When I was at Alkmaar about thirty years ago, I strolled to the
neighbouring village of Heilo, on the road to Limmen, where I saw,
surrounded by a moat, the foundations of the castle of Ypenstein. A view of
this once noble pile is to be found in the well-known work of Rademaker,
_Kabinet van Nederlandsche en Kleefsche Oudheden_. This place, as tradition
tells, once witnessed the perpetration of a violent deed. When the son of
the unfortunate Charles I. was an exile in our country, this house
Ypenstein was occupied by a family of English emigrants, high in rank, who
lived here for a while in quiet. How far these exiles were even here secure
from the spies of Cromwell appeared on a certain dark night, after a
suspicious vessel had been seen from the village of Egmond, when an armed
band of the Protector's Puritans, led by a guide, marched over the heath to
the house Ypenstein, seized all the inhabitants, and carried them off, by
the way they had come, to the coast, put them on board, and transported
them most probably to England. In such secresy and silence was this
violation of territory and the rights of hospitality perpetrated, that no
one in the neighbourhood perceived anything of the occurrence, except a
miller who saw the troop crossing the pathless heath in the direction of
the coast, but could not conceive what had brought so many persons together
in such a place at midnight.
I would gladly learn whether anything is known of this transaction; and if
so, where I may find farther particulars of this English family, their
probable political importance, &c. To investigate the truth of this
tradition, that we may acquit or convict the far-famed Cromwell of so foul
a crime, cannot certainly be untimely now that two celebrated learned men
have undertaken to vindicate his memory.--From the _Navorscher_.