tively. In the former, Adriaen Urselincx, native of Hasselt, citizen, declares under oath that he has occasion, in behalf of his employers, to journey to Frankfort, Nuremberg, Leipzig, and elsewhere, for the sole purpose of collecting debts due them, and that he has no intention to remain in any of those places. In the second, Willem Ursselincx, citizen, makes similar declaration that he has occasion to go to Cologne, Bingen, Bacharach, and other towns on the Rhine, to collect debts due him and buy wine, and does not intend to remain there. The learned archivist is manifestly wrong in attributing the second of these declarations to the Willem Usselinx who is the subject of this monograph, for he was born only a few months before; we may suppose, the surname being a rare one, that the two merchants were his father and uncle.' It appears from the certificates that, though they had attained the freedom of the city of Antwerp, the family of Usselinx originated in Hasselt, a small town in the dominions of the prince-bishop of Liège, some fifty miles southeast of Antwerp,-the town where, in Mr. Browning's famous poem, the first of the three horses galloping from Ghent to Aix gives out. In view of the strong

From a separate reprint, kindly transmitted to me by M. Génard, of his fourth annual report as Secretary of the Société de Géographie d'Anvers, and printed in the bulletin of that society, Tom. vi., p. 147 (also in the Bulletin des Archives d'Anvers, T. xii., pp. 60-1). The certificates read:

"Adriaen Urselincx, geboren van Hasselt, oppidanus, juravit et affirmavit dat hy benoot wordt van hier te reysen naer Franckfort, Noerenberch, Lipsick ende elders om, voor zyne meesters, te heysschene, te ontfangene ende gecrygene sekere schulden die men hem schuldich is, ende dat hy tot geenen anderen eynde aldaer en is reysende, ende dat hy oock van gheender meyningen oft intencien en is aldaer zyn woonstadt te kiesen oft te houden."

“Willem Ursselincx, oppidanus, juravit dat hy benoot wordt te reysen naer Coelen, Byng, Bachgrach ende elders op den Rhyn, om zyn schulden te gecrygen ende oock om wynen te coopene, ende dat hy van geender meyningen oft intencien en is aldaer zyn woonstadt te houden oft te blyven woonen." Since, on his journey to Gustavus, in 1629, Usselinx took a pass from Groningen under the name of Willem Willemsen, I am inclined to suppose that his father was named Willem. These two dates are in old style.

8 Mons. H. van Neuf, archivist of Hasselt, has kindly sent me a list of all the early baptisms and marriages of persons named Usselinx to be found in the archives there, but these begin only with the year 1582; the name William occurs in the family, however.

Calvinism of Usselinx himself, one's first thought might be that his father and uncle, if such they were, had fled to Antwerp to escape religious persecution from their ecclesiastical lord; but, in reality, the bishopric of Liège had been, during the period preceding, on the whole, a more comfortable place for Protestants than the provinces under the king of Spain, and it is quite as likely that they removed to Antwerp for purposes of trade.

The youth of Usselinx was probably spent at Antwerp. His education was that of the business man rather than of the scholar; here and there in his writings he tells us, in quaint phrases, that he is not learned, knows little of the classics and of jurisprudence, has little Latin wisdom." That education which comes from living amid stirring events he had much opportunity to gain. Not only were the first eighteen years of his life marked by the rising of the northern provinces, the heroic resistance of Holland and Zeeland, the pacification of Ghent and the union of Utrecht, the abjuration of Philip and the assassination of Orange, but in Antwerp itself the image-breaking riot of the year before his birth, and the Calvinistic tumult of that year, had been followed at short intervals by the troubles with the mutineers in 1574, the terrible Spanish fury two years later, the attempt of Anjou and his followers in 1583, and, finally, by the ever-memorable siege in 1584 and 1585.

All this, no doubt, did much to produce that intense hatred of Spaniards and Catholics, of which the writings of

See the essay of M. Henri Lonchay, Les dits des Prince- vêques de Liège en Matière d'Hérésie au xvie Siècle, especially pp. 48-50, in the first fascicule of the Travaux du Cours Pratique d'Histoire Nationale of Prof. Paul Fredericq.

10 Naerder Bedenckingen, pp. 2, 24, 34; Argonautica Gustaviana, pp. 32, 48. According to a note of Mr. Henry C. Murphy's, De Koopman, ii. (anonymous, 1770), says on Usselinx in a foot-note, p. 74: "Amateurs still know of a letter of his, written in French to Dr. P. Plancius; I have a copy of it among my papers." Other letters of his, in French, will be spoken of hereafter. The Stockholm MSS. show that he, in later life, had acquired some knowledge of German and Swedish; and a letter of about 1642, to Oxenstjerna, shows that he had an acquaintance, though not a perfect one, with Spanish.

Usselinx are so full, and this perhaps equally whether he was or was not still resident in the city of his birth. If he was, in fact, a witness of the great siege, he must soon after have left the city" and entered upon that second stage in his career, the effects of which, even more conspicuously than his early-imbibed hatred of Spain, appear with dominant influence in all his subsequent life. Following, no doubt, a custom of foreign service frequently observed by young Antwerpers of mercantile families, he went to spend several years, perhaps as agent of some great Antwerp firm, in other dominions of the king of Spain. That he went out with a mind open to other than mercantile ideas is, however, evident enough; in particular, an eager desire to know more of the wonderful regions then newly discovered, an interest in all geographical information, was likely to be part of the mental equipment of any young fellowcitizen of Ortelius and Mercator, who had been making Antwerp at this time the chief centre of geographical science."

A part of these fruitful years was spent in Spain, perhaps chiefly at Seville, where he watched with eager interest the unloading of the great plate-fleets, and in Portugal," but most of them apparently in the Azores, where he probably arrived soon after the occupation of the island by the troops of Philip II.” In those islands there was a considerable popu

11 Statements in the memorial to the States General, of August 15, 1630, printed in the Argonautica Gustaviana, p. 51, and elsewhere, require him to have been absent from the Netherlands for several years preceding 1591. A copy of this memorial, an important source for the biography of Usselinx, is in the Royal Archives at Stockholm (Bibliographical Appendix, II., No. 43); but I shall quote it from the printed copy in the Argonautica Gustaviana, rather than from my transcript of the manuscript.-The name Usselinx is not found in the list, published in the Kronijk of the Historisch Genootschap te Utrecht, for 1852, p. 27, of a large number of Antwerp families who, in the year after the siege, inform Leicester of their desire to emigrate to Middelburg.

12 Vivien de St. Martin, Hist. de Géog., pp. 399, 400.

13 Corte Aenwysinge, of April 13, 1620, published as Appendix iii. of O. van Rees, Geschiedenis der Staathuishoudkunde in Nederland, ii., p. 413; and Arg. Gust., p. 51. In Arg. Gust., p. 10 (Vthförligh Förklaring, Div verso), he says that he learned most of his science from the Portuguese.

14 Arg. Gust., pp. 37, 51; Mercurius Germaniae, p. 41. A statement to

15

lation of Flemish descent. The islands had been discovered, or rediscovered, by mariners from Flanders, and were still almost as commonly called the Flemish Islands as the Azores. Somewhat more than a century before, a colony of two thousand Flemings had gone out thither from Antwerp, "whereof, till this time," says Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, in Purchas, "there is a great number and offspring remayning, that in manner and behauiour are altogether like Netherlanders"; "yet," says he in another place, in his description of Fayal, "they vse the Portugals language, by reason they haue been so long conuersant among them, and those that vsed the Dutch tongue are all dead: they are greatly affected to the Netherlanders and strangers." Here, among the friendly descendants of the

16

the effect that he had been in the Canaries is to be found at p. 255 in the Advies tot Aanbeveling van de Verovering van Brazilië, published in vol. 27 (1871) of the Kronijk of the Historisch Genootschap te Utrecht, and attributed by the editors to Usselinx. I have given elsewhere (Note 135) my reasons for believing that it cannot have been written by him. Udemans, 'T Geestelijk Roer, i., f. 100, says that he had spent several years in Spain, the Azores, and the West Indies; but this is explained by the statement in Arg. Gust., p. 37, (Vthförligh Förklaring, J verso), where Usselinx says, "I have lived for a time in the Azores, which are reckoned part of America." A similar statement is made in an unpublished memorial presented June 15, 1622 (Bibliographical Appendix, II., No. 12), now in the Royal Archives at the Hague, but of which a copy (designated as B. 1:9 in the calendar) is among the Murphy MSS. in the New York State Library at Albany; replying to cavils, he says that he has been in some islands of America, but that whether he had been in the Antilles or the Azores or Punta de Araya or along the whole African coast is all the same. Dr. Asher is in error when he says, Dutch Books and Pamphlets, p. 83, referring to that passage in the Dutch Octroy ofte Privilegie which corresponds to the German Arg. Gust., p. 37, that the statement there made as to his travels " has not been noticed by any compiler since Udemans, who is the only one who tells us that Usselincx has not been in America, but that he lived for several years in the Azores ;" what Udemans really says is the reverse. The residence in the Azores is also mentioned in an unpublished memorial (Bibliog., II., No. 17) of Feb. 24, 1623 (Hague MSS.); a notation which I shall employ to denote documents at the Hague of which I have, through the courtesy of Mr. L. Ph. C. van den Bergh, the royal archivist, obtained copies.

15 Bennet and Van Wyck, Verhandelingen over de Nederlandsche Ontdekkingen, etc., Utrecht, 1826, pp. 11–17.

16 Purchas His Pilgrimes, Fourth Part, London, 1625, pp. 1668, 1672.

Netherlanders in Fayal, or among the Portuguese inhabitants and Spanish garrison of the larger port of Angra, in Terceira, Willem Usselinx served his apprenticeship as a student and observer of colonial matters, acquiring, sometimes at much expense," that wonderful familiarity with the details of East Indian and West Indian trade, which the reader of his many writings is so often called upon to admire. What the life of a Dutch factor in the Azores must have been, we can picture from the account, already mentioned, of Linschoten, whose three years' detention occurred at just about this time. The islands lay directly in the path of trade to both East and West Indies. Month after month "argosies with portly sail, like signiors and rich burghers of the flood," signalled from the twin hills behind the town, sailed up, laden with gold and silver and pearls, with silks and spices and drugs, into the port of Angra, discharged or shifted their cargoes, took in water and supplies, made their settlements at the weather-worn stone custom-house, and sailed away again. Meanwhile the foreign merchants, no longer jealously confined to a single street, as when the Portuguese ruled, yet still forbidden to explore the coasts of the island, rapidly drew streams of wealth from this main artery of commerce. Year after year the great carracks and galleons of the king's silver-fleet made their annual visit to the harbor; and year after year the English captains lay in wait for them off Flores and Corvo.

Usselinx was probably in the islands when Sir Richard Grenville, on his way back from Raleigh's deserted colony at Roanoke, plundered the Azores in 1586, when Drake, the next year, lying near the islands, took the "St. Philip," the first carrack captured, and when, in 1589, the Earl of Cumberland, in his third voyage, took Fayal; he may even have been there two years later, when, off the two northwestern

A full history of the principal island, during the period of Usselinx's stay, is to be found in Annaes da ilha Terceira, por Francisco Ferreira Drummond, Angra, 1850, pp. 268-382, for an opportunity to examine which I am indebted to the kindness of Col. T. W. Higginson.

17 Arg. Gust., p. 37. Vthförligh Förklaring, J.