1920 DUTCH MISSIONS TO ENGLAND IN 1689 537 in an autobiographical fragment written in 1711, has happily survived.^ It is perhaps unfortunate that Witsen's version of the negotia- tions has been so well expressed and so often repeated by later historians. His point of view, in spite of his personal shrewdness and patriotism, is a special and, one might almost say, an interested point of view. He was an Amsterdammer, a typical member of the oligarchy of regents, a merchant and a shipowner, so that his attitude was bound to be different from that of the king's own circle, and may have had bad points of which no record has come down to us. For the other records are defective. On the Dutch side there are the bare reports to the states general and the griffier, the rather fuller letters to Heinsius, and nothing more. On the English there is very little material of any kind.^ Normally the main authority would have been the official papers of the secretary of state for the northern department, Lord Nottingham, who was also the chief of the commissioners who treated with the Dutch, Neither in the Record Office nor among the manuscripts of Mr. A. G. Finch, which include many of Nottingham's official papers, is any valuable material of this kind to be found.^ Between the two sides of the negotiations are the occasional references in the letters of William,* and the notes, mostly on personal points, made by one of William's secretaries, Constantijn Huygens the Younger, in his diary. But on the whole Witsen has it very much his own way. He begins very soon to think that the diplomatic arrangements
- The official collective report is the ' Verbaal der Extraordinaris Ambassadeurs '
(Leg. 811, The Hague), giving copies of the dispatches with short summary report. Transcripts of the dispatches are in Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 17677 II. Witsen's letters to the Amsterdam burgomasters have been printed in P. Scheltenia^yAmstels Oudheid, vols, iv and v (the originals are in the Gemeente-Archief, Amsterdam : Arch. Burg. Diplom. Miss. S. II, 5 and 6), and in vol. vi of the same work is his autobiographic "^,1 paper of 1711. Of his lost ' Verbaal' an eighteenth-century summary with short extracts is given in J. Scheltema, Geschied- en Letterkundige Mengelwerk, dl. Ill, 2 stuk (Utrecht, 1823), to which some additions may be made from Wagenaar, Vad. Hist., bk. 61, ch. vi, and Sirtema de Grovestins, Guillaume III et Louis XIV, vi. 161-3, both of whom knew the original. His letters to Heinsius as pensionary of Holland and private holographs to him, along with those of Dijkveld, are in the papers of Heinsius (I a) at The Hague. A few selections are given by H. J. van der Heim, Het Archief van den Baadpensionaris Antonie Heinsius, vol. i (The Hague, 1867).
- A few formal instruments are to be found in Foreign Entry Book 69 (Record
Office) and Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 34340, ff. 43, 58. The communications received from Dutch ministers, ambassadors, &c., are in State Papers, Foreign, Foreign Ministers 21 (Record Office).
- I have to thank the editor of the publications of the Historical Manuscripts
Commission for his permission to make this observation about the forthcoming second volume of these papers, and Mrs. S. C. Lomas for much kind help in this matter.
- Archives de la Maison cP Orange-Nassau, 3rd series, vol. i.
