everyday life, 400 years ago

The “Butter House”  in The Hague, 1600s

You can fill a thousand lifetimes reading easy-to-find books on art history. Somehow it seems a bit more tricky to find out what everyday life was actually like when all these masterpieces were being painted, centuries ago. How did ordinary people live? What did they get up to?

I was very excited to find this book, a second-hand copy from the “Learning Resources Centre” of Stanborough School in Welwyn Garden City: “Plain lives in a Golden Age”. In it, Author Van Deursen examines popular culture, religion and society in 16th and 17th century Holland. Normal people, refreshing.

From working and living conditions, playing, drinking, courtship and marriage, being a citizen, religion and popular culture, to the grudge Dutch people had against the tax man. Interestingly, this is an account of ordinary life during times of peace but also in times of war: from 1568 the locals struggled against Spanish occupation which ended with the Peace of Munster in 1648, allowing the country to move on and enter a Golden Age. I’d like to share some funny parts with you.

Bad breakfast
During the 1570s the regents tried to prevent hunger by ensuring an adequate supply and correct price of cereal grains. For example, grain was not allowed to be held back, sold to foreigners, or used to make cake (!) and white bread. And, mind-boggling to us 450 years later, bakers were not allowed to mix bran into the people’s bread, as bran was “a great disadvantage and damage to the poor community”. It would be a while before people realised as we do in 2025, that bran is a good source of fibre, vitamins and minerals.

Order! Order!
Society also had to remain orderly: people were to behave according to their station. Among other things, this was to be expressed in clothing: aristocratic women were allowed and expected to be beautifully dressed, but Intgen Pietersz. received a warning because she dressed her children as ‘Burgomaster’s children’ while she gave them ‘lard-cakes’ to eat. Government thought it needed to protect people from themselves so that they would stop showing off their pretty new ruffs and instead feed their kids a proper meal: it felt it had a moral obligation.

Cartoon mocking ruffs, ca. 1600. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Rage against the (tax) machine
There were acts of rebellion too. Every now and then the Dutch had had enough of newly introduced regulations such as a new tax. In 1610, the village of Maassluis (founded around 1340 as a settlement next to a lock (sluis) in the sea barrier between the North Sea and Rotterdam) erupted when the tax on fish was raised. The crowd threw rotten apples at the poor guy announcing it. They also seemed to have had issues with authority: in 1613, on the market place in The Hague, an English beggar was about to be arrested by officers of the Court of Holland, so a crowd showed up and assaulted them. In France, Charles Ogier wrote of the “corrupt masses of Holland that do not respect any officers at all”.

 

The market place in The Hague, 1600s

The town of Maassluis today (Wikipedia, image credit: Michiel Verbeek)

References
Plain Lives in a Golden Age, A. Th. Van Deursen, Cambridge University Press, 1991. Translated from “Het kopergeld van de Gouden Eeuw” Van Gorcum, Assen, 1978.
Ruffs cartoon, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
Wikipedia, Maassluis