The neat cleanliness of the province of Holland was notorious among travellers who did not always speak so kindly of the Dutch themselves. In 1517, the Italian Antonio de Beatis went round the Low Countries as chaplain to a cardinal, and what he most noticed were the doorstep cloths for wiping your feet, the floors that were sanded. In 1567 the Florentine Ludovico Guiccardini noticed ‘order and tidiness everywhere’. In the countryside foreigners reported that cattle and carts were not allowed on the streets. This passion for cleaning has connections with the moral pressures of Calvinism, but
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