Maria van Reigersberch

Her parents fled to Boulogne sur Mer during the troubled times of the reign of Governor General Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester over the Dutch Republic and may only have returned to Veere after her birth, so that her birthplace is a matter of speculation.

She married the up-and-coming lawyer Hugo de Groot (better known as Grotius), who had just been appointed advocaat-fiscaal (prosecutor) at the Hof van Holland on 2 July 1608 in Veere.

[2] The couple settled in The Hague where Grotius made a swift career under the mentorship of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the Land's Advocate of Holland.

During this period their first seven children were born: Cornelia (26 April 1611) and Cornelis (2 February 1613) in The Hague; Pieter (24 February 1614; died 18 June 1614); another Pieter (28 March 1615), Françoise (17 August 1616; died 3 May 1617), Maria (16 April 1617), and Diederik (10 October 1618; a month and a half after Grotius' arrest) in Rotterdam[3] Grotius was arrested on 29 August 1618, together with van Oldenbarnevelt, Rombout Hogerbeets, the pensionary of Leiden, and Gilles van Ledenberg, the secretary of the States of Utrecht, on suspicion of treason, on the orders of stadtholder Maurice, Prince of Orange.

[1] In Paris Grotius expressed his gratitude for his wife's role in his escape with the Latin poem Silva ad Thuanum in which he made it known that the ruse with the chest had been invented by Maria.

[1] Grotius soon unleashed a torrent of pamphlets and larger publications in which he defended Oldenbarnevelt and himself (the best-known is his Apologia or Verantwoordingh, published in Latin and Dutch in Paris in 1622).

She took care of the contacts with his Dutch publishers, and also started several lawsuits to undo the forfeiture of his assets (and hers, because her considerable wealth was in their community property that had been seized in its entirety).

For her own property she was successful in 1625 (after the death of Maurice and the appointment of his half-brother Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange as the new stadtholder), while the forfeiture of Grotius' assets was lifted in 1630.