Going Dutch_ How England Plundered Holland's Glory - Lisa Jardine [120]
In any case, it is Moray who is urging Bruce to take an active interest in the new pendulum clocks, which he himself clearly understands a good deal about already. And Bruce soon had ample occasion to follow his friend’s advice.
The following year, in 1659, Alexander Bruce married Veronica van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck, daughter of Cornelis van Aerssen, Heer van Sommelsdijck, the wealthiest man, and one of the most politically prominent, in the United Provinces, and set up home in The Hague. The van Aerssens were a distinguished diplomatic family, who had served the house of Orange for three generations. They were neighbours of the Huygenses in het Plein, the smartest quarter of The Hague, close to the Mauritshuis.18 On the eve of the Restoration of Charles II, Bruce – now the Earl of Kincardine – became an extremely rich and influential man in Holland, and a family friend of one of the most celebrated horologists in Europe. He retained his Scottish rank and position also – Samuel Johnson’s friend and biographer James Boswell was a direct descendant.
From Moray’s correspondence we learn that Alexander Bruce and Christiaan Huygens began working on clocks together almost as soon as they met. In early 1660 Moray (now in Paris, probably helping negotiate the terms of the return to the English throne of Charles II), wrote responding to a description of this work by Bruce:
If all Mr Zulicom’s addition to his invention be no more but the making of a clock of the size that the pendule beats the seconds, that is every stroak takes up a second, I do not considder that of all. For I know the pendule must be about a yard long to do that, and it is believed here that all the church clock’s in The Hague are made after his way, so that they ever strike all at once, for so it hath been said here to our Queen [Henrietta Maria]. I have not seen his book, nor think it can be bought here. therefore think of sending me one. If you recommend it to Sir Alexander Hume19 and bid him send it by some of the Earl of St Albans’s servants it will come safe. If I see him here I will talk to him of his perspective glasses, and mean to make my court with him upon your account.20
So Moray and Huygens had still not met, though Moray was intent on their doing so, to discuss lenses and telescopes, and in order that he might ‘make [his] court’ on Bruce’s account.
In summer 1660, Sir Robert Moray returned to London, where he was given a senior Scottish appointment in the new government of Charles II, and became part of the close inner circle of courtiers, with lodgings within Whitehall Palace itself.21 By now Bruce has ordered a Huygens-designed clock for Moray, at his own expense, the delivery of which Moray was eagerly awaiting:
I am well pleased with Mr Zulicem’s ordering of my clock. Let it be so, and I will thank him when I see him. I have not time now to talk of that curiosity you mention,22 but where people think it needless and that those watches are best that have the pendule fast to the axeltree that hath the two pallets,23 but I am not yet of their mind, nor for that advantage he speaks of in the stoppers24 you mention. I shall onely say more of this that if the watch do not mark the inequality of the days, it goes not equally.25
Alexander Bruce and his Dutch wife, meanwhile, settled into a well-to- do international lifestyle which involved moving between the family home in The Hague, London, and Bruce’s family home (and coalmines) at Culross (Fife) in Scotland.26 In 1668, for example, Veronica’s mother, in a letter to Constantijn Huygens congratulating him on the marriage of his son Constantijn junior, tells him that she is currently staying