Epilogue

Summary

In the 30 years that passed between 1620 and 1650, the world changed drastically. The Dutch Republic gained its independence from Spain with the treaty signed at Westphalia in 1648. The prosperity and economic growth of the early part of the century began to wane. Peace throughout Europe also brought economic hard times to the Republic, as the trade in armaments, weapons, and supplies had proved to be lucrative for Dutch merchants. The economic conjuncture went into decline, social mobility became more rigid, and the Dutch Reformed Church began to recognize its failure at not becoming a state church as the Roman Catholic Church was before the Revolt. During the 1650s and 1660s the Republic experienced a series of setbacks: in 1651 a devastating tide flooded parts of Amsterdam, the first Anglo Dutch War (1652-1654), the Republic's economy went into further decline, the loss of Brazil to the Portuguese, the burning of the village of De Rijp in 1654 and 1658, the loss of the Nieuw Nederland colony in North America to the British in 1664, and the outbreak of plague in Amsterdam in 1665. Moral crusaders attested these misfortunes to be the sign of God's wrath on the Republic for its licentiousness, and at the forefront of the country's wayward lifestyle were the country's young people. However, this time it was a new generation of young men, those born in the 1630s and 1640s. This time moralists accused them of lewd behavior because they had succumbed to excessive drinking, engaging in premarital sex, and squandering their leisure time with randy books.

For the generation of young men from the 1620s and 1630s, their lives changed drastically as well. By 1650 Otto Copes, the drunken young man arrested in 1629 for firing weapons at Groningen's municipal guard, was married and the father of five children. After his ruckus with the municipal guard in December 1629, he left that city and enrolled four months later as a law student at the University of Leiden. By the mid-seventeenth century he had become a successful municipal administrator, regent of the city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, and representative of the generality region of North Brabant for the States-General in The Hague, where he developed strategic relations with the House of Orange.