Peter Grotius seems to have had a dislike to Amsterdam; for his father writes thus to his brother William Grotius[765], March 9, 1641.  “I have consulted with my wife about Peter’s affairs:  we are of opinion that he should go to Amsterdam, if he can be prevailed with; if not, you must tell him to come here:  he will serve me for Secretary, and I shall give him lectures in law, which perhaps he would not have received from any other.  Let him bring with him what he has translated of the Institutes of the Laws of Holland.”  Grotius soon changed his opinion; for he writes to his brother[766], April 13, in the same year:  “I would not have Peter come here:  therefore keep him with you.”

The irresolution of Peter Grotius chagrined his father:  “I am much afraid, he writes to his brother[767], that he will some day smart for his continual disobedience.”  Grotius told his son[768], that he must expect no letters from him, unless he sent him the Latin translation of the Institutes of the Laws of Holland, which he had long before enjoined him to set about.  Writing to his brother[769], he says, “I am much afraid, that the counsels which Peter follows, and will follow hereafter, are inconsistent with a good conscience.  I am resolved to refer the whole to God, and not intermeddle in it.  I should be sorry to have a repetition of the grief I suffer on his account.”

Some time after, he was better satisfied with him, and wrote to his brother William[770], Feb. 28, 1643, “I commend Peter highly for applying to the bar:  it is the way to acquire much useful knowledge, to gain a character, and in time to lay up something, or to rise higher.”  This is all that Grotius’s letters inform us about his son:  the sequel of whose life is more interesting.

In 1652, he married, for love, an Attorney’s daughter, rich and handsome; but his mother and his other friends disliked the match.  In the year following, a powerful party wanted to get him made Greffier of Amsterdam; but Veue Linchovius opposed him with great virulence and violence; maintaining that such a place ought not to be given to the son of an out-law, whose religious sentiments were erroneous.  The declamations of this hot-headed man preventing Grotius from being nominated to the place, he bore the disappointment with great tranquility.  In 1655, he purposed to publish a complete edition of his father’s works, as appears by the privilege of the Emperor Ferdinand III. dated Oct. 2, 1655, prefixed to his theological works.  This edition, which unfortunately he did not go on with, was to be in nine volumes in folio.  The first was to contain his Annotations on the Old Testament; the second, the Commentary on the New; the third would have comprehended his smaller theological pieces; the fourth, the treatise De Jure Belli & Pacis, the Apology, and the work De Imperio summarum potestatum circa Sacra; the fifth, Law Tracts; the sixth, Writings Historical; the seventh,