Jan Bernd Bicker

He served as an alderman in the city council and as an administrator of the Amsterdam branch of the Dutch West India Company (WIC) and was director of the Society of Suriname.

Bicker was opposed to the House of Orange and supported the Patriots, a liberal group that wanted to curtail the power of the Stadtholder.

Because of his opposition to the Stadtholder, he was forced to leave the country when the latter, after the Prussian invasion of Holland, removed the Patriots from power.

The coup d'état of 22 January 1798 by Herman Willem Daendels, Pieter Vreede and Wybo Fijnje and his supporters (radical Unitarians), had to guarantee "the unity and indivisibility" of the Batavian republic.

The group behind Vreede was dissatisfied with the conservative-moderate majority in parliament, which tried to prevent the formulation of a more democratic, centralized constitution.

In March he, his son and a servant were transferred to Leeuwarden and imprisoned for 11 weeks in three spacious upper rooms of the Princessehof.