William III of England and Mary II

“ William was very short and Mary was quite tall. It would not do to have Mary taller than her husband, so a stool was brought for William to stand on. Now they are the same height as they are crowned King William III and Queen Mary II of England. When William and Mary ruled England the country was happy and prosperous because love reigned in the royal household. ”

“ William regarded these enactments as evidence of a lack of confidence in him. Conscious of his own magnanimous aims, of his power and his purpose to serve England as she had not been served before, he felt hurt and wounded at fetters which had not been placed upon such Kings as Charles I. and his sons. We wonder that a man so exalted and so superior, did not {129} see that it was for future England that these laws were framed, for a time when perhaps a Prince not generous, and noble, and pure should be upon the throne. ”

“ William was, as we have said, the centre of opposition to Louis, and that began to mean to Catholicism as well. Also, William had married a daughter of King James and had thus some claim to interfere in the family domains. And, most important of all, as chief ruler of Holland, William had an army at command. With a portion of that army he set sail late in 1688 and landed in England. Englishmen of all ranks flocked to join him. King James fled to France, and a Parliament, hastily assembled in 1689, declared him no longer king and placed William and his wife Mary on the throne as joint rulers. ”

“ William's policy had not been bounded by his Island Kingdom. It included the cause of Protestant Europe. An apparently invincible King sat on the throne of France, gradually drawing all adjacent Kingdoms into his dominion. When in defiance of past pledges he placed his grandson upon the vacant throne of Spain, and declared that the Pyrenees should exist no more, even Catholic Austria revolted, and beginning to fear Louis more than Protestantism, new combinations were formed, England still holding aloof, and striving to keep out of the Alliance. ”

“ James was soon obliged to leave Ireland, and his friends there were severely punished. In the meantime, William was fighting the French in Holland—as he had done nearly all his life—while Mary governed the kingdom at home. She was a handsome, stately lady, and was much respected; and there was great grief when she died of the small-pox, never having had any children. It was settled upon this that William should go on reigning as long as he lived, and then that Princess Anne should be queen ”

“ William, Duke of Normandy, was King of England. Not alone that. He claimed that he had been rightful King ever since the death of his cousin Edward the Confessor; and that those who had supported Harold were traitors, and their lands confiscated to the crown. As nearly all had been loyal to Harold, the result was that most of the wealth of the Nation was emptied into William's lap, not by right of conquest, but by English law. ”

“ Old republicans could not refuse their confidence to one who had worthily filled, during many years, the highest magistracy of a republic. Old royalists conceived that they acted according to their principles in paying profound respect to a prince so near to the throne. At this conjuncture it was of the highest moment that there should be entire union between William and Mary. A misunderstanding between the presumptive heiress of the crown and her husband must have produced a schism in that vast mass which was from all quarters gathering round one common rallying point. ”

“ All the peculiarities of his character fitted him to be the peacemaker between William and Mary. When persons who ought to esteem and love each other are kept asunder, as often happens, by some cause which three words of frank explanation would remove, they are fortunate if they possess an indiscreet friend who blurts out the whole truth. Burnet plainly told the Princess what the feeling was which preyed upon her husband's mind. She learned for the first time, with no small astonishment, that, when she became Queen of England, William would not share her throne. ”

“ Several Englishmen of note signed an invitation to the prince to land in England with an armed force in defence of the religion and liberties of the country; and it was brought to him by Admiral Russell, one of the signatories. After some hesitation William, with the consent and approval of the princess, decided to accept it. No man ever had a more loyal and devoted wife than William III of Orange, and he did not deserve it. For some years after his marriage he treated Mary with coldness and neglect. ”

“ On the death of Prince William, only son of Henry I, king of England, the latter had no legitimate issue, except his daughter Matilda, whom he had betrothed when a child to the emperor Henry V. who also dying without children, the king gave his daughter to Geoffry Plantagenet, eldest son of the count of Anjou, and endeavoured to secure her succession, by having her recognized heiress to all his dominions; and obliged the barons, both of Normandy and England, to swear fealty to her. ”

“ He had no longer his popular and beloved Mary to leave behind him in England as his representative when he set out for the wars, and there were few in England whom he trusted fully, or who trusted him. To die at the beginning of a great European struggle, leaving the dull people whom he disliked to take his place in England, and the soldier whom he had crushed and subdued and sternly held in the shade as long as he was able, to assume his baton, and win the victories it had never been William’s fortune to gain, must have been bitter indeed. ”

“ William III., king of England, born at The Hague, son of William II., Prince of Orange, by Mary, the daughter of Charles I.; during a contest on the part of the United Provinces with Louis XIV. was, in 1672, elected Stadtholder, and by his valour and wisdom brought the war to an end in 1678; married his cousin Mary, daughter of James II.; being invited to England, landed with a large army at Torbay, and on the flight of James to France, he and Mary were proclaimed king and queen of Great Britain and Ireland in 1689 ”

“ For many a fair one he seems t’ have enthrall’d.
James second, brother of Charles second succeeded,
But after a reign of four years, he seceded;
When quitting his throne, and his country he flies
Over the channel to France, where he dies.
Next the Prince of Orange, (from Holland he came,)
For the crown of old England, asserted his claim
Through right of his wife, Princess Mary by name.
And William the third with Mary his wife
Are crowned King and Queen of England for life.
This princess was lovely in person and mind,
As a wife most devoted, a friend ever kind. ”

“ It is unnecessary here to enter into the mere facts of the political history; how Northumberland's ill-arranged and almost childish scheme fell to pieces and collapsed, and how, within a few days of Edward's death, Mary found herself undisputed Queen of England, and those who opposed her had not only gained nothing, but had put themselves entirety at her mercy. Mary was herself, perhaps, as unfit to rule as any sovereign who ever arrived at a throne in mature age. ”

“ Quicksighted as he was and versed in affairs, he was altogether ignorant of the character of Mary, and of the feeling with which she regarded her husband; nor was her old preceptor, Compton, better informed. William's manners were dry and cold, his constitution was infirm, and his temper by no means bland; he was not a man who would commonly be thought likely to inspire a fine young woman of twenty-six with a violent passion. It was known that he had not always been strictly constant to his wife; and talebearers had reported that she did not live happily with him. ”

“ About the same time the Princess Anne was laid up with small-pox, and Mary could not be induced by her husband to leave the infected palace of St. James's, where she sought comfort from her chaplain, Dr. Lake (Diary, p. 9) . Contrary winds delayed the departure of the prince and princess, and in the interval William, who was absorbed in the peace negotiations, took little notice of his bride. There was a discrepancy of twelve years between their ages, he was in feeble health and taciturn, and the prospect of leaving England seemed full of wretchedness to her in her solitude. ”

“ The King and Queen had never, since the commencement of their reign, been on very good terms with their sister. That William should have been disliked by a woman who had just sense enough to perceive that his temper was sour and his manners repulsive, and who was utterly incapable of appreciating his higher qualities, is not extraordinary. But Mary was made to be loved. So lively and intelligent a woman could not indeed derive much pleasure from the society of Anne, who, when in good humour, was meekly stupid, and, when in bad humour, was sulkily stupid. ”

“ The power vested in the Crown of nominating Bishops and other dignitaries had been exercised during the life of Queen Mary very much according to her discretion. William,—perhaps because he was a foreigner, and also destitute of entire sympathy with Episcopalianism, or because he was so engrossed with foreign affairs,—seems to have been reluctant to take part in the bestowment of ecclesiastical patronage. In the year 1700 he devolved its responsibilities, to a large extent, upon the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the Bishops of Salisbury, Worcester, Ely, and Norwich. ”

“ These were precisely the views of the great majority of Englishmen; and accordingly James sank still deeper in public odium on this publication, and William and Mary rose in popularity. They seized the opportunity to organise a most powerful party in their favour, and thus pave the way to an accession to the throne, which their sagacity assured them would much sooner arrive than the natural demise of the king. Mary has been censured for so readily uniting in a plan to drive her father from the throne. ”

“ Theoretically, no doubt, the power of the Crown was as great under James and Charles as under Elizabeth, but the Parliament in the one case was far less submissive, and in the other claimed and succeeded in establishing (for the moment) a power far greater than that of the Crown. And, again, the circumstances under which Elizabeth came to the throne were unusually favourable to a new departure. Mary's legislation had reduced the law and the constitution of England to a condition which practically gave her successor a liberty of action in ecclesiastical matters unexampled before or since. ”

“ He was stopped in his flight by some fishermen at Faversham, and was forced to return to London. William insisted that he should be sent to Rochester, and there allowed him to escape to France. After this final flight of James, William, on the advice of an assembly of notables, summoned a convention parliament on the 22nd of January 1689. After a great deal of discussion, William was at length proclaimed joint-sovereign of England in conjunction with his wife, Mary (Feb. 13th 1689) . ”

“ The nothingness of absolute power, and of government by one alone, was thus revealed under the reign of the "Great King!"
%THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION% FLIGHT OF JAMES II A.D. 1688 GILBERT BURNET H.D. TRAILL With the accession of William and Mary to the throne of England not only did the Stuart line come to an end, but the Protestant religion was finally established in the kingdom. By the Declaration of Right, upon which their title rested, it was decreed that after the death of William and Mary no person holding the Roman Catholic faith should ever be king or queen of England. ”

“ Bartholomew—Siege of Edinburgh Castle—War in France—Splendid Defence of La Rochelle—Death of Charles IX.—Religious War in the Netherlands—Rule of Don John—The Anjou Marriage—Deaths of Anjou and of William the Silent.
Elizabeth, on reading Mary's letter, felt that she was now entirely in her power; and all her art was exerted to draw her over into the heart of the kingdom, so that she could neither retreat nor escape to France. She took every measure to avoid alarming her. ”

“ For a time William was a negligent husband. He was indeed drawn away from his wife by other women, particularly by one of her ladies, Elizabeth Villiers, who, though destitute of personal attractions, and disfigured by a hideous squint, possessed talents which well fitted her to partake his cares. 215 He was indeed ashamed of his errors, and spared no pains to conceal them: but, in spite of all his precautions, Mary well knew that he was not strictly faithful to her. ”

“ The negotiations between Spain, England and France had been brought to a pause by Mary's death, but were to be resumed after a brief interval, during which Elizabeth was to make up her mind. Some outwardly amicable letters passed between her and Henry II. She tried to play the part of the pure-bred Englishwoman, who should not suffer for the sins of the Spanish Mary. But the French were not to be coaxed out of Calais, and she knew that they were seeking a papal Bull against her. ”

“ Hers, in its turn, was mainly undone by her sister and successor; yet is there no sovereign who ever sat on the English throne, unless it be Henry VIII. himself, who has produced a greater or more permanent effect upon the subsequent history of the country. The loathing which Mary's persecution produced in the minds of Englishmen did more to establish the Reformation in England than any other single cause. 'You have lost the hearts of twenty thousand that were rank Papists within this twelvemonth,' wrote a lady to Bonner. ”