Post by Demi van Breukelen

Few are venerated for being a lyncher. Especially if the lynchees in question were two of the country’s most famous and talented politicians. But the sentiment was quite different in late seventeenth-century The Hague, where Johan van Bancken had owed his career to the fact that he had played a prominent role in the brutal killing and subsequent mutilation of Johan and Cornelis de Witt. That is, until he began abusing his office, and angered a burgomaster who happened to be slowly losing his mind, thus possibly causing the latter’s swift descent into complete madness. This is a story of murder, prostitution, prison break, paranoia, and the end of the world, told, for the most part, through rare items of print. Read more in this blogpost I have written for the Universal Short Title Catalogue blog! https://lnkd.in/ewMwwQya