Legal Action

The extent to which the burgomasters of Amsterdam – or some of them – were actively involved in the smear campaign against Romeyn is a moot point. It was not uncommon for urban regents in the Dutch Republic to have a hand in the production of libels. But since pamphleteering – the writing, printing, and distributing of potentially subversive broadsides and booklets that failed to mention the names of their authors and publishers – was a criminal offence, they had to observe discretion. Ericus Walten complained that Amsterdam's magistrates were cracking down on peddlers of tracts favouring the Prince of Orange while condoning the overt dissemination of pamphlets supporting their own policies. Moreover, Walten, Bidloo, and de Hooghe were convinced that the burgomasters had supplied Muys van Holy with ‘evil rumours about the state, the stadtholder, and the affairs in England, and payed him handsomely for writing his malicious tracts’. The regents had spent ‘several thousand guilders’ to make him write libels against ‘the enemies of the city’ and especially against Romeyn.

Yet they aspired to more than mere defamation of Romeyn's character. If they could not hope to drag a citizen of Haarlem before an Amsterdam court of law, it might be feasible to secure a conviction in his own neck of the woods. In order to accomplish this, they had to produce solid facts, not mere rumours, about Romeyn’s behaviour, and provide the chief sheriff of Haarlem with the legal grounds necessary for criminal prosecution. They did both.

On April 22, Adriaan Schoonebeek, Romeyn's former pupil and presently a successful etcher and print retailer in Kalverstraat, appeared before notary Michiel Bockx to make an extremely damaging statement ‘at the request of [chief sheriff] Boreel versus Romeyn de Hooghe’. Who were the men cooperating to prepare Romeyn’s downfall?

Michiel Bockx was a notary public who worked part-time as a clerk in the office of the chief sheriff. His boss, Jacob Boreel, was a quintessential member of Amsterdam's wealthy and aristocratic regent elite. He had served his native city in various functions, and the States General as ambassador in Moscow, Brussels, and Paris. He owned several manors in Zeeland and a stately home, Meeresteyn, near Beverwijk.