Poppo, the son of Radbod, who succeeded him in governing Friesland, was killed in 750 in a battle with Charles the Hammer, who established at Utrecht the famous episcopate of which Saint Willebrordus was the first

1 Ecusson: un ccrf sauiant guardant dans line clairere d’une foret noire. Citnier: la tete d’un cerf guardant. Lambrequin: de sinople et d’argent . Vide: Frontispiece.

(end p.4)

bishop. Saint Bonifacius, his episcopal successor, in order to enlarge the bounds of his bishopric, sedulously applied himself to bring the Frisians under the domination of the church. The unwillingness of the people to be converted caused much bloodshed, for many were slaughtered by those attempting to make them tractable to the yoke of ecclesiastical authority. While endeavoring to advance by force of arms the propagation of his faith among them, Saint Bonifacius heroically met a martyr’s death at the hands of the resolute Frisians at Dokkum, about nine English miles northeast of the site of the manor of Zwartewoude.

Under Charlemagne, 768-814, Friesland was governed by counts and dukes appointed by the illustrious German emperor. Conrad, the ambitious Bishop of Utrecht, in February, 1088, obtained ecclesiastical control, by letters patent, of the counties of Oostergoo and Westergoo. The title to this territory was abrogated by Lothaire 11., who, in 11 25, succeeded to the throne of Germany. Considering it to have been acquired by unlawful means, he transferred the two counties, and the section entitled the Seven Forests (which three divisions comprised the territory then known as Friesland), to his nephew, Theodore VI., the twelfth earl of Holland and Zealand, and lord of Friesland.

The persistency of the valorous Frisians in freeing themselves from subjection to foreign rulers was signally rewarded in the year 141 7, when a charter confirming their political independence was given them by Sigismund 11., Emperor of Germany. Thereafter, for many years, unvexed by war, they peacefully planted and reaped, enlarged their barns and built themselves more comfortable dwellings, and wisely administered the affairs of their provincial government.

The selection of the Netherlands originally so uninviting because of their sombre forests, impassable morasses, extensive infertility, and extremely humid climate, for permanent habitation by men who elsewhere might have had more agreeable and healthful surroundings —is strangely inexplicable. The persistency with which they and their descendants labored and contributed the means to change the cheerless aspect of the inhospitable land and render its waste places arable and salubrious, as also the manner in which they debarred the North Sea, by immense dikes and massive dams, from destructively inundating the low country, are distinctly stupendous and unparalleled. Any one considerately viewing the stirring1 traffic of its great cities, the countless steamships and sailing craft crowding its ports and waterways, the rare and costly art-relics of its famous museums, the many well-paved highways of the rural districts, the striking productiveness of the sedulously-cultivated farms, the multiplicity of the serviceable wind-mills, the innumerable herds of grazing kine, the frequent villages with lofty-towered churches, cannot

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THE SWARTWOUT CHRONICLES.

but perceive with amazement the effect of the initiallabor and enterprise of the early inhabitants.

The chief and most woful of the many afflictions besetting the early inhabitants of the Netherlands was the frequent flooding of the country by the North Sea. Lacking the means to build costly dikes to check the invasive floods, they not only often lost all the property which they had slowly acquired through long years of provident industry, but many were drowned in attempting to cross impassable and impetuous streams to reach unsubmerged ground. The following translated excerpta from one of the histories of the country summarily describe the calamities consequent upon these once-frequent inundations”:

Hereafter our ancestors enjoyed a rest until the great flood in January, in the year 1164, when the whole of Friesland and parts below it were dreadfully damaged ; the flood being general, the number of men that was killed by it was estimated as being over a hundred thousand. Our region was shortly thereafter visited by an amazing drought in 1285, and by a frightful inundation in 1287, by which, between the rivers Eems and Lauwer alone, twenty thousand men were killed.”1

At the beginning of the eleventh century there lay between the rivers Eems and Lauwer, at the confluence of the rivers Aa and Hunze, about thirty-five English miles eastward of the manor of Zwartewoude, a great meadow, which on account of the vivid beauty of its verdure obtained the name of Groene Inge (Green Meadow), which in the course of time was corrupted into Groningen.

The origin of the prosperous city, the capital of the province of the same name, now widely extending its numerous and cleanly-kept streets over the outer area of the verdurous lea, is obscure. The information extant respecting the beginning of the place is exceedingly meagre. Nothing, itseems, is known of the existence of Groningcn prior to the year 1006. Itis titled VillaGroninga” in a Latin gift-deed presented, in 1040, to the church of Utrecht, by Henry 111., Emperor of Germany. The prosperity of the place being evidently assured, and the inhabitants finding, in the year 1110, that the fence of palisades, with which it had long been surrounded, was either too low or too insecure, they removed it and encircled the city with a high stone wall, massive towers, strong gates, and a deep ditch. Gondebald, Bishop of Utrecht, fearing that the people might thereafter hold his ecclesiastical authority in contempt, as the wall had been built without his consent, induced the citizens two years later to pull it down.

1 Tcgenwoordigc staat dcr Vereenigdc Nedcrlandcn. Stad en Lande. Amsterdam, 1793. Twintigste

dec!, pp. 40, 85.

MAP OF GRONINGEN AND THE SURROUNDING DISTRICTS, 1793.
(Sorry, no map at this time.)

7

THE SWARTWOUT CHRONICLES.

Groningen was not again rendered defensible until 1255, when the construction of another stone wall around it was undertaken. The circuit of the place was then estimated to be about two and a half English miles.

About the year 1334, the Ommelandcrs or country-people of Friesland became antagonistic to the interests of the town-people, and an open war with the people of the city of Groningen ensued, in which the inhabitants of the rural districts, principally those of Hunsingo, Fivelgo, Langewold, Vredewold, Drenthe, and the Eight Parishes, participated. The Gronino-enburehers at first twice defeated the combined forces of their antaoonists, but in a third engagement they themselves were worsted. The struggle thereafter was indifferently prolonged until the contestants consented to have an arbitration commission appointed to settle their differences. Thereupon a body of ecclesiastical dignitaries and distinguished laymen 1 was selected to render decisions for the settlement of the disagreements existing between the people of Frisia and those of the city of Groningen.

The Latin text of the unique decree, published on the festival of Saint Paul, June 30, 1338, is engrossed on a scroll of parchment, twenty inches wide and ten long, in the lower border of which slits were made for attaching the seals of the eight districts designated in the instrument. The valuable document is carefully preserved in the Government or Old Archive (Rijks of Oud-Arc/u’ef’), a fire-proof building behind the Province-house (/let Provincie/iuis), opposite but back of Saint Martin’s Church, in Groningen. Written as it was a century and more before the art of printing by movable type became serviceable for the publication of books, the antique method of abbreviating words and of punctuating sentences is curiously exemplified in the remarkably legible text.

The residence of Otto Swartewold, at that time in the district of Drenthe, in Friesland, lying south of the city of Groningen, and about thirty English miles southeast of the site of Zwartewoude, was probably caused by a marriage contracted by him there, or by an inclination to attempt the betterment of his fortune in that locality, which was only a day’s journey from the family manor. It may be well to remark that a beginning of the Dutch way of spelling the family name is evident in his writing it Swartewold, for he omits using the German adjective schwarz and adopts the Dutch adjective swartc while retaining the ancient Teutonic substantive.

Otto Swartewold was undoubtedly a man of marked integrity as well as of considerable intellectual ability, since he was selected one of the number of arbi1

“De talri/ke hooge geestelijkcn en lecken” (the numerous high ecclesiastics and laymen)

Wandelingen door het oude Groningen. vi. Door Mr. J. A. Fcith, Rijksarchivaris in Groningen. Jaar boejke voor Geschicdenis, Taal-en Letterkunde der provincie Groningen. 1895, p. 89.

8

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