making him the second most important person in the Netherlands. In 1815 the Netherlands became a Kingdom. Prince William accepted the throne as King William I. Belgium was later added to the Netherlands. The new King was too authoritarian to the taste of Van Hogendorp and the two men became enemies. Van Hogendorp constantly had to remind the King that he was a Constitutional, and not an absolute King. The relation between King and Vice-President became unworkable when Van Hogendorp criticised the King's protectionist policy. Van Hogendorp preferred free trade instead of protectionism. In 1816 Van Hogendorp asked to be relieved from his position of Vice-President of the Council of State. He was relieved on 7 November of that year and was named a member of the Eerste Kamer der Staten-Generaal, the Senate. As an MP he belonged to the moderate and liberal opposition to the King. In 1819 Van Hogendorp was dismissed as a member of the Council of State by the King. In 1830 he urged the government to listen to the grieves of the Belgium people in order to keep the Belgians within the Kingdom. He showed some sympathy with the Belgians when they seceded from the Netherlands in 1831. Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp, who suffered from gout since his early fifties – he was bed stricken very often – died at the age of 71 years old at his house in The Hague. Personal life Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp was married to Hester Clifford (1766–1826), the daughter of an extremely wealthy merchant family from Amsterdam. They had ten children. When Gijsbert Karel died in 1834, six of his children were still alive. Actually, two of them still lived at the family home in The Hague. On 20 September 1815 he was ennobled and became the first Count Van Hogendorp. When he died, his title passed to his eldest son Willem. Religious ideas Van Hogendorp belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church. In his younger years he was not very much impressed by religion (he only showed interest in moral aspects of the Mosaic Law), but later on – when he was still a young man – he became a practising Christian. He was a typical middle-of-the-road Christian: he disliked the ultra orthodoxy as much as religious liberalism. He religious views could be described as quite enlightened. He was opposed to the religious and political opinions of the