Loevestein faction

It claimed to be the party of "true freedom" against the stadtholderate of the House of Orange-Nassau, and sought to establish a purely republican form of government in the Northern Netherlands.

There, stadtholder William II locked up six members of the States of Holland and West Friesland during his coup d'état of 30 July 1650.

It has been suggested that Jacob had 'poisoned' his sons with anti-Orange sentiments, and he allegedly told them every day to 'Gedenck aan Loevesteyn' ("Remember Loevestein"), although this is disputed.

From the 1660s onwards, the Prince's supporters would start identifying the Brothers de Witt with earlier States supporters such as Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (executed for his opposition against Maurice of Nassau) and Hugo Grotius (sentenced to life imprisonment in Loevestein in 1619 at Maurice's instigation, but he escaped in a book chest in 1621).

In the early 19th century, king William I preferred to let the factional struggles during the Dutch Republic be 'forgiven and forgotten', but amongst others the firmly Orangist historian Willem Bilderdijk on the one hand and the liberal historian Reinier Cornelis Bakhuizen van den Brink (calling himself a "Loevesteiner [...] to the bone") on the other, vehemently disagreed, and sought to rewrite the history of the Netherlands according to their own views.