Grotius, Hugo. Dutch statesman and writer. Born at Delft, 1583. Entered public life as pensionary of Rotterdam. Went to England in 1615 as a commissioner on the Greenland fisheries' question, and there met Casaubon. As a friend of Barnevelt, and a supporter of Arminius, he was imprisoned by the stadtholder, Maurice (1619), but two years after his wife contrived his escape, and he went to Paris for some years. After a short stay in Holland, and a residence of two years at Hamburg, he returned to Paris in 1635 as Swedish ambassador, where he remained until shortly before his death. Chief among his many works were "Poemata Sacra," "De Jure Belli et Pacis," and "Annotationes in Novum Testamentum." Grotius died in 1645.

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