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employer – he wrote in his diary: ‘miserere populi hujus et mei, o Magnus Deus’ (’have mercy upon this people and upon myself, o Great God’). So by the time Anne did embark on her European tour in 1653, Huygens had yet stronger motivation for persuading her to spend some time in The Hague, frequenting the courts of Amalia and the Princess Royal, and performing for the city’s élite. Huygens and Anne’s father had kept in close touch during the intervening five years, and had formed a professional relationship. Just as painters were happy to secure the continuing favour of their clients and patrons by supplying them with works by other artists, la Barre acted as agent for Huygens, commissioning and procuring sought-after state-of-the-art musical instruments for him in Paris. These were shipped from France via Gasper Duarte in Antwerp, to add to the collection of fine instruments Huygens had boasted of to la Barre’s daughter.

The la Barres did indeed eventually break their journey to Sweden at The Hague. As he had promised, Constantijn Huygens entertained Anne and her accompanying family members in his own home, ‘so that I am able to see her often, as far as my official responsibilities allow’. And true to his word, he recommended Anne enthusiastically whenever he had the opportunity, penning several eulogistic poems to her musical prowess, and preparing the way for her rapturous welcome at the court of Queen Christina, where the la Barres stayed for a year. ‘Amarinthe [Anne],’ he wrote, ‘is admired and cherished here as she deserves’:

The Queen of Bohemia [Elizabeth] and her royal niece [Princess Mary Stuart] cannot get enough of her, and for the first time Madame la Princesse Mere [Amalia van Solms, widow of Stadholder Frederik Hendrik] attended a gathering which included the Queen [the exiled Henrietta Maria of England]. There that illustrious young singer had a solemn audience, at which she was a marvellous success.19

This meant, of course, that by the time the la Barres continued on their way, their stories of sophisticated musical soirées in The Hague, where the Princess Royal, her mother-in-law and her aunt all participated as ‘a solemn audience’, gratifyingly spread the word that all was continuing to prosper with the houses of Stuart and Orange in the United Provinces.

Music featured prominently in the masques and ballets which were a regular feature of the soirées and entertainments of the courts at The Hague, particularly as encouraged and patronised by Elizabeth of Bohemia. Spectacular combinations of theatre, elaborate scenery, song (solo and choral), dance and orchestral accompaniment, they were occasions for competition between royal patrons.

In 1624, the young Sir Constantijn Huygens himself wrote a verse introduction to a ‘ballet’ performed before Elizabeth, in which ‘Amor’ and a series of suitors played poetic court to the exiled Queen.20 Such entertainments were popular at the English and French courts also, and by the 1650s the English exiles were vying with one another in their reports of elaborate entertainments in music and dance performed at the courts of Europe. Princess Mary, in Paris visiting her mother in 1655, reported, ‘I have seen the masque again, and in the entry of the performances received another present, which was a petticoat of cloth of silver … Monday next there is a little ball at the Louvre, where I must dance.’ While in 1656, James, Duke of York wrote to his brother from Paris: ‘I saw the ballett practis’d yesterday, in which there is some very fine entries; it will be danced on Sunday, and I will send the book on’t; and the tunes of Baptist making, so soone as I can gett them.’21

A number of English writers migrated to The Hague in the later 1650s, to provide masques and entertainments in English for the exiles there. They included Sir William Lower, whose Enchanted Lovers was printed and published at The Hague in 1658. In 1659 he dedicated his English translation of the French romance The Noble Ingratitude to Elizabeth of Bohemia, in the hope that it would delight her enough