Jorrit Muyskins

Jorrit Muyskins is a foundling, which is a very different thing from being an orphan. An orphan usually knows who his parents were even if they are both dead. A foundling is an infant who has been abandoned and found. So he has no idea who he is, who his family might be, if his parents are alive or dead or indeed anything about them.

At least for Jorrit life was not too bad. He was fortunate enough to be raised in a home for foundling boys run by the stern but kind Moeder Machteld. There he spent his earliest years with his friend Seppe, getting into mischief as boys are wont to do, running half-wild on the streets together. But Breda being in the Dutch republic of the United Provinces where basic education was seen as essential, Jorrit went to school a couple of days each week and was a quick learner.

By the time he was eleven or twelve (no one was quite sure exactly how old Jorrit was) he could read, write and do arithmetic. One of his nurses had been English and he learned to speak that language too. There was talk of him gaining a good apprenticeship within the next year. But Jorrit and Seppe didn’t want to become apprentices. They dreamed of being soldiers like the brave men who had sneaked into Breda thirty years before, concealed in a peat barge and taken the city from the Spanish.

Then in the summer of 1624, Seppe died. Carried from life by a fever, like so many children. Jorrit missed him badly and began spending more time on the streets. Where before he might have used his quick wits, agility and knowledge of the streets to pull pranks, now he put them to more nefarious use and began thieving. Even though he knew if ever Moeder Machteld found out he would be severely punished, perhaps even thrown out, and all hope of a decent future would be gone.

When Breda came under siege the city leaders remembered to have good supplies of everything from wheat to wine, but no one thought of tobacco. So daring smugglers began to brave the siegeworks to sneak into the city and sell it for a very high price. Boys like Jorrit could help the smugglers by running errands for them, delivering their wares and spreading the word that they were in the city and had a load of precious tobacco for sale…