Hoorn

Hoorn grew from a marketplace near a sluice giving the villages of West Friesland access to the Zuiderzee. Farmers exchanged butter and cheese for goods brought by merchants, including beer from Hamburg and Bremen. Count William V of Holland granted the settlement town rights in 1357. Its harbour and markets made Hoorn a leading town of the region.

During the Dutch Revolt the town opened its gates to the Sea Beggars. It became a seat of the councils of West Friesland and the northern quarter in 1573 and shared the seat of the northern admiralty with Enkhuizen. In the seventeenth century Hoorn was home to a chamber of the Dutch East India Company, and its ships travelled far beyond European waters. In 1616 Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire rounded the southern tip of South America; Schouten named Cape Horn for his home town. By the late eighteenth century Hoorn found it increasingly difficult to compete with Amsterdam and turned more towards regional trade.