FRANCE

BRITTANY

Stephen Goyoun was identified as an envoy of the Duke of Brittany in 1391 by the King of England who sent the following message to the port authorities in Southampton:

"To the keepers of the passage in the port of Southhampton, Plymouth, Dertemuth, Falemuth or Fowe.  Order to suffer Stephen Goyour, Master Richard de Lesmenez and Anthony Rizoe, envoys of the Duke of Brittany to pass to the Duke with 20 horses, 20 saddles, 60 bows for the wood, 30 lance staves, 18 leather pots, four dozen arrows for the wood, two dozen horns, two dozen candlesticks, basins, ewers and vessels of tin and other small things for the household and 20 tuns of Spanish wine, as the king has given them license to do in any of those ports which they will choose, and any former command of the King to the contrary notwithstanding."

PICARDY

Peter Goyon, "of Picardy, farmer and a manufacturer of Cambric and silk at the time of the revocation [1798]" was mentioned in "Huguenots in England and Ireland" by Smiles.  His son became the English master at the Belfast Academy.

HOLLAND

Jan Josephszoon van Goyen was born in the university town of Leyden, Holland January 13, 1596.  He studied painting under several masters at Leyden and Haarlem.  He was mar­ried in 1618 and moved to The Hague about 1631 where he became president of the painters guild.

His paintings can be found in 1991 in the Louvre Museum in Paris and in Berlin, Gotha, Vienna, Munich, Augsburg and The Hague.  The National Gallery in London has seven of his works.  More than 1,000 of van Goyen's pictures have been catalogued by Hofstede de Groot.

He died at The Hague April 27, 1656.  A daughter, Margaret van Goyen was born to him about 1620.  She was married about 1640 to Jan Steen.

                                             ==O==

Cor Snabel wrote of Jan van Goyen, the mayor of The Hague in 1640 who got caught up in the “irrational exuberance” of the tulip market boom-and-bust of that period.  He was bankrupted, according to Snabel.

About 1620 the tulip became a very popular flower in the Netherlands and growers succeeded to make wonderful variants of this flower. Everyone was delighted with this new flower and some were willing to pay a lot of money for these bulbs.

The growers saw this new market and in 1634/1635 the supply in the market was increased in such proportions, that the prices started to go down and this somewhat exclusive flower became in the reach of the “common” man.  The sudden enormous demand for this product made the price go up in no time and the fact, that tulips were not available outside the season, pressured the production to satisfy the demands on the market, which speeded up the price even more. At harvest time in 1636 even the normal types did cost three times the normal price.

But hysteria had just started. One variety was 15 guilders in December 1634 and 175 guilders two years later, One selling for 40 guilders was 350 a few months later and another  was raised in a few weeks from 800 to 2200 guilders.  Soon people started to pay for tulips with goods. A quarter of a pound of “Witte Kronen” was bought with four cows and 525 guilders on delivery.  One single “Semper Augustus” was paid with 4,600 guilders, a carriage and a team of grey horses, which was worth about 2,000 guilders.  This kind of transactions was made official in notarial deeds.

At the end of 1636, the authorities started to get worried, because this insanity became pure speculation on paper. People started to buy delivery-contracts and no real bulbs anymore.  Rumors about intervention by the authorities started on February 2, 1637 in Haarlem and people panicked and started to sell.  On February 4, prices decreased by the hour.  The tulip-growers decided to act in order to save their stock and good name and had a conference in Amsterdam on Feb. 24th.

They tried to get to a compromise in which transactions made before November 1636 were considered bona fide, but the Court of Holland had no consideration with the tulip-growers, who were, according to the public opinion, responsible for this tulipomania and who were only trying to reduce their own losses. 

Many speculators lost a lot of money, like Jan van Goyen, a Mayor of the Hague, who had bought 10 bulbs for the amount of 1,900 guilders and the promise to add a painting of van Ruysdaal as payment.  In 1641 he still had not paid his debts nor did he deliver the painting, and he died as a broken man.

                                             ==O==

John James “Johnny” Mc Gowan died April 14, 2000 in Utrecht, Holland, according to his obituary in “Overlijdensberichten, Utrechts Nieuwsblad”