Haarlem schutterij

During the Hook and Cod wars in 1402, Haarlem formed a hand bow schutterij under the patronage of St. George of 120 citizen volunteers to support the local court of Justice.

After another uprising in 1425, a "New" schutterij was formed to educate young men in the use of the crossbow and they defended the city in 1426 against Jacoba of Beieren.

They still kept up their social activities in church, though the Protestant reformation began to cause various problems with their political support for the court of Justice.

Today almost all of the schutterstukken that once hung here have been transferred to the Frans Hals Museum; the 1612 painting by Cornelis Engelsz is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg, France.

In 1577, the city council refurbished the main buildings of the old St. Michiels cloister to house the schutterij called the "Oude schuts", whose hall had been burned in the fire of 1572.