He was also secretary to two Princes of Orange: Frederick Henry and William II, and the father of the scientist Christiaan Huygens.

In 1647 he published in Paris his Pathodia sacra et profana with his compositions of airs de cour in French, madrigals in Italian and Psalms in Latin.

Constantijn received education in maths, law and logic and he learned how to handle a pike and a musket.

In 1614 Constantijn wrote his first Dutch poem, inspired by the French poet Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, in which he praises rural life.

In the Spring of 1618 Constantijn found employment with Sir Dudley Carleton, the English envoy at the Court in The Hague.

In 1620, towards the end of the Twelve Years' Truce, he travelled as a secretary of ambassador François van Aerssen to Venice, to gain support against the threat of renewed war.

In January 1621, he traveled to England as the secretary of six envoys of the United Provinces with the object of persuading James I to support the German Protestant Union.

[5] In December 1621 he left with another delegation, this time with the aim of requesting support for the United Provinces, returning after a year and two months in February 1623.

[citation needed] He is often considered a member of what is known as the Muiderkring, a group of leading intellectuals gathered around the poet Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, who met regularly at the castle of Muiden near Amsterdam.

In October of that year Huygens sent Jacob Cats a large poem in Dutch, entitled 't Voorhout, about a woodland near the Hague.

In December he started writing 't Kostelick Mal, a satirical treatment of the nonsense of the current vogue.

[6] Huygens was employed as a secretary to Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, who—after the death of Maurits of Orange—was appointed as stadtholder.

In 1626 Constantijn fell in love with Suzanna van Baerle after earlier courtship by the Huygens family to win her for his brother Maurits had failed.

In these years Prince Frederick Henry of Orange, Huygens' confidante and protector, became increasingly ill, and died in 1647.

The new stadtholder, William II of Orange, greatly appreciated Huygens and gave him the estate of Zeelhem, but he died too in 1650.

The emphasis of Huygens' activities moved more and more to his presidency of the Council of the house of Orange, which was in the hands of the young Prince inheritor, a small baby.

To stop the gossiping which started shortly afterwards, Huygens wrote the poem Cluijs-werck, in which he shows a glimpse of the latter stages of his life.

[8][9] In 1632, Louis XIII of France - the protector of the famous exiled jurist Hugo Grotius - appointed him as Knight of the Order of Saint-Michel.

In 1634 Huygens received from Prince Frederick Henry a piece of property in The Hague on the north side of the Binnenhof.

Aside from his membership in the Muiderkring (which was not as formerly supposed, an official club), at the start of the 1630s he was also in touch with René Descartes,[10] with Rembrandt,[10] and the painter Jan Lievens.

[11] After a couple of years as a widower, Huygens bought a piece of land in Voorburg and commissioned the building of Hofwijck.

As a new year's present for Leonore Hellemans, he composed the Heilige Daghen, a series of sonnets on the Christian holidays.

[13] In 1647 he published another work, in which play and seriousness are united, Ooghentroost, addressed to Lucretia of Trello, who was losing her sight and who was already half-blind.

In 1661, a grandfather by now, Huygens was sent to France by the circle of tutors of William III, to recover possession of the county of Orange.

Constantijn Huygens plays a major part in Brian Howell's novel, The Curious Case of Jan Torrentius (Zagava, Düsseldorf, 2017), an expanded edition of his previous collection of novellas, The Stream and The Torrent: Jan Torrentius and The Followers of the Rosy Cross: Vol.1 (Zagava/Les Éditions de L'Oubli, 2014)