In the autumn of 1631, Grotius travelled back to the Republic, hoping that he would be allowed to stay. He met with old Remonstrant friends, visited the statue of Erasmus, and travelled to Delft, where he was reunited with his parents and sat for a portrait by Michiel Jansz Van Mierevelt. However, after a six-week stay in Rotterdam, it looked as if a new arrest was imminent. Grotius left for Amsterdam, where he wrote this message to his brother, and a very similar one to Nicolaas van Reichersberg. It is a desperate letter – Grotius writes that he simply cannot understand why he is not allowed to be in the country that he loves so sincerely and of the yearning he felt in exile, for the skies of his homeland and the faces of his elderly parents. But his stay was not to last: the Counter-Remonstrant governors and administrators, many of whom had been installed by Stadtholder Maurice after 1618, did not want Grotius in the Republic and he left the country again in the spring of 1632.
Grotius to Willem de Groot, letter, 13 December 1631 [PAP 2]