutral tavern of the seas. The twelfth year closed with cash in the bay, Hop’s notebooks on the table, Van Oudtshoorn in the second chair without the fiscal’s pen, Cloppenburg independent, Van Schoor in a rebuilding drostdy, and Kirsten still styled resident at the winter port. The gardens of 1652 were a hundred and ten years behind. The great river, named Chari or Eyn in the notebooks now home, was no longer only a Namaqua rumour. The boom still paid. The next calendar would test the magazines another way. [3] [4] [7] [8] [9]