His parents were ardent partisans of the House of Orange-Nassau, and Bilderdijk grew up with strong monarchical and Calvinistic convictions.

Louis Napoleon received Bilderdijk kindly and made him his librarian, and a member[4] and eventually president (1809–1811) of the Royal Institute.

[1] After the abdication of Louis, Bilderdijk suffered great poverty; on the accession of William I of the Netherlands in 1813, he hoped to be made a professor but was disappointed and became a history tutor at Leiden.

[3] Bilderdijk was the founder of the spiritual movement "Het Réveil", which tried to give a Christian answer to the ideals of the French Revolution.

Among his disciples were Abraham Capadose, Willem de Clercq, Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer,[5] and especially Isaac da Costa, who called his teacher "anti-revolutionary, anti-Barneveldtian, anti-Loevesteinish, anti-liberal".