which he filled with so much reputation, the States augmented his
salary, and promised him a seat in the Court of Holland.

XVIII. John Grotius, on his son's being made Advocate-general, began to
think of a wife for him; and fixed upon Mary Reigersberg, of one of the
first families in Zealand, whose father had been Burgomaster of Veer:
the marriage was solemnised in July, 1608. The greatest encomium of the
new-married lady is, that she was worthy such a husband as Grotius. The
most perfect harmony subsisted between them, and Grotius held her in the
highest esteem[52]. This alliance gave occasion to a number of poems.
John Grotius wrote his son's Epithalamium; Daniel Heinsius composed a
Poem on that subject, which, in the opinion of Grotius, was the best of
the kind that ever had been written. Grotius himself celebrated his
nuptials in some Latin verses, approved of by Scaliger, and translated
them into Dutch: he also wrote some in French on that occasion.

FOOTNOTES:

[52] Ep. 423. p. 876.

XIX. At the time of his marriage he was employed in a work of great
importance, which was not published till the year following. This was
his _Freedom of the Ocean, or the Right of the Dutch to trade to the
Indies_; dedicated to all the free nations of Christendom, and divided
into thirteen Chapters. The author shews in the first, that by the law
of Nations navigation is free to all the world: In the second, that the
Portuguese never possessed the sovereignty of the countries in the
East-Indies with which the Dutch carry on a trade: In the third, that
the donation of Pope Alexander VI. gave the Portuguese no right to the
Indies: In the fourth, that the Portuguese had not acquired by the law
of arms the sovereignty of the States to which the Dutch trade: He shews
in the fifth, that the ocean is immense and common to all; that it is
absurd to imagine that those who first navigate a sea ought to be judged
to have taken possession of it; that a vessel which cuts the waves of a
sea, gives no more right to that sea, than she leaves marks of her way
in it; that, besides, the Portuguese are not the first who sailed in the
Indian sea, since there are facts which demonstrate it was neither
unknown to the Ancients, to the Spaniards, nor to the Carthaginians, nor
even to the Romans. The sixth chapter proves, that the right of
navigation in that sea cannot belong exclusively to the Portuguese by
virtue of Alexander VI's donation, because