7 - Cruso the translator

Summary

As the seventeenth century progressed, Norwich was on the up, prompting one scholar to write, ‘Already in the seventeenth century, Norwich was a gathering point and a source of fashionable good for the county gentry.’ John Cruso was on the up, too. By 1632, he had established himself as a senior member of the Dutch Stranger community, working as a church elder and militia captain, while his son John Jr. was beginning his studies at Cambridge. By this time, he had moved with his family to one of the more expensive properties in the parish of St Peter Mancroft, underlining his success as a hosier and cloth merchant. His new neighbours included physicians and lawyers as well as wealthy gentry. Furthermore, as we saw in the last chapter, he had made his first mark as a military author, with Militarie Instructions set to gain him a reputation throughout England. At this point Cruso, about to embark on his fifth decade, might have felt entitled to rest on his laurels. However, he still had aspirations as an author and would publish other military works as well as further Dutch verse. This chapter analyzes two of his military works, which were both translations of French works. The Art of Warre or Militarie discourses, published in 1639, is based on a text by the Sieur du Praissac (anglice Lord of Praissac). Some copies are bound with Cruso's translation of another work by Praissac, entitled A Short Method. In 1640 Cruso published The Complete Captain, a translation of a work published only a few years earlier by the celebrated Huguenot military leader, Henri, Duc de Rohan (1579–1638). It will be instructive to analyze several themes concerning these translations, such as the relationship between the source and target texts, how Cruso operationalizes his multilingualism, what the front matter tells us about Cruso's social and literary network, and the reception of these translations. The fact that a second edition of The Art of Warre was published in 1642 indicates that the first edition enjoyed some success. First, however, let us catch up with developments in Cruso's life in Norwich in the 1630s.