“Hulsius in some measure replaces what the fire at the Marine Arsenal has robbed us of; among other records he has preserved for us in his _Achte Schiffart_ the sentence pronounced in this matter by the admiralty, and of which we have knowledge from no other sources. From it we learn the grounds upon which the claimants demanded the adjudication of the booty. These grounds are the same twelve which De Groot discusses in his book.... This concordance can be explained on the ground that De Groot must have had acquaintance with the sentence; but he was not a man merely to repeat what others had before him witnessed. I should be inclined to feel that in the process he had served as counsel for the Company, and that he himself was one of the authors of the written claim upon which the sentence was based. It would not then be surprising if in his book he should develop at greater length and throw light upon what had already been set forth in the claim” (pp. 390-391). “I cannot state definitely that Hugo De Groot was persuaded by the Directors to write such an argument; I have been unable to discover any evidence to that end. That he was in close relations with the Company, he himself says in a letter of later date, addressed to his brother. Nor can there be any doubt that in writing his work he made use of the archives of the United Company and of its predecessor. If the supposition, which I have elsewhere ventured to make is correct, that is to say, that in the conduct of the case he appeared as advocate for the Company, it would then appear most probable that, after consultation with the directors, he set about writing his book, which was to be a second plea in their behalf” (p. 403). [D] For the account which Grotius himself gives of the incident, see his _Annales et Historiae de Rebus Belgicis ab Obitu Philippi Regis usque ad Inducias Anni_ 1609, written in 1612, but first published in 1658, Book 1, p. 429. For a fuller account of the circumstances under which the treatise on the law of prize was written, see Hamaker’s edition of the _De Jure Praedae_, pp. vii-viii. The distinguished historian and scholar, Robert J. Fruin, after an exhaustive examination of the evidence, informed Hamaker that Grotius was retained by the Company to prepare the commentary on the law of prize. The English translation of Hamaker’s exact statement reads as follows: “Fruin is of the opinion that he [Grotius] undertook this work at the instance of the Company, and that he appeared in it as their spokesman.” For an analysis of the commentary _De Jure Praedae_ and the circumstances under which it was written, see Jules Basdevant’s study on Grotius, pp. 131-137, 155-179, in Pillet’s _Les Fondateurs du Droit International_ (1904).