[2][3] After the stadtholder's court moved from Leeuwarden to The Hague during the Orangist Revolution of 1747 at the end of the Second Stadtholderless Period Douwe became very influential in the patronage politics of the regency of the Princess during the first years of the minority of William V, Prince of Orange.

His scandalous dealings for his own profit in public offices (he sold the governorship of the Dutch East India Company colony of Ceylon in 1756 for 70,000 guilders, for instance[4]) helped put the stadtholderate in bad repute.

Nevertheless, he was made a lieutenant-general in the army of the Dutch Republic, and served as governor of the Barrier Fortress Ypres in the Austrian Netherlands in 1774.

Probably because he played a central role in the corrupt practices of the regime of the Stadtholderate, he also was the subject of widespread rumors that he had had a liaison with Princess Anne, and even fathered the future stadtholder William V. Except for the uncanny family resemblance between himself and William, Anne's biographer Veronica Baker-Smith thinks there is insufficient ground to believe this rumour.

[6] Late in life, Douwe became the protector and lover of the early feminist Etta Palm d'Aelders, whom he apparently taught the skills to set up as a high-class courtesan, and organiser of a political Salon in pre-Revolutionary Paris.