Thomas Cletcher

Thomas Cletcher (1598 – 2 June 1666) was a Dutch jeweller, goldsmith, and gem dealer from The Hague, who was involved in several transactions of jewels of historical significance, and also served as the city's mayor from 1652 to 1657.

Family and early life The Cletcher family (sometimes also spelled Cletscher, Clisser, Clitsert, Clitchert, Cletzer, and van Cletcher) originally lived in Colchester, England. The family emigrated to the Low Countries in the mid-16th century, where Thomas Cletcher Sr. registered as a burgher of the city of Antwerp in 1560. As a result of turmoil stemming from the Eighty Years' War between the Dutch and the Habsburg Netherlands, the Cletchers moved north in 1585 and settled in The Hague in the newly founded Dutch Republic. The son of Cletcher Sr. – also named Thomas – became a wine merchant in The Hague and married Tanneken van Bree in 1597; the couple welcomed their firstborn Thomas Cletcher in 1598 (sometimes styled as Thomas Cletcher jr. to distinguish him from his father and grandfather). Marriage into the Hoeufft family increased Thomas's reputation, but he would ultimately outlive even his third wife by two years.

Jeweller and goldsmith

Thomas Cletcher is known to posterity mostly through his profession as a jeweller, goldsmith, and gem dealer. In 1626, he designed a piece of jewellery in the shape of a branch of the Polygonatum plant, also known as 'Solomon's Seal'. a position which he skillfully leveraged to make connections with various European noble houses. the majority of which survived and are held today by the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. The Mirror consisted of three large diamonds, one from the Great H of Scotland, with an equally large ruby, and hanging underneath, one of the largest cut diamonds that existed in Europe at the time, the 55-carat Sancy. While Charles was able to redeem the Sancy some 13 years later in 1639, the Mirror was broken up by Cletcher and never returned to England. In 1644, he engineered the purchase of the 35-carat Beau Sancy diamond–the smaller sibling to the Sancy–from the estate of the late Marie de' Medici by Frederick Henry, whose appetite for luxury had grown with the successes of the Dutch Republic.

In addition to his activities as a jeweller, Cletcher was also a skillful investor in schemes such as the draining of marshland in the Poitou region of France, milling in Sweden, and various real estate purchases. While his family assets are recorded as 6,000 guilders in 1627, by 1654 this had grown to over 90,000 guilders.

Public service and later life The Municipality of The Hague, by Cornelis van Ceulen (1647). Cletcher is sixth from the right. Cletcher received his first appointment to the Hague city council in 1643, which might have been helped by his marriage into the noble Hoeufft family. His first term as alderman of the council began in 1645, a position to which he was reelected several times, before ultimately becoming mayor of The Hague in 1652. The mayorship was a highly prestigious post, and would have been considered the crowning achievement of a burgher's life. Cletcher served as mayor until 1657, when he retired from his business; he moved to nearby Amersfoort in 1659, where his son Thomas was mayor. Cletcher died in Amersfoort on 2 June 1666.

From his first marriage with Anna Ghijsberti, Cletcher had five children:

Thomas, later mayor of Amersfoort. Hendrik, secretary at the Dutch embassy in Sweden. Robert, painter and member of the Confrerie Pictura in The Hague. Anna, who married Otto Viglius, the commissioner for the region of Friesland in the States General of the Netherlands. Jacob, who died as a young man after his marriage in 1647.