Willem Adriaan Van Der Stel, and Other Historical Sketches

by George McCall Theal

Promotion of Simon van der Stel.

The circumstances of this grant were peculiar. Simon van der Stel and some of the other officials deserved encouragement, and the lord of Mydrecht regarded this as the easiest way of rewarding them, though no one but the commander availed himself of it. The Huguenot and Dutch immigrants of a few years later were still unthought of, and the demand for produce of all kinds was so much greater than the few colonists then in the country could meet that there was not the slightest fear of the officials competing with the burghers. The land granted too was so close to the castle that it could be reached in little more than an hour, so that the owner need never be absent from his duty or pass a night away from his residence. For these reasons the directors confirmed the grant, but they took the precaution of announcing a few years later that it was an exceptional one and that the law of 1668 was still in full force.

Simon van der Stel, promoted to be governor in June 1691, with a salary of £16 13s. 4d. a month, and in 1692 to be councillor extraordinary of Netherlands India, a position which added to his emoluments as well as to his dignity, remained at the head of the administration of the Cape Colony until February 1699, when at his own request, made in 1696, he retired, and he spent the remainder of his life upon his farm Constantia, where he died on the 24th of June 1712.

Historical Sketches.

As a mark of the estimation in which he was held by the directors, on the 26th of September 1697 they appointed his eldest son, Willem Adriaan van der Stel, to be his successor, with the full title, salary, and emoluments which the retiring official had earned by his long and faithful services.[46] On the 31st of July 1698 the newly appointed governor received at Amsterdam his final instructions from the directors, and parted from them with their good wishes for his welfare. He and his family left Holland with the first ship that sailed thereafter for India, and in January 1699 reached Capetown, but he was not installed in office until the 11th of February.

What kind of man Willem Adriaan van der Stel was in person cannot be ascertained from any document in the archives of the Netherlands or of the Cape Colony, or from anything contained in the vast mass of printed matter of the period concerning him. He may have been tall and stout or he may have been small, he may have been darker coloured than his father, for atavism sometimes plays curious freaks in this respect, or he may have been as light skinned as a pure Netherlander: there are no means of getting information on this now. But one thing can be said of him with certainty: that before he became governor of the Cape Colony he had borne a good character, and had not displayed those vices which at a later date made his name infamous. There is a Dutch proverb De gelegenheid dieven en moordenaars maakt, Opportunity makes thieves and murderers, and in his case the opportunity was wanting as long as he resided in Amsterdam. He had been an official in that city for ten years, had even been a schepen, and if his conduct had not been upright—outwardly at least—he would not have secured the favour of the directors of the East India Company, men who knew him well personally.

Condition of the Settlement.

The condition of the settlement was at this time very different from what it had been when his father arrived. The Huguenot refugees had come from Europe and been located in the lovely valleys where so many of their descendants still reside. An even greater number of Dutch families and orphan girls had migrated to South Africa, and had been located side by side with the French or by themselves around the Tigerberg, so that all the land as far as the Groeneberg beyond the present village of Wellington was occupied, though sparsely. There were three separate congregations in the settlement, though as yet there was a church building at Stellenbosch only. In Capetown divine service was still held in a hall in the castle, and at Drakenstein in a farmer’s house or under an improvised screen. Wheatfields, vineyards, orchards, and gardens were scattered over the land, each with a thatched cottage on its border, cattle and sheep grazed on the hill sides, and here and there young oaks were beginning to beautify the scene. The view was fair, but concord was wanting in the settlement. Between the Dutch and the French there was little goodwill, for national prejudices kept them from being real friends, though a few intermarriages had already taken place.

The Dutch reformed—identical with the French evangelical—was the state church, and all officials were required to be members of it. No other public worship was tolerated. But there was no inquisition, and in a man’s own house he was free to worship God in any manner he pleased. This was the system of the Northern Netherlands, and it was the system of the Cape Colony. No Roman Catholic was sent out as an emigrant, but there were some of that creed in the Company’s service, and when any of these took their discharge in South Africa they were not interfered with, provided they exercised their devotions within doors. By their fellow citizens, however, they were not favourably regarded, for their tenets were supposed to be dangerous to freedom.

Historical Sketches.