We continue the study of the lower central series of a free associative
algebra, initiated by B. Feigin and B. Shoikhet (arXiv:math/0610410).
We build representations of the affine and double affine braid groups and
Hecke algebras of type $(C^\vee_n,C_n)$, based upon the theory of quantum
symmetric pairs $(U,B)$. In the case $U=U_q(gl_N)$, our constructions provide a
quantization of the representations constructed by Etingof, Freund and Ma in
arXiv:0801.1530, and also a type $BC$ generalization of the results in
arXiv:0805.2766.