A few years after his birth, his father Willem left for the Dutch East Indies in search of riches, but he would never return, as his ship sank on the way back.

Wilhelmina of Prussia, Princess of Orange, consort to the Stadtholder William V, concerned herself with the fate of the young Gijsbert and his older brother Dirk, and arranged an education for them at the cadet corps in Berlin.

[4][5] During his stay in Berlin befriended the enlightened Dr Johann Erich Biester, a scholar and undersecretary at Prussian ministry of Cult who later became head of the Royal Library.

He returned to Holland in 1781 at the request of his mother to serve in the army of William V. He became quite close to the stadtholder, but especially to his wife, princess Wilhelmina, the sister of the King of Prussia.

On his return to the Dutch Republic he briefly visited London to get acquainted with the parliamentary system of government.

He belonged to the moderate wing of the Orangist party and he personally advocated some reforms, including the introduction of a constitution.

Van Hogendorp, who played an important role in the restoration of the ancien régime, was elected pensionaris – main legal advisor and advocate – of Rotterdam from 1788 to 1795, only to be dismissed after the French occupation and the establishment of the Batavian Republic.

He did not change his mind when some of his old colleagues from the Orangist party went to serve Louis Napoleon when he ascended the throne of the Kingdom of Holland in 1806.

During the French occupation Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp and his wife, Hester Clifford, lived at Adrichem manor house for a while.

In 1812 Van Hogendorp became convinced that the French Empire would collapse in a few years and drafted a paper, a precursor of the Constitution of 1814.

Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp, who suffered from gout since his early fifties – he was bed stricken very often – died at the age of 71 years old at his house in The Hague.

Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp was married to Hester Clifford (1766–1826), the daughter of an extremely wealthy merchant family from Amsterdam.

In his younger years he was not very much impressed by religion (he only showed interest in moral aspects of the Mosaic Law), but later on – when he was still a young man – he became a practising Christian.

His older brother, Dirk van Hogendorp (1761-1822), a military, was a General in the army of Napoleon and governor of Eastern Prussia.