Later Career and French Knighthood
Huygens started a successful career despite his grief over the death of his wife (1638). In 1630 he was appointed to the Council and Exchequer, managing the estate of the Orange family. This job provided him with an income of about 1000 florins a year. In that same year he bought the estate Zuilichem and became known as Lord of Zuilichem. In 1632 Louis XIII of France, the protector of the famous exiled jurist Hugo Grotius, appointed him as knight in the Order of Saint-Michel. In 1643 Huygens was granted the honor of displaying a golden lily on a blue field in his coat of arms.
In 1634 Huygens received from Prince Frederick Henry a piece of property in The Hague on the north side of the Binnenhof. The land was near the property of a good friend of Huygens, Count Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen, who built his house, the Mauritshuis, around the same time.
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