Fort Kochi - Adriaen van Lier

In 2025 it will be 345 years since Adriaen van Lier was buried in the St. Francis Church in Cochin. That location is not unusual, you would say at first glance. After all, he was opperkoopman and secondo of the VOC trading post in Cochin. It was fitting that he was taken to his final resting place with all respect and ceremony, but in his case the choice of St. Francis Church was not self-evident. During the presence of the VOC, the church was a Protestant church and Adriaen van Lier was a Catholic.

While the now Protestant Holland was involved in the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648) against Catholic Spanish rule and the battle intensified, Adriaen van Lier was born in Delft around 1620. Catholicism was not forbidden, but it was banned from public life and the profession of faith was pushed back to hidden churches. Positions in governments were officially not accessible to people of other faiths. 

Because the Catholic baptismal records are missing, we will never know when Adriaen was baptized and who his parents were. His surname may be derived from the small town of De Lier, which is located near Delft in a water-rich environment. In 1653 Adriaen was a prospective bookkeeper and arrived with the ship the Grijpskerk in Malacca in Malaysia and signed a new employment contract for five years. For the next three years, he will serve as an accountant and the last two as a sub-merchant. Because the Grijpskerk was demolished on Malacca, Adriaen was transferred to the Troostenburg. In 1655 he is mentioned as a onderkoopman and is sent to Hougly in Bengal^[i].  In 1658 he was appointed chief merchant and head on the Moluccan island of Haruka. From that moment on, he left a thick paper trail in the archives of the VOC. He would remain in various places in the Moluccas until 1672, such as in 1661 in Ambonia and from 1662 on Saparua. He regularly made trips to the Banda Islands and to the VOC office on Ambonia. In the meantime, he is married to Susanna van Saxen, a native woman with whom he had at least 6 children. In 1666, a riot arose around the baptism of his newly born son. The VOC had decided that Reverend Johannes Sweerdius should also settle on Saparua and that led to escalating tensions between the preacher and Van Lier. Van Lier had informed Sweerdius that he had a son and wanted to have him baptized. As a Catholic, Van Lier did not want to answer the questions on the baptism form himself. That is why he indicated that a Lutheran corporal would baptize the child and that he himself would be present as a baptismal witness. Sweerdius resisted fiercely to this course of events and did not acknowledge the corporal because of his Lutheran faith. He demanded at least a Reformed membership as a baptismal agent. In his complaint about the case to the governor, Sweerdius spoke disparagingly about "that papist" who thought he could dictate the service to him. The child was eventually baptized according to the rules, but the relationship between the two gentlemen was soured forever. Things got even more out of hand when Sweerdius, who was not at all satisfied with the church building, had the building demolished and a new church built more or less on his own initiative. Recent graves were also desecrated. Now the governor and the population also turned against Sweerdius^[ii] and he was transferred to Ternate.

Tombstone Adriaen van Lier in the St. Francis Church.

Van Lier may have got rid of Sweerdius, but there were also complaints about him. Reason for the new governor of Ambon to have him come over and interrogate him. He also had to take the oath of faithfulness and honesty again. When difficulties arose again in 1671-1672, he was recalled to Ambon and interrogated by the Council of Justice of Ambon, which suspended him and sent him to Batavia for further interrogation^[iii]. The outcome of this is not known, but it will not have been serious because he was retained in the position of chief merchant.

When on 19 January 1677 Jan van Riebeeck, the founder of Cape Town in South Africa, was buried in Batavia with great display, the coat of arms of the deceased was carried forward by Adriaen van Lier^[iv]. On 8 October 1677 he was appointed opperkoopman and secundo of the Malabaar coast, present day India. Together with his wife and children, he arrived in Cochin in early 1678. The trading post has only been in the possession of the VOC for 15 years and will be a whole new challenge for Van Lier. Unfortunately, he will not be given much time. On 12 December 1680, his life  came to an end. He leaves his widow behind with 6 children, 3 of whom work for the VOC. He probably contracted a contagious disease, because barely two days later his son Dirck van Lier, who was employed as an assistant by the VOC, also died. Together they are buried, without any discussion about faith, in the St. Francis Church. Something that would not have been possible in the Netherlands at the time.

Susanna van Saxen, the widow of Adriaen van Lier, left Cochin in August 1681, but only survived her husband for a short time. She died before May 1682. Two of her children had stayed behind in Cochin. Salomon van Lier remained as assistant. His descendants would hold high positions along the coasts of Malabaar, Coromandel and Ceylon.

Notes

^[i] NL-HaNa 1.04.02.1203_0583

^[ii] NL-HaNa 1.04.02.1260

^[iii] NL-HaNa 1.04.02.1297

^[iv] Dagregister Batavia 1677