Now Gerrit van Assendelft, after his wife's death at the hands of the executioners, determined to cut his son Nicolaes out of his inheritance. He had indeed to give his son his "legitimate portion" but why leave to this child of "a woman of poor and humble origin" all his titles and extensive properties? He hit upon the idea of urging and persuading his son to go into the priesthood, and in this he succeeded, with the help of various friends. He then petitioned the Emperor, Charles V, for an "octrooi" - (an authority) - to leave his titles and most of his properties to two of his brothers, and their heirs - on the plea that he wanted to preserve the family titles and the family properties, now that his son had become a priest, and could not therefore help with the inheritance. He received this "octrooi" and made a will, perhaps with a slightly uneasy conscience, first in favour of two of his brothers. Then, when his brothers died before him, he made a new will in favour of two nephews, their children. He died at the age of 70, in 1558, a lonely man in the great house on which he had left his mark by many changes and improvements, and we are told that the great bell of the Grote Kerk rang out dirges in his honour for three days before his burial.
On Gerrit's death, his son Nicolaes upset all the deep laid plans of his father. He sought the Pope's consent to renounce his vows on the ground that he had only joined the priesthood under pressure. This was duly granted and he then proceeded, with considerable success, to lay claim to his father's properties. He married a wife, but he had no children by her. Curiously enough, the two nephews to whom his father had bequeathed his properties and titles also died childless. This did not, however, prevent the development of a terrific family feud. After all, there were a lot of titles and a lot of properties. Nicolaes, and, after his death in 1570, his great nephew Floris, who was his heir, seem to have remained in effective possession of the Westeinde house, but the "have nots" among the Assendelft relatives could not reconcile themselves to this. There were claims and attempted settlements, and finally a tremendous law suit. lt must have been something of a cause célèbre. All the family scandals came out in the evidence, and eventually, in 1645, - 87 years after old Gerrit died - a judgement 130 pages long finally declared old Gerrit's will invalid, and confirmed the co-lateral heirs of his son Nicolaes as the rightful owners of the van Assendelft titles and properties, including the House of Assendelft. This judgement was confirmed on appeal in 1656, 98 years after old Gerrit's death.
And all this happened because of the innkeeper in Orléans who insisted on the young law student Gerrit van Assendelft marrying his daughter, Catherine de Chasseur.
Meanwhile in 1574 the town of Middelburg had fallen to the seige of William the Silent's armies and the States of Zeeland had taken over the properties of the Abbey of Our Lady of Middelburg, including the House of Assendelft. The house itself seems to have been extensively altered, probably by a great-nephew of Nicolaes van Assendelft, and tenure had passed in 1619, to a van Assendelft daughter Anna, widow of Gerald van Renésse van der Aa. But the Renésses do not seem to have lived in The Hague or to have had a close personal interest in the property. lt was rented to various people, the most important of whom was Johan de Witt. lt will be remembered that Johan de Witt was made Grand Pensionary, that is to say, First Minister of the United Provinces, in 1653, at the tender age of 28. Up to that time he had stayed in The Hague, at the Logement van Dordrecht, with the other representatives of the town of his birth, but on becoming Grand Pensionary it was considered desirable for the sake of "dignity" that he should come and live in that great house on the Westeinde, although he had to borrow money from his uncle for the purpose. And so he lived there for two years, from 1653 until 1655, when he married Wendela Maria Bicker, and bought a house of his own on the Kneuterdijk. Then, in 1677 Vrouwe Anna's son, Georg Frederick de Renesse, Lord of Assendelft and Baron of Elderen, sold the house. And the purchaser was the Spanish Ambassador to The Hague, Don Emanuel Francisco de Lyra, in the name of the King of Spain. And so the Huis van Assendelft became the Spanish Embassy. That was, of course, some twenty nine years after the end of the Eighty Years' War. The following year the States of Zeeland granted a fresh fief to confirm the sale. De Riemer's book "Beschrijving van 's-Gravenhage" records that the house in those days had a huge garden stretching out behind it and that indeed the only palace in The Hague with a larger and finer garden was the Noordeinde Palace. De Riemer goes on to describe a huge fountain in the middle of the garden that spouted water high into the air and was fed from a reservoir on the roof of the house. A chapel was built in 1682 behind and to the side of the Embassy house - but although previously, in respect of an earlier Spanish Embassy residence the States of Holland had laid down strict rules to the effect that only the Spanish Ambassador and his family might worship in its chapel, the then Spanish Ambassador clearly had other ideas in the Westeinde because the chapel he built was of considerable proportions. lt must indeed have looked more like a barn than a chapel and it could hold a congregation of 1500 to 1800. lt was very popular among the Catholics in The Hague and some fashionable weddings were celebrated there.
Between 1702 and 1715, during the war of the Spanish succession, the Portuguese Minister occupied the house, in the absence of his Spanish colleague, and this was principally in order to protect the chapel. So much for the chapel. Now to return to the house. In 1754, or by some accounts three years later, the Spanish Ambassador of the day, who was probably Pablo de Barrenechea, Marquès de Puente Fuerte, had the old house pulled down and built the existing Residence. And the strange thing is that, apart from the arms of Philip the Fifth of Spain, which still stand over the archway, there is nothing Spanish about the house. lt seems a typical Dutch town house of the period with French (Louis XV) influence. Experts have suggested that the architect was Pieter de Zwart, a Dutchman, who studied in Paris.
This new building is said to have cost eight tons of gold, or Fls. 800,000, but I find this hard to believe. It seems a fantastjc price for those days.
Then carne the Napoleonic wars and the occupation by Napoleon's armies of both the Netherlands and Spain. In 1811 the house was sold. lt was bought by Petrus Judocus van Oosthuysen, Lord of Rysenburgh, one of the wealthiest men in The Hague and a pious Catholic, who is said to have acquired the house to save the chapel. He did not live in the house, but rented it, probably first to the French Minister, from 1812 to 1822, then to the Danish Minister, Baron de Selby, from 1822 to 1842. Meanwhile, in 1832 the house had been bought by a certain Chevalier de Gilles of Antwerp, who six years later presented it to the Jesuit fathers, who own it to this day. They pulled down the chapel and stables to make way for the existing church of St. Theresa which was completed in 1841, but they never lived in the house which, after twenty years as the Danish Legation, was rented, for another 18 years, from 1843 to 1861 by the Minister of Prussia, Count von Konigsmark.
Then in 1861 Sir Andrew Buchanan, who was British Minister at The Hague, took a lease of the house, probably for a 21-year term, for a rent of Fls. 3,000 a year. This lease has been renewed again and again right up to the present day.
And so Westeinde 12 has a history that is traceable back to 1458. The old house changed hands first by inheritance within the Assendelft family and then passed through marriage to the Renesse family, until it was bought in 1677, by the King of Spain, and became the Spanish Embassy. The existing house, in the 212 years of its existence seems never to have had any other occupant than the head of a diplomatic mission. Few, if any, other houses in the world can match this record. We, the British, have been proud and happy to have the house first as our Legation, and, since the Second World War, as our Embassy for over 105 years. I am the twentieth British incumbent. So far as I know the only other British Residences that can claim a longer occupation are in Paris and Copenhagen. And an interesting coincidence is that the Minister who negotiated the first lease of the Legation in Copenhagen was - Sir Andew Buchanan.
Everyone who has lived in the house en the Westeinde has found it a very pleasant house. Sir Horace Rumbold who was Minister from 1888 to 1896 writes in his memoirs: "The commonplace entrance, up a few stairs under the archway, little prepared one for the really fine proportions of the suite of reception rooms on the ground floor, the main feature of which was a beautiful ballroom nearly forty feet square with a perfect parquet floor, for which, in after years, I would have given a great deal at the wretchedly scamped Embassy House in ball-loving Vienna", and he also writes: "The Legation, which became for us so attractive a home, fully deserves more particular description, being in some respects the most interesting house I ever occupied in the many changes in my career. lt was situated in the old street called Westeinde, or, as its name denotes, the western region of the town, whence, contrary to the tendency observable in other capitals, the tide of wealth and fashion had long set in other directions. A serious drawback to it was its position in this very narrow street which leads out of the picturesque but untidy Groenmarkt, with its busy stalls and the rough market folk who crowd the immediate neighbourhood, while the heavy country carts too often block the way".
Now there have been persistent references over the years to the existence of a ghost in the house. On this Sir Horace Rumbold writes: "upstairs, .... there ran a long dark corridor with a number of good-sized bedrooms, opening onto it on either side, some of which we made as bright and liveable as we could, without, however, entirely succeeding in divesting the passage itself of a depressing gloominess for which it was difficult to account. Vague stories were indeed current of the building being haunted, and the occupants of one room in particular were certainly plagued by vivid nightmares which, through the recurrence in them of the same distinctive features, were singularly akin to spectral visitations. There is, I am told, no doubt that my successor in the house found it advisable to give up using the room in question as a bedroom, and turned it into a boxroom. Be this as it may, we were all of us from the first conscious of an undefinable atmosphere of creepiness and mystery pervading the entire rambling building after dark". "It was only towards the end of my tenancy of it that I became aware of the gruesome and thoroughly authentic tradition attaching to the house, and which, had I known it at the outset, would have more than accounted for the uneasy sense of mystery I have spoken of. I am indebted for the story to M. de Riemsdijk, the Director of the State Archives at The Hague, whose wife was one of the Loudons, a very charming family of Scottish descent. In his searches in the marvellously rich records under his care, M. de Riemsdijk had come upon the complete evidence of a criminal trial that took place at The Hague in the middle of the 16th century, and was closely connected with the Assendelft House."
The ghost, if such there be, is indeed none other than that of Catherine de Chasseur, the French girl from Orleans, whose unhappy story I have already told.
The suggestion that the spirit of Catherine de Chasseur comes back to the house where she was once happy can hardly be correct, because her relations with her husband Gerrit in the old house must always have been difficult. But at least she enjoyed a rank and prestige in the house which she could never otherwise have known, and perhaps that could still mean a great deal to her restless spirit. Besides she had reason to be anxious about the fate of her son, Nicolaes.
Actually, the first known reference to a ghost comes in a letter to Johan de Witt from his sister Johanna. lt was Johanna who took on the task of getting the house ready for her brother when he came to live there in 1653. On August 16 of that year she wrote to him from Dordrecht for advice: the girl she had engaged as kitchen maid, Grietien, was unhappy at the prospect of sleeping alone in the house 'because she had heard tell that it was haunted', and Johanna asked whether Grietien might spend the night with Juffrouw Verbies or Moije de Veer. This is at least strong evidence that our ghost was not imported from England.
What manifestations there may have been in the years that follow, I do not know - that is, up to the time of Sir Horace Rumbold, whom I have already quoted. lt is a pity that Sir Horace does not specify which room was the one in which sleepers had "vivid nightmares which were singulariy akin to spectral visitations", but it seems very possible that it may have been the small room at the end of the passage, over the archway. lt would also be interesting to know what form those nightmares took.
The next reference to the ghost of which I am aware comes from a book by Meriel Buchanan, the daughter of Sir George Buchanan, who was Minister in The Hague from 1908-1910. Miss Buchanan gets most of the story wrong but makes this comment: "two maids in succession left us, complaining that somebody, or something, had tried to pull the covers off their bed in the middle of the night. I once - although this may have been imagination - experienced the same sensation. Although when I turned on the light no-one was there, I thought I heard the rustle of a dress, as if someone had hurriedly left the room". From then on there are a succession of stories, but they are not recorded in print, and this makes it difficult to check up on them. Besides, when stories are passed around by word of mouth they change in the telling for better or for worse. There are many references to "watery manifestations", which could be links with the way Catherine de Chasseur died. We can speak with more authority of the time when Sir Odo Russell was Minister here, from 1928-33. During his time there were many manifestations or indications of the presence of a kind of Poltergeist, - doors that opened, things taken from drawers and scattered around the floor, water lying about in unexpected places, and taps turned on. The Russell children had no doubt whatever about an unseen presence in that small room at the end of the passage, already described. This was known, at that time, as the train room, because the youngest of the children, David, had his toy trains there. Eventually one day young David, alone in that room, was quite certain that the "presence" was between him and the door. He finally made good his escape, but he never wanted to play trains there again. And the most remarkable manifestation of all occurred one evening in the dining room when the table was ready for a large dinner party and suddenly, just before 8 o'clock, water poured from the ceiling, falling exactly in the place where the hostess was to sit. The table itself had to be removed hurriedly to the ballroom, and re-set, but the strangest thing of all was that afterwards there was no sign of water damage to the ceiling.
There is a persistent story that after this, the ghost was exorcised "by bell, book and candle", but this does not seem to have been the case. However, the rooms in which manifestations took place were blessed on each occasion by a priest, and as a result the perturbed spirit seems to have found at least temporary rest.
Then in the time of Sir Paul Mason (1954-60) his small son Will once saw a lady with her head covered, walking down the upstairs passage which Sir Horace Rumbold found to be "of a depressing gloominess", and no explanation was ever found for her appearance. Then an English girl living with the Masons was alone one night in the house, and taking a bath in the bathroom on the Westeinde side of the passage, with the Mason's corgi dog, an inveterate barker, for company. She suddenly saw the corgi crouched back, all hackles up, dead quiet and obviously frightened, and at the same time she heard footsteps and saw the handle of the bathroom door turn. The door was locked, there was no sound of footsteps going away, and when she was sufficiently brave to unlock the door, there was nothing to be seen.
Have we seen the lady ourselves? That is not easy to answer. One evening while my wife and I were sitting at dinner something shadowy seemed to pass between us. I saw what looked like a waving line of smoke which moved slowly across the table. My wife did not notice anything and I cannot offer any logical explanation for it. lt could have been the misty outline of a full and flowing dress.
Curiously enough, our butler, Brinkman, who has now been at the Embassy for 39 years also believes that he once saw the ghost, and when my wife asked him next morning what it was that he had seen, Brinkman, not knowing about my experience, said "a shadowy figure with a grey and smoky skirt".
And now, to round off the Embassy story I will mention some Royal occasions. There may well be others, but I have not traced them. The first, indeed, is almost certainly not connected with this house because it concerns a dinner given to Charles II in The Hague by the then Spanish Ambassador in 1660, that is to say, seventeen years before the old Westeinde house became the Spanish Embassy. But it is such an interesting story that I feel justified in telling it. My source is the journal by Adriaen Vlak concerning the passage through Holland of Charles II from the 25th of May to the end of June 1660. King Charles was, of course, on his way back to England for the Restoration of the monarchy on the collapse of Cromwell's Commonwealth.
The Spanish Ambassador of the day, Don Estevan de Gamarra, went to meet the King at Moerdijk on his way northwards on the 24th of May. lt was an unusual thing for the Spanish Ambassador to do, but it was a friendly gesture - an act of courtesy which might help to restore a favourable atmosphere after the difficult days of Cromwell. Besides the Ambassador had met the King in Brussels and had stayed with the King's two brothers. The meeting seems to have been very friendly, yet en the day of His arrival in The Hague the King rather upset the Spanish Ambassador's social arrangements. The Ambassador had arranged a lunch party including the Marquess of Ormond, Lord St. Germain, the Duke of St. Albans and others, but the King insisted on all these worthy people going to lunch with Him instead. However, the King made up for this by going to dinner at the Spanish Embassy the next evening with a very impressive following, including the Queen of Bohemia, the Prince of Orange and the Princess Royal. Adriaen Vlak's journal describes the scene: "The table was laid in the ballroom, one of the biggest in the whole of The Hague, and it was one of the most splendid repasts ever given by a private person. There were two great dishes of fish, or rather monsters of the deep, as well as soups and entrées and such a quantity of dried and preserved fruits that all the distinguished guests went away well filled."
We can imagine that this banquet, this diplomatic "scoop", and the jealousy of the Spanish Ambassador's colleagues, were the talk of the town for days afterwards. But what about my own predecessor of those days, Mr. Downing by name? Well, of course, he was in a pretty difficult position, because he had been the representative of Oliver Cromwell, now dead, whose son Richard had gone into exile. He had, however, been kept on by the Rump Parliament as Minister Extraordinary. Mr. Downing had not, of course, been invited to the Spanish Ambassador's dinner, but he turned up at midnight at the Spanish Embassy bringing a letter of recommendation to the King from General Monck. This strikes me as the act of a man armed with the courage of despair; but his courage was rewarded. The King accepted his gesture of loyalty and, indeed, knighted him a few days later. In Vlak's words, the King "wanted men to believe that the intense dislike which Downing had repeatedly shown towards Him, right up to a few days before the whole of England had gone solidly over to the King, was not motivated by evil intentions, but by the necessity of hiding his true feelings, for fear of compromising the plans of His Majesty".
King Charles stayed in the Mauritshuis while in The Hague and a contemporary print shows him at a dinner party there. Another print records another party at the Noordeinde Palace.
I do indeed have a justification for bringing Charles II into this talk, because we have just received on loan a portrait of Charles II which now hangs in the dining room of the Embassy. lt is the property of Mr. Victor Montagu, formerly the Earl of Sandwich, who recently gave up that title, and it has an interesting history. lt was given by Charles II to Mr. Montagu's ancestor, Admiral Edward Montagu, the first Earl of Sandwich, patron and benefactor of Samuel Pepys, in recognition of his services in the events leading up to the Restoration. (The King also rewarded the Admiral with the Order of the Garter). The portrait is by a Dutch artist Simon Luttichuijs and it arrived in England en the 25th of November, 1660. That very day Lord Sandwich showed it to Samuel Pepys who made this entry in his diary: ...."the King's picture which was done in Flanders, that the King did promise my Lord before he ever saw him, and that we did expect to have had at sea before the King came to us; but it came but to-day, and indeed it is the most pleasant and the most like him that ever I saw picture in my life".
I will digress to say a little more about that man George Downing, one of my less attractive predecessors. For he came back to Holland in 1671 as Minister, but he was so unpopular that he had to flee for his life three weeks later, a diplomatic failure that earned him a brief imprisonment in the Tower of London. Pepys, who had worked briefly for him, describes him in his Diary as "a stingy fellow, a perfidious rogue - and full of servility, treachery and avarice". Clearly he did not like him any more than the Dutch did. But it is after him that Downing Street is named!
But to come nearer to the present day, in 1932, in the time of Sir Odo Russell, the Prince of Wales came on a visit to Holland and stayed at the Embassay, probably sleeping in what is now called the Churchill Room, because Churchill slept there in 1948. There was a hall at the Embassy that night, to which Prince Hendrik also came, and next night there was dinner and dancing at the Restaurant Royal, at which the time passed so quickly that the Prince of Wales nearly missed the night boat at Hook of Holland.
On the day of the Coronation of our Queen Elizabeth II (June 2, 1953), when Sir Nevile Butler was Ambassador in The Hague, the heads of the six Commonwealth Embassies in The Hague, as joint hosts, celebrated the occasion with a dinner in the Ball Room, which Queen Juliana graciously attended, as well as the Prime Minister Dr. Drees.
When Queen Elizabeth II came herself to Holland on a State Visit in 1958 she did not come to the Embassy, but went instead to the Canadian Embassy because the Canadian Ambassador was at that time the senior CommonweaIth Representative. But the Grote Kerk, which towers above us, and whose great bell had sounded dirges for Gerrit van Assendelft 492 years earlier, pealed out its carillon throughout the day in The Queen's honour.
Four years ago, my predecessor, Sir Adrew Noble, gave a hall to celebrate the 100th anniversary of this house as the British Legation or Embassy and Her Majesty Queen Juliana and Their Royal Highnesses Prince Bernhard, Princess Beatrix and Princess Irene honoured this ball with their presence.
And in May of last year my wife and I gave a dinner for Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon when they came to Holland for the British Week in Amsterdam. Princess Beatrix was unfortunately prevented by illness from attending and Princess Margriet was good enough to take Her place at short notice.
But I would like to end with a story taken, once again, from the memoirs of Sir Horace Rumbold, whose mission in The Hague covered the last years of the reign of King William III, and the accession of Queen Wilhelmina at the age of 10. One day a messenger came from the Palace with the following invitation addressed to Lady Rumbold. The invitation was in French but I translate it into English: "By order of the Queen Regent, Mlle, van de Poll requests Lady Rumbold to allow her son Hugo to come and play with Her Majesty The Queen". Sir Horace Rumbold comments that, according to the accounts brought back by the boy thus privileged to be one of Her playmates, the Iittle Queen, while the most gracious of hostesses, could be the greatest of romps".