Flemish Inspiration and The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

A popular quip says that success is the product of 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. That formula may be appropriate for the everyday tasks we face in our 21^st century lives. However, it may not reflect the optimal mix for explorers and discoverers, seafarers and mariners during the Age of Discovery (ca 1450-1800).

One book in particular, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, appears to have had an exceptional hold on the fearless yet educated European elite that sought to map and colonize the farthest corners of the earth. Virtually every transatlantic European explorer I have studied at some point in their saga admitted to being inspired by the mythical travelogue featuring a 14^th century English knight. And, as with other posts on this blog, the thin thread of a connection to Flanders – when firmly tugged – yields yet another example of a modest Fleming, working in near obscurity, who has made an outsized and significant contribution to the Discovery and Settlement of America.

Marco & Mandeville

It is undisputed that the [European] Age of Discovery began with the Portuguese in the 1400s. Under the tutelage of Henry the Navigator, small caravels sailed out of Lisbon and south around the West coast of Africa and west across the southern and northern mid-Atlantic. In the first decades of that age they discovered Atlantic islands (Azores, Canaries, Madeiras) and African kingdoms. But these were merely accidental and interim discoveries: the ultimate goal of all these adventurers was to reach the spices and wealth of the Indies in Asia.

Impassioned by their crusading Christian faith, hungry for the riches of the East, and guided by relentless advances in mathematics, geography and cartography, the Portuguese court attracted like-minded men from across Europe. Some were Italians – such as Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and Giobanni Caboto (John Cabot). Others were Luso-Flemings – like Gaspar Corte-Reale and Ferdinand D’Ulmo (Hendrik Van Olmen) – or Germans – like Henricus Martellus and Martin Behaim. Regardless of origin all sought the same thing: wealth and glory.

What bonded these men was a common mindset.[i] While ethnically diverse they shared similar nautical sources.[ii] Besides cartographic references, all these men appear to have heavily relied upon two travelogues. The first, by Marco Polo, has a solid Flemish connection to Columbus: his copy was printed at either Leuven or Antwerp in 1485[iii]. The second is less well-known today: “The Travels of Sir John Mandeville”.[iv] Both books were written within seventy (or less) years of each other.[v] These two books then were, in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, according to a modern authority, “the two most famous European books on Asia.”

Who Was Sir John Mandeville?

The name Marco Polo needs little explanation to most educated readers, even today. He is remembered as the Italian traveler of the 13^th century who claimed to have traveled to, lived in, and returned from China.[vi] Whether Marco Polo’s tale is accepted as fact or fiction, his name is a byword for early east-west intercourse and the promise of exploratory travel. For men at the time of Columbus, et.al., Mandeville was an equally compelling source. Yet few people today (outside of limited scholarly circles) are aware of the name Sir John Mandeville. Who was he?

Sir John Mandeville “was once the most famous writer in medieval Europe,”[vii] as one popular authority phrased it. “He [Mandeville] had set off from St. Albans [Abbey] on St. Michael’s Day [February 21^st] in 1322 with the intention of making a pilgrimage to the churches and shrines of Jerusalem. But 34 years later he arrived back in England claiming to have visited not only the Holy Land, but India, China, Java and Sumatra as well. And what stories he had gathered in the years he had been away! Kings and priests studied The Travels to satisfy their thirst for knowledge of far-away lands. Geographers used his new-found information to redraw their maps. Monastic scribes translated his book from language to language until it had spread [in pre-printing press Europe] throughout the monasteries of Europe….The sheer number of surviving manuscripts is testament to Mandeville’s popularity: more than 300 handwritten copies of The Travels still exist in Europe’s great libraries – four times the number of Marco Polo’s book.”[viii]

Printed books of course did not take off until well into the 16^th century. This meant that until printing presses became widespread (in the late 1400s/early 1500s) each book was painstakingly copied by hand – usually by scribes in monasteries. And while not the focus of this particular post, Flemish domination of the printing industry in the 15^th thru 17^th centuries is unquestioned.[ix] The important point here is that ‘casual’ reading as we know it today was a real luxury. Those with access to books read with a purpose and intensity – often memorizing the passages after frequent re-reads. Any book that could offer an escape from their seemingly mundance surroundings and at the same time seamlessly supply the key to riches was sure to be a hit.

Mandeville’s tale offered that and more. “Early readers were intrigued by Mandeville and captivated by his outrageous tales and humorous mishaps.”[x] Sir John Mandeville somehow meets men with one large foot (used for shading themselves during siestas!); headless humanoids whose faces are part of their chests; Amazons and their male counterparts; and even dog-faced humans, Cyclops, and sexually liberated natives. Mandeville somehow does this while satisfying religious obligations (a pilgrimage to Jerusalem) and charting a course to the riches of Cathay (China). In other words, Mandeville’s Travels offers enough to titillate even the most serene monk.

But this is not the reason medieval explorers were drawn to the book. Rather, their interest was more practical. Columbus, Vespucci and others were piqued by the 175 lines in the book where Mandeville explains why he believes it is possible to circumnavigate the world.[xi]

“The importance of The Travels lay[s] in a single yet startling passage which set the book apart from all other medieval travelogues. Mandeville claimed that his voyage proved for the first time that it was possible to set sail around the world in one direction and return home from the other.”[xii]

The author has Mandeville declare: “‘I have often thought of a story I have heard, when I was young, of a worthy man of our country who went once upon a time to see the world. He passed India and many isles beyond India, where there are more than five thousand isles, and travelled so far by land and sea, girdling the globe, that he found an isle where he heard his own language being spoken…He marveled greatly, for he did not understand how this could be. But I conjecture that he had travelled so far over land and sea, circumnavigating the earth, that he had come to his own borders; if he had gone a bit further, he would have come to his own district….”[xiii]

This simple yet forthright anecdote had a profound effect on Christopher Columbus.[xiv] Not only did it convince the future “Admiral of the Ocean Seas” of the validity of his hunches, but it was his trump card when in debate with his detractors. Giles Milton (the author I have heavily quoted here) asserts that it was Columbus’ copy of The Travels that convinced the Spanish court to pay for his voyage.[xv] Curiously, this was not a ploy or stunt: Columbus was a true believer. Far away from the critics at court, Columbus literally relied on The Travels as a guide for his transatlantic journeys.

Nor do we need to rely solely on Columbus himself for confirmation of this. The contemporary Spanish clergyman and historian Andres Bernaldez chronicled the voyage. In one telling excerpt, after going into painful detail on how the riches of the east can be reached by sailing west, the good father gave as his validation, “‘Anyone who wishes to know the truth of this may read it in Mandeville’s book.’”[xvi]

Of course neither Bernaldez nor Columbus were simply parroting the iffy claims of a medieval novelist. First and foremost this is because Mandeville’s claims were no secret. Anyone who could locate a copy could read those same 175 lines on circumnavigation. Columbus’ skill was in marshalling an overwhelming combination of written texts, modern navigational charts, sailors’ yarns, and ancient cartographic clues into a mosaic compelling to even cash-strapped sovereigns (such as Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain).

Still, once discovered, the fact that dog-headed humans were not immediately found did not lessen Mandeville’s appeal to explorers. Part of Mandeville’s residual impact was the fact that Columbus’s discoveries appeared to validate the ancient text – as Bernaldez appears to under-score. Other contemporaries – men unconnected to the Spanish court – also made this connection between Columbus’ discoveries and Mandeville’s claims. Columbus acknowledged this debt – and bolstered his claims – by repeated references to Mandeville. “The earliest Italian letter about Columbus to be preserved intact was written by a Barcelona merchant named Hannibal Zenaro os Januarius to his brother at Milan on April 9, 1493…[included] a slight exaggeration of Columbus’s hearsay report that Sir John Mandeville’s tailed men grew in the Province of Havana… Zenaro’s information was derived from Columbus’s Letter on the First Voyage.”[xvii]

Proof in Mandeville’s insights appear to be found literally in the sky. Perhaps the connection between Mandeville’s guidance on the use of stars, and what could be found on the other side of the Atlantic were the only frame of reference available to these late medieval explorers. For even on his Second Voyage [1493-1494] Columbus relied on Mandeville: “The Admiral wished to pass to the southward and leave these islands [off the Cuban coast, on May 14, 1494] to starboard, but, remembering that he had read that all that sea is full of islands and that Sir John Mandeville says that there are more than five thousand islands in the Indies, he decided to go forward.”[xviii]

Heavy reliance on a single tome was not a flaw unique to the environment that Iberian seafarers or men of the late 15^th century were susceptible to. “It was not just Columbus who turned to The Travels. Many other Renaissance geographers and explorers read Mandeville for practical information about remote areas of the world. Sir Walter Raleigh admits in his book Discoverie of Guiana that although initially skeptical about Mandeville, his own journey forced him to conclude that The Travels was true in every respect: ‘[Mandeville’s] reports were holden for fables many yeeres, and yet since the East Indies were discovered, we find his relations true of such things as heretofore were held incredible.’”[xix]

Another contemporary, Sir Martin Frobischer, “also turned to Mandeville for advice when he set out on on his voyage to discover the North-West passage. Not only did his ship’s library contain a copy of Mercator’s world map…but it also contained a copy of The Travel.”[xx] Raleigh, Frobischer, and several generations of Englishmen (and women – Queen Elizabeth I among them) were driven to seek riches and fame on the other side of the Atlantic after reading Richard Hackluyt’s encyclopedia of England’s greatest explorers: The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation. Mandeville’s “Travels” was accorded pride of place and proof of English prominence in exploration.[xxi]

Clearly then, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville impacted different generations and many prominent European explorers. Yet, for all this, the authorship of the book at that time was unclear. No one knew of any “Sir John Mandeville”. Some thought he was an Englishman; others believed that textual analysis suggested a Frenchman or a Walloon in Liege or at least someone who had studied at the University of Paris. However, tools unavailable until today have enabled a group of modern scholars to credibly pin down authorship of the travelogue.

It sometimes takes a fresh pair of eyes on well-worn facts to uncover new insights. The late Professor John Larner was just such a man. A globally recognized expert of Marco Polo and Columbus, Professor Larner concluded that The Travels of Sir John Mandeville was “the work of Jan de Langhe, a Fleming who wrote in Latin under the name Johannes Longus and [wrote] in French as Jean le Long.”[xxii] Larner tells us that Jan de Langhe was born in Ieper (Ypres) early in the 1300s and by 1334 had become a Benedictine monk at the abbey of Saint-Bertin[xxiii] in St. Omer[xxiv] which was about 20 miles from Calais (and the English Channel). After studying law at the University of Paris, de Langhe returned to the abbey. He presumably was a competent administrator and a man who took his vows seriously for he was elected abbot in 1365. De Langhe was a prolific writer and avid collector of travelogues, right up to his death in 1383.[xxv] It was this collection of travelogues – almost unequalled in Europe at that time – that supplied de Langhe with the material for his Mandeville tale. Unfortunately little is known of the man himself besides these broad facts.

While few details of de Langhe’s life remain for us today, his contribution to the discovery of America is clear. The impact of this book, written by a Flemish monk who never traveled, “gave a whole generation of explorers – men like Columbus who really did discover the world – a justification, both theological and practical, for setting out into the unknown….Most important of all, [the book] provided a motive for financial backers to plough huge sums of money into highly risky ventures.”[xxvi]

Contrary to expectations, it may very well be that de Langhe’s objective in writing The Travels was different than Columbus and others assumed. Ironically, Mandeville’s core message had little to do with exploration and everything to do with Christian concepts of humanism. “His message of tolerance, central to the book’s meaning, was either misunderstood or ignored”[xxvii] by the Age of Discovery explorers.

Today, despite the fact that his travelogue of a fictitious character inspired many to seek a westward, trans-oceanic path to the East, no monument stands to him – east or west. Nor is he cited in textbooks – not even in his native Flanders. Jan de Langhe – or Jan d’Ypres as he is sometimes also known – left little in this world about himself. The abbey that Jan de Langhe presided over (St. Bertin ) is abandoned and in ruins.

Today de Langhe is unrecognized in his home town of Ieper/Ypres. He is unknown in North America and only marginally less obscure in Flanders. That is wrong. It is time the world recognizes the contributions of one Flemish monk who, toiling alone in a quiet monastery in the Flemish countryside, inspired droves of Europeans to strike out across the seas and discover, for Christian Europe, a New World.

Endnotes

[i] Curiously, virtually all of these individuals knew each other personally. Behaim knew Columbus possibly in the Azores and certainly was one of those who rejected Columbus’ petition to King John of Portugal in 1484. Van Olmen knew Behaim and Martellus knew him and Columbus in Lisbon thru Bartholomew Columbus. Vespucci helped outfit Columbus and later stayed in his home. Diaz – who rounded the Cape of Good Hope – was the first to meet Columbus on his famous return from the New World. Columbus, Vespucci, and Cabot were all born in the year 1450 – as was Queen Isabella of Spain. Cabot and Colombus were both Genoese. Thus the lives of famous men (and women) seem to be inexplicably entwined.

[ii] Arthur Davies, “Behaim, Martellus and Columbus”, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 143, No. 3 (Nov., 1977), pp. 451-459. Published by: Royal Geographical Society. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/634713 Accessed May 28, 2011. Davies believes that that source was Bartholomew Columbus, the discoverer’s brother.

[iii] Arthur Davies, “Behaim, Martellus and Columbus”, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 143, No. 3 (Nov., 1977), pp. 451-459. Published by: Royal Geographical Society. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/634713 Accessed May 28, 2011. Davies claims it was printed at Leuven (“Louvain”) between 1485 and 1490 [p.453].

[iv] And not only Columbus. Behaim’s citations on his globe were in 1492. Ponce de Leon in searching for the fountain of youth in 1512 was referencing Mandeville. So to was the English explorer Martin Frobischer on Baffin Island in 1575, Hackluyt in 1589, and even William Shakespeare in “Much Ado About Nothing” and “Othello” in the early seventeenth century. See John Larner, “Plucking Hairs from the Great Cham’s Beard: Marco Polo, Jan de Langhe, and Sir John Mandeville,” pp.133-155, in Marco Polo and the Encounter of East and West, ed., Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Amilcare Iannucci, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), pp. 146-147.

[v] John Larner, “Plucking Hairs from the Great Cham’s Beard: Marco Polo, Jan de Langhe, and Sir John Mandeville,” pp.133-155, in Marco Polo and the Encounter of East and West, ed., Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Amilcare Iannucci, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), p.133.

[vi] As someone married to a Chinese woman, I personally have my doubts about Marco Polo’s actual life in China. He never mentions basic curiosities such as the use of chopsticks. Nor has there ever been found any Chinese official document naming Marco Polo as an official of the Great Khan (as he claimed). Readers interested in delving into this aspect might want to check Frances Wood, Did Marco Polo Go to China?, (London: Seckler & Warbug, 1995). For a counterargument, see http://rspas.anu.edu.au/eah/Marcopolo.html

[vii] Giles Milton, The Riddle and The Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001), p. 3.

[viii] Giles Milton, The Riddle and The Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001), p. 3.

[ix] Some may view my claim as hyperbole but I have sufficient material collected on this subject for a future post. Suffice it to say, that Flemings were at the forefront of the spread of printing not only in the Low Countries but in Spain, Italy and possibly even France. Stay tuned!

[x] Giles Milton, The Riddle and The Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001), p. 3.

[xi] Giles Milton, The Riddle and The Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001), pp. 271-272.

[xii] Giles Milton, The Riddle and The Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001), p. 3.

[xiii] Giles Milton, The Riddle and The Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001), pp. 273.

[xiv] Giles Milton, The Riddle and The Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001), pp. 275.

[xv] Giles Milton, The Riddle and The Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001), pp. 276.

[xvi] Giles Milton, The Riddle and The Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001), pp. 276.

[xvii] Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1942), pp. 376-377.

[xviii] Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1942), pp. 454.

[xix] Giles Milton, The Riddle and The Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001), p. 277.

[xx] Giles Milton, The Riddle and The Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001), p. 277.

[xxi] Giles Milton, The Riddle and The Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001), pp. 277-278.

[xxii] John Larner, “Plucking Hairs from the Great Cham’s Beard: Marco Polo, Jan de Langhe, and Sir John Mandeville,” pp.133-155, in Marco Polo and the Encounter of East and West, ed., Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Amilcare Iannucci, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), p.133.

[xxiii] Abbey of Saint Bertin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbey_of_Saint_Bertin - The Dutch language version is much more thorough: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdij_van_Sint-Bertinus

[xxiv] Saint Omer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Omer. Until the late 19th century St. Omer (or Sint Omaar) was a Flemish language region. Among its other famous sons is Godfrey of St. Omer founder of Knights Templar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfrey_of_Saint-Omer

[xxv] John Larner, “Plucking Hairs from the Great Cham’s Beard: Marco Polo, Jan de Langhe, and Sir John Mandeville,” pp.133-155, in Marco Polo and the Encounter of East and West, ed., Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Amilcare Iannucci, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), p.137.

[xxvi] Giles Milton, The Riddle and The Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001), p. 278.

[xxvii] Giles Milton, The Riddle and The Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001), p. 278.

Copyright 2011 by David Baeckelandt. All rights reserved. No reproduction permitted without my express, written consent.

Franklin’s Flemish Forefathers

Benjamin Franklin, in beaver hat, as depicted in a late 18th century French engraving. The French found his combination of modesty, good manners, and home-spun wisdom a compelling personification of an ideal. It is largely thanks to Franklin that the French entered the Revolutionary War and without their material assistance the American Revolution would have been suppressed.

Benjamin Franklin, as most American schoolchildren quickly learn, is one of America’s “Founding Fathers”. In fact, some history books call him the “first great American”[i]. Authors from Herman Melville to Mark Twain, and Philosophers from Voltaire (who met him) to Max Weber (who studied Protestant contributions to capitalism), cast Franklin as the penultimate American.[ii] Modern commentators have been equally emphatic that Franklin’s “contributions to statesmanship, science, philanthropy, and literature were unrivalled both in his time and in ours[iii].” In the heavily status-conscious society of colonial America, where wealth was almost always founded on heredity and lands, Franklin inherited neither, but died the richest man in America.[iv]

Certainly his greatness is tied up in not only with who he became and what he did but where he came from. Many reckon that they know where he came from geographically: born in Boston, became a Pennsylvanian, lived 33 of his last 35 years in Europe. But what they do not know is that underlying all of this is a secret to his past: Benjamin Franklin was born with Flemish DNA.

Norwich in a 1581 map. At this time the Flemish were the largest non-English component in the city and may have accounted for as many as half of the city's total population. The radical Protestant Flemish refugees helped make Norwich an economically prosperous municipality and the center for the religious dissent that lead the Pilgrims to leave for America.




Norwich, Flanders, and Wool
Like many of the 17th century transplants to English colonies in North America, Benjamin Franklin’s Flemish ancestors came from England’s second largest city, Norwich, in the county Norfolk of East Anglia. This is the region of England closest to the North Sea, and an historic hotbed of religious dissent. It is the birthplace of the Separatist Pilgrims and the Puritans. Norwich is where thousands of Flemish Protestant weavers beginning in the late 1560s finally settled after fleeing in waves from the persecution of the Spanish Duke of Alva .

In the 1560s Flanders heaved with dissent. The volatile mix of repression by the Hapsburg authorities, economic dislocation, and John Calvin’s fiery precepts made for an unstable political situation. In 1566 an iconoclastic outbreak of religious statue-smashing (called “Beeldenstorm” in Dutch) started in Flanders and swept through the entire Netherlands. In desperate reaction, the Hapsburg authorities brought in the Spanish general, the Duke of Alva, to restore order and suppress this outbreak of Protestant fervor. Over the next year an inquisition was installed and those found guilty were imprisoned, banished, and sometimes executed, depending upon the perceived degree of criminality. Historians often mark this point as the spiritual start to the 80 year long Dutch Revolt (1568-1648). But more importantly it laid the groundwork for Franklin’s forefathers to flee to England.

Just at this time economic depression hit East Anglia. In part this was because social unrest in Flanders disrupted economic production, which in turn reduced the demand for wool from England to Flanders. In part it was also because Spanish wool was replacing English as a preferred raw material and equally in part it was because the Flemish in the West Kwartier had created more technologically advanced weaving skills that offered lighter clothing suitable for summer that was more attractive than the scratchy old woolens Norwich’s weavers wove. This new cloth was a manufacture of silk and wool called ‘bombazines’.”[v] When the Pilgrims, fifty years later had learned the technique, it was more commonly referred to as ‘says’ and ‘bays’.


The West Kwartier area of Flanders. This is the region where the most innovative techniques in textile production started and where thehotbed of religious dissent to the Catholic Hapsburgs began in the 1500s. This is also the place where the iconoclasm (Beeldenstorm) began which spread north to the rest of the Netherlands sparking a flood of refugees leaving for England, Holland, Germany and ultimately America.




The production of the Flemish innovation of says and bays devastated the English weaving sector. Town authorities at Norwich were eager to reverse this decline. They enlisted the help of the Duke of Norfolk (a close confidant and relative of Queen Elizabeth I and the Lord of the county that Norwich was in) and her de facto prime minister, William Cecil, and sought out as well the aid of the “Dutch” (really, Flemish) Church in London.[vi] Royal letters patent issued forth on November 5th, 1565 for 24 Flemish (and 6 Walloon) master craftsmen to relocate under favorable conditions to Norwich.[vii] Most of the Flemish in this and subsequent waves came from the city of Ypres (Dutch: Ieper).[viii]





The church in Diss, Norwich where John Folger, Benjamin's great-grandfather, married about 1616, the same time the Pilgrims in Leiden were beginning their plans for emigrating for America and King James was thinking of getting rid of religious dissenters the same way as criminals: exile to distant lands.



Meet the Folgers and the Strangers
Franklin’s ancestors were among these religious refugees. While the details of their actual arrival in Norwich are uncertain, Jan Foulger and his future wife (Elisabeth) were both born there (in 1569 and 1571, respectively). Their son, John Folger (b.1593), and grandson Peter Folger (b.1617) were also born in Norwich and both listed their profession as weavers (a mostly hereditary profession). But although the English authorities welcomed these immigrants with their highly sought after skills they did not make them feel at home. The Flemish immigrants had strict rules to follow in trade, social interactions with their English neighbors, and in worship. Violators were always at risk of expulsion back to Catholic Flanders - or worse.

More specifically, from 1550 on the ‘Strangers’ – as foreigners were then called in England – were required to conduct their worship in their own, segregated churches. They were strictly prohibited from mingling with their English neighbors. But of course over time they did, especially in a place like Norwich where, at any time from 1570 to 1600, they made up between 25% and 50% of all inhabitants. The Folgers (at least initially) likely attended what was known first as the Flemish Church and later as the Dutch Church (for the language spoken there – not for the modern-day national origin).[ix]

The Stranger population in Norwich was: 300 in 1565; 1500 by 1568; 2826 by 1569; and 3,900 by 1571. Records show that 2482 died in the plague of 1578-1579 but the population of Strangers was back up to 4,679 by 1582. By 1620 the numbers were around 4,000 and by 1650 the number of Strangers had dropped (through emigration and assimilation) back down to 1500 souls.[x] When Benjamin Franklin later visited his Norwich cousin, Thomas Folger, a century later, the Folgers were outwardly no different than their English neighbors. They had forgotten Dutch, and instead attended the local parish church and conformed to the local customs.




The Church in Norwich where John Robinson preached before leading the Pilgrims to Leiden in 1607. It is not far from where benjamin Franklin's grandfather lived and is where the "Dutch" Church in Norwich met for services as well as where the Flemish set up Norwich's first printing press.



Leaving Laud
When Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, the sentiment towards and treatment of the ‘Strangers’ worsened. Some fled back across the North Sea to Leiden (English: Leyden) or Middleburgh where Flemish exiles accounted for more than 50% of the population[xi]. Others saw the hope of a better life waiting in the New World. The final push came in the 1630s, when Archbishop Laud tried to force ‘conformity’ on the ‘Stranger’ churches in Norwich, John Folger, reportedly decided to follow his grandparents’ example and flee.


In 1635 John, his son, a controversial half-Flemish preacher by the name of Hugh Peters[xii] (who later would hang for his role during the English Civil War for condoning the regicide of Charles I) and others (including Peter’s servant, Mary Morrill, whom Peter ‘purchased’ for £20, and who later became the 18-year old Peter Folger’s wife in America) boarded the ship ‘Abigail’ for New England. They were part of a great exodus that emptied out the Eastern Counties of England. So much so that later historians claimed 2/3 of all those claiming English descent in America could trace their ancestry from East Anglia.[xiii]

In the New World the Folgers prospered. John (a widower) married Mirabah Gibbs (another Norfolk native). Although we do not know Mirabah’s ancestry, as one historian put it: “Two generations had now passed since the great immigration [from Flanders] to Norwich and by this time a very large proportion of the citizens must have acquired a share” of Flemish DNA.[xiv]

Mirabah’s brother-in-law, the Reverend Thomas Mayhew, was instrumental in settling Martha’s Vinyard in the 1640s. By 1642 John and Mirabah had 5 acres of land in Watertown, MA and two young daughters. When John passed away in 1665 his will excluded his only son Peter, which suggests their relationship may not have been ideal.

Peter himself by that time had moved away to Nantucket and had his own success. Besides a large and thriving family (9 children), Peter kept busy by working as a surveyor, miller, schoolteacher, machinist, blacksmith, eyeglass maker, published author (and poet), interpreter and preacher (sounds a lot like his grandson Benjamin!).

To fulfill his duties as a Baptist preacher – he converted to this very Flemish form of worship (a logical evolution of the Anabaptists) after arriving in the New World – Peter Folger mastered the Wampanoag language to better preach to the native Americans around Nantucket. He espoused religious and ethnic tolerance (in an age of witchcraft trials), demonstrated personal bravery during King Philip’s War (without carrying weapons) and was several times elected to serve as clerk of the court. He was esteemed by his neighbors, jailed for sticking up for the rights of others, respected by the Indians (who called him “white-chief’s old young-man” in recognition of his judiciousness and thoughtful demeanor), and especially adored by his youngest daughter, Abiah.

Peter died in 1690, sixteen years before Benjamin Franklin was born, so they never knew each other. Clearly Abiah treasured her Anglo-Flemish father’s memory and passed it along to her youngest child Benjamin. Naturally, she did so genetically – Benjamin would grow up to embody many of his maternal grandfather’s Flemish traits of modesty, intellectual curiosity, razor-sharp wit, and relentless energy. But she must have also told him tales of her Flemish grandfather since he wrote, in his Autobiography, of Peter Folger’s “decent plainness and manly freedom” as well as Folger’s stories “in the home-spun verse of that time and people”.[xv]



Today Benjamin Franklin’s likeness graces the highest denomination U.S. currency in general circulation (the $100 bill), a mark of official recognition. Franklin’s achievements in science, diplomacy and other areas still stand after centuries. Franklin’s legacy to the establishment of modern democracy as well as the United States is immeasurable. And all this is due to the flight of hard-working Flemish weavers, who fled their homeland with little but a dream for a better life in a new land and the hope to practice their faith that might lead to the afterlife.

What more fitting way, then, to remember the contribution of Benjamin Franklin’s Flemish ancestors than to conclude with the words of his Flemish grandfather:

“Thus, reader, I, in love to all, leave these few lines with thee,
Hoping that in the substance we shall very well agree.”

- Peter Folger, A Looking Glass For the Times, (Nantucket, 1676)






Endnotes

[i] Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), p. 481 quoting Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous 1887 quote.
[ii] Gordon S. Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, (New York: Penguin, 2005), pp.2-8.
[iii] Jill Lepore, “The Creed: What Poor Richard cost Benjamin Franklin” in The New Yorker, January 28, 2008, sourced online at http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/01/28/080128crat_atlarge_lepore?currentPage=all
[iv] Ralph Frasca, “The Emergence of the American Colonial Press”, Pennsylvania Legacies, The Pennsylvania Historical Society, no date, sourced online at http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=864 .
[v] John J. Murray, Flanders and England: The Influence of the Low Countries on Tudor-Stuart England, (Antwerp: Fonds Mercator, 1985), p.152
[vi] K. J. Allison, “The Norfolk Worsted Industry in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries”, Bulletin of Economic Research, Vol 13, No 2, p. 61
[vii] Ibid [viii] Charles Boardman Jewson, Transcript of Three Registers of Passengers From Great Yarmouth to Holland and New England: 1637-1639, (Baltimore: Clearfield Reprint, 1990), p.15
[ix] See letter from Captain Jacques de Hennebert to Lord Walsingham, April 10, 1587, From: 'Elizabeth: April 1587, 1-10', Calendar of State Papers Foreign, Elizabeth: April-December 1587, Volume 21, Part 3 (1929), pp. 1-14. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=75346 Date accessed: 16 January 2009. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=75346
[x] K. J. Allison, op cit, p. 61-62
[xi] See Dr. J. Briels, Zuid-Nederlanders in de Republiek 1572-1630: Een Demografische en Cultuurhistorische Studie (Sint-Niklaas: Danthe, 1985) for the authoritative source on Flemings in the Northern Netherlands.
[xii] Hugh Peters father was also a West Flemish emigrant with the surname of Dyckwoode who married an Englishwoman in Southampton.
[xiii] John Fiske, The Beginnings of New England: or, The Puritan Theocracy and its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1898), p.57
[xiv] Charles Boardman Jewson, op. cit., p.15
[xv] Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin, A Biography, (New York: Bramhall, 1987) reprint of 1938 Viking edition, p.9 quoting Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, no date or publisher cited, pp.231-232.



Copyright 2009 by David Baeckelandt