RKD STUDIES

The West End was the ideal location for John van Collema’s retail premises, close to his customer base, but it was inconvenient for the trading hub of the City of London. This was where most merchants lived, concentrated in the Candlewick and Walbrook wards, close to the wharves where their goods were unloaded. However, John van Collema was almost certainly not acting alone. His close ties with two prominent City-based Anglo-Dutch merchant families, the Van Hattems (alternative spelling Van Hatten) and the Davalls, suggest that Van Collema was simply the retail front of a large network of merchants, from whom he acquired his stock. John van Hattem was a London-based Dutch merchant specialising in wine imports.¹ It is not known when he arrived in England, but he was granted denization in 1681 and naturalisation in 1685.² His wife Lydia was also from a family of Anglo-Dutch merchants. She was the sister of Sir Thomas Davall I (1644-1712), who was born in Amsterdam and specialised in the Levant and/or eastern Mediterranean trade [18].³ He was knighted in 1683 and served as MP for Harwich from 1695 to 1708. The link between the van Hattem and Davall families was cemented further in 1712 when John and Lydia van Hattem’s daughter Lydia Catherine (known as Catherine) (1692/3-1750) married her first cousin Thomas Davall II (1682-1714), son of Thomas I and his wife Rebecca Burr (dates unknown), herself the daughter of an Anglo-Dutch merchant.⁴ The marriage, however, was short lived, as Thomas II died in 1714, followed by the deaths of their two infant sons in 1714 and 1718. In 1736, Lydia Catherine remarried to James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos (1673-1744), thus attaining the highest rank of the nobility [19].⁵

Van Collema was connected to the van Hattems and Davalls through his marriage to Anne (or Anthoneta) van Hattem (c. 1667-1725) on 9 January 1691.⁶ However, it seems likely that the marriage took place as a consequence of his friendship with John van Hattem, rather than vice versa. They were married by special licence in Canterbury (rather than by banns in the bride’s home parish, as was customary), implying that Anne had just crossed the Channel, and John had travelled to Kent to meet her – in other words, that a van Hattem bride had been sent over from the Dutch Republic, to cement Van Collema’s existing personal and professional relationship with the Van Hattem family.

Van Collema’s association with the Van Hattems was much more than a connection by marriage; it was a close relationship with three generations of the family that extended over five decades. He and his wife were beneficiaries of John van Hattem’s will (wherein he was described as ‘my cozen’), and when his widow Lydia van Hattem died nine years later, Van Collema was called on to confirm the authenticity of her handwriting in her unwitnessed will, made in haste ‘in a great storm of Lightning and Thunder’.⁷ He declared ‘that he knows and was well acquainted with Mrs Lydia Van Hattem of the Parish of Allhallows the Great London Widow lately deceased for above thirty years before and to the time of her death she being related to the deponent by marriage’.⁸ This would place their first acquaintance to around 1690, shortly before Van Collema’s marriage to Anne van Hattem. In return, John van Collema stood as godfather to John and Lydia van Hattem’s grandson, John van Hattem junior (1725-1787), and at his death, Lydia Catherine, Duchess of Chandos (née van Hattem) was the principal beneficiary of his will.⁹ By then a wealthy widower, with no surviving children, Van Collema left her the dividends of £5,000 of South Sea Annuities and Stock for the duration of her lifetime, to be administered by the elders of the Dutch Church.¹⁰ She was also appointed one of the executors of his will, which was witnessed by Joseph Briscoe (dates unknown) and Dorothy Randolph (dates unknown), Lydia Catherine’s lawyer and housekeeper respectively.

These convoluted connections are significant because they underscore the closeness of the relationship between Van Collema and the Van Hattems, in which their personal ties were almost certainly the counterpart of their entwined business interests. Whilst the details of Van Collema’s business dealings with the Van Hattems and Davalls are unknown, it is likely that he sourced his stock through one or both of these interconnected families. Although John van Hattem principally imported wine (port and sherry), he may have diversified into the East India trade. Jones noted that wine merchants often ventured into this area, since their Iberian connections gave them access to the bullion from the Spanish and Portuguese American colonies that underpinned trade with the Far East, where there was little appetite for European manufactures.¹¹ The EIC held a monopoly on English trade east of the Cape of Good Hope, but nevertheless, individuals within the company (known as supercargoes) brought back private consignments on company ships. There was also an illicit trade on non-company ships. Van Hattem was not among a list of interlopers (illegal incursions into the East India trade) recorded in the 1680s, but this may simply mean that he was not caught.¹² There were also Dutch-based Van Hattems working in the East India trade, who may have brought back private cargoes (though Van Hattem was a common Dutch surname and they may not be related). A Willem van Hattem (dates unknown) was listed as a VOC crew member on a voyage to Batavia (now Jakarta, the principal Dutch trading port of the East Indies) in 1696-1697, while Jan van Hattem (dates unknown) of Utrecht served as a VOC crew member on a voyage to Batavia in 1712 [20].¹³ It is possible that the Dutch branch of the Van Hattem family were re-exporting their India wares to London, where there they could be more profitably sold by Van Collema. Whilst the clandestine and informal nature of illegal imports and supercargoes leaves no paper trail, it is highly likely that Van Collema sourced his India goods from Dutch merchant ships, either through, or in partnership with, the Van Hattems.

18
Jacob Knijff
Ships in a the bay of a Levantine harbour

19
Herman van der Mijn
Portrait of James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos (1674-1744), before 1726
London (England), National Portrait Gallery, inv./cat.nr. NPG 530

20
Jeronimus Becx (II)
Coats of arms of the VOC and Batavia, dated 1651
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. SK-A-4643

Van Collema may also have had preferential access to EIC imports through the Davall family. Sir Thomas Davall I was a major investor in overseas funds. By 1689, he owned £3700 of EIC stock, and in December 1691 he offered security for £4300 of EIC stock.¹⁴ He was also a Commissioner taking subscriptions to the South Sea Company in 1711 (along with James Brydges, later Duke of Chandos and husband of Lydia Catherine), which may be when Van Collema acquired all or part of his £5000 of stock. That he was considered ‘very wealthy’ at his death suggests that he was not badly affected by the ‘South Sea Bubble’ market crash of 1720. Van Collema’s large holding of South Sea Annuities marks him as a major investor in the slave trade, the company principally being formed to finance the transport of enslaved people from Africa to the Americas, which it subcontracted to the Royal Africa Company. These EIC connections may have secured Van Collema first pick of the stock at, or ahead of, the company’s India goods auctions.

Not all India goods merchants in London were Dutch – Mary Dewett, Jane Potter and Peter Motteux were English and French respectively – but it is probably not a coincidence that two leading merchants were Dutch.¹⁵ Besides Van Collema, the other was his principal rival, Solomon de Medina. As the first Jew to be knighted in Britain, De Medina has received some scholarly attention.¹⁶ Born c. 1650 in Bordeaux to parents of Sephardi Iberian origin, he moved to Middleburg in 1656 and thence to Amsterdam, where he trained as a merchant. Moving to England in 1670, De Medina remained in the country for 30 years, trading India goods, coal and silver, as well as servicing William III’s army with supplies and loans.¹⁷ De Medina was a shareholder in the EIC, from which he sourced some of his stock, but he also traded with the Dutch branch of his family, his brother Joseph de Medina & Son. The connections to the EIC/VOC and cross-channel networks that Van Collema and De Medina enjoyed were important contributors to their success as India goods merchants.