Cornelis Hooft

In 1566, the Protestant merchants around Hooft -- Jan Jacobsz Bal Huydecoper van Wieringen, Jacobsz Reael, Adriaan Pauw, and Dirck Jansz Graeff -- took over the social leadership within the city of Amsterdam in order to hold it in a political sense after the Alteratie of Amsterdam in 1578.

Hooft had been interested in theology, but was nevertheless tolerant - his wife Anna Jansdr Blaeu was a Mennonite, and he seems to have been a 'via media' man, declaring for neither the Remonstrants nor the Anti-Remonstrants.

As an independent merchant he had a large share in Baltic trade and reshipped herring, oil and grain.

Hooft was opposed to the appointment of foreigners to important posts, pointing to the Flemish Calvinists and preachers such as Petrus Plancius.

In 1618, stadholder Maurits of Orange, in his purge of Remonstrant regents from the vroedschap as a result of the Synod of Dort and the arrest of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, spared Hooft, who took a neutral stance.