717 



WILLIAM III. (OP ENGLAND). 



WILLIAM III. (OP ENGLAND). 



718 



also said, " the temper of the youth of this laud, I shall have plenty 

 of followers." Nevertheless it does not appear that auy considerable 

 force accompanied him; but as soon as Helie heard of his arrival, be 

 dismissed hia troops and took to flight, upon which William shortly 

 after returned to England. This was the last time that the Red King 

 took the field. On the 2nd of August following he was shot dead by 

 au arrow as he was hunting in the New Forest, by whose hand was 

 never certainly known, although the popular story of the time, dressed 

 up with many striking circumstances by the monkish chroniclers who 

 subsequently recorded it, attributed the act to Sir Walter Tyrrell, 

 otherwise, from his estates in France, called Sir Walter de Poix, a bolt 

 aimed by whom at a deer is said to have been turned aside by a tree, 

 fiuil, striking the king under his raised right arm, to have pierced his 

 heart. The dead body was left unnoticed till a late hour in the 

 evening, when it was found by a poor, charcoal-burner, who put it in 

 hia cart and so conveyed it to Winchester. William's successor on the 

 English throne was HKNUY I. 



William Rufus was never married, and the genealogists have not 

 even assigned to him any natural children, notwithstanding all the 

 licentiousness that is attributed to him in general terms. The chroni- 

 clers, who were all ecclesiastics, have drawn his character in the 

 darkest colours, and it may be presumed that he is indebted for some 

 portion of the infamy and malediction they have heaped upon him to 

 the manner in which he treated the church, of which he was through- 

 out his reign the systematic oppressor and despoiler. At the same 

 time it is sufficiently clear that neither as a man nor as a king did he 

 much care for restraints of any kind more tban those of religion. He 

 was not only dissolute, but rapacious, crafty, unscrupulous, and in the 

 main regardless of everything except his own interests and passions. 

 Rufus, with all his ruffianism, had a taste for some of the true splen- 

 dours of civilisation, and showed that he was not altogether sunk in 

 sensuality by devoting part of his wealth to architecture, the only one 

 of the fine arts which a king could in his day do much to encourage. 

 Besides other erections of less magnificence, he was the builder of the 

 first Westminster Hall. The commissioners of the Fine Arts, in their 

 Report, dated March 24, 1843, state that "they have reason to believe 

 that the original hall of King William Rufus occupied the same area 

 as the present building." 



WILLIAM III., King of England, was born in 1650, and was 

 the posthumous son of William II., prince qf Orange, by Mary, 

 daughter of Charles I., king of England. As William II. was the 

 eldest son of tho stadtholder, Frederic Henry, who was the youngest 

 son of William the Silent, by Louisa, daughter of the famous Admiral 

 Coligni, William III. was great-grandson of the founder of the Dutch 

 republic, and was also lineally descended, in the female line, from the 

 renowned leader of the Huguenots. Not only had a father's- care 

 been denied to the birth and infancy of William III., but his youth 

 was destined to suffer for the errors of his parents. The stadtholder 

 Frederic Henry, unlike his brother Maurice, had administered his 

 office without attempting to violate the liberties of the republic, or 

 giving umbrage to the jealousy of the States : but his son William II., 

 even in the brief career which was cut short by death in his twenty- 

 fourth year, contrived, by his violence and infringement of constitu- 

 tional rights, to revive public suspicion of the designs of his house 

 against the freedom of the commonwealth; and the party opposed 

 to the Orange interest took advantage of the helplessness of his infant 

 son to prevent his succeeding by election to the dignity of stadtholder, 

 which had become, aa it were, hereditary in the line of Nassau. The 

 alliance of that family with the house of Stuart had also excited the 

 jealousy of Cromwell, whose power was now in the ascendant; and, 

 when peace was concluded between the two republics of England and 

 the United Provinces, in 1654) the imperious demand of the protector, 

 that all the States should solemnly engage to exclude the infant prince 

 of Orange and his descendants prospectively from the stadtholdership, 

 was only satisfied by a secret engagement to the same effect, to which 

 Holland, as the leading province of the Union, acceded. 



The restoration of the Stuarts to the British throne, in a few years, 

 tended however at once to raise the hopes of the adherents of the 

 house of Orange, and to increase the disquietude of their opponents ; 

 and, in 1667, the republicans, headed by the two celebrated brothers, 

 John and Cornelius de Witt, succeeded in inducing the States to pass 

 the 'Perpetual Edict,' for ever abolishing the office of stadtholder. 

 But the iniquitous aggression of the French king, Louis XIV., upon 

 the republic in 1672, soon put an end to the operation of this edict. 

 However pure might have been the intentions of the De Witts, their 

 measures had left the republic defenceless. Confiding in the friend- 

 ship of France, and distrusting the best officers of the army, as 

 devoted to the house of Orange, they had, by reductions and neglect, 

 so weakened the land forces of the republic, that resistance 'to the 

 invaders seemed hopeless. The Orange party were loud in their 

 clamours against the administration of their rivals ; and the populace, 

 who had always been favourable to the family of Nassau, were 

 instigated to revolt. Their fury was directed against the De Witts, 

 whom they murdered with horrid barbarity; and the young prince o: 

 Orange was tumultuously raised to the proscribed dignity of stadt 

 holder. 



William III. was only iu the twenty-second year of his age when he 

 was thus suddenly called to the government of a factious and distracted 



state, a lawless populace, and a dispirited and disorganised army. 

 With such means was he required to arrest the progress of the victo 

 rious king of France at tho head of a veteran army of 100,000 men, 

 aided by the best generals of the age, and supported by tho whole 

 >ower both of his own crown and that of England, which the baseness 

 )f Charles II. had rendered subservient to his ambition. But, 

 happily for his country and the world, William at onca displayed the 

 same characteristics of a firmness and sagacity far beyond his youthful 

 fears, which seem to have been the heir-looms of his race, and equally 

 ;o have distinguished him with his great ancestors William the Silent 

 and Maurice. He indignantly repelled all the efforts of the combined 

 Lings of England and France to seduce him from the cause of the 

 republic ; and when Buckingham, the favourite of Charles II., asked 

 aim if he did not see that the destruction of the commonwealth was 

 nevitable, he replied, " There is one means by which I at least shall 

 je sure not to witness the ruiu of my country : I will die in the last 

 ditch." His magnanimous spirit he knew how to infuse also into his 

 despairing countrymen, who cut the dikes of their lands, and resigned 

 ;he fertile fields, which their ancestors had rescued from the sea, to 

 ;he ravages of that element, rather then yield them to their invaders. 

 The example of their young leader taught them to spurn the insolent 

 demands of their enemies ; and in two short campaigns, the French 

 armies, which had overrun the United Provinces, and penetrated 

 almost to the gates of Amsterdam, were entirely driven out of the 

 ;erritory of the republic. In 1674, the young Prince of Orange 

 ventured to bring the veteran Conde" to a battle : and, though he 

 suffered for his temerity afc Seneffe, he so conducted himself in that 

 defeat as to extort from his illustrious opponent the generous. avowal 

 ;hat "he had acted in everything like an old captain, except in 

 venturing his life too much like a young soldier." 



During the remainder of the war, which, after a separate peace 

 between England and the States, was protracted with France for four 

 years, and concluded by the peace of Nimegueu in 1678, William con- 

 tinued to give abundant proofs both of his political and military 

 talents ; and, shortly before the close of hostilities, he had effected a 

 personal alliance, which largely influenced the fortunes of his sub- 

 sequent life. This was his marriage with his cousin Mary, eldest 

 daughter of James, duke of York, and heiress presumptive to the British 

 crown. It is not easy to comprehend the readiness of Charles II. to 

 adopt a measure so contrary to his usual policy and inclinations as 

 this union of the princess with William, who, though his nephew, had 

 thwarted his designs and offended his wishes by his maintenance of 

 the republican cause. But dread of the growing discontents of his 

 people, and a belief that the marriage would dispel the suspicious 

 excited by his brother's religion, are supposed to have been motives 

 sufficient to obtain his consent ; and he invited or permitted his 

 nephew to pay him the visit in England during which the alliance was 

 concluded. 



Neither the Prince of Orange nor Charles II. and his brother pro- 

 bably foresaw all the consequences of this union to the politics of 

 Europe. But no event of William's fortune contributed so essentially 

 to the furtherance of that great design which had become the master 

 passion of his mind the reduction of the tyrannical power of Louis 

 XIV. and the security of the liberties of the Protestant world ; and 

 in whatever degree motives of personal ambition, whether uncon- 

 sciously to himself or otherwise, were mingled in his plans, he never 

 appears to have suffered any consideration for an instant to interfere 

 with his pursuit of the great cause to which he had devoted himself. 

 Many circumstances contributed to place him at the head of the 

 general league, provoked by the aggressive power of Louis XIV., in 

 resistance to which his first glory had been won. The revocation of 

 the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, by that monarch, and his perse- 

 cution of his Protestant subjects, had justly alarmed and outraged all 

 their European brethren of the same faith ; the insolent pretensions 

 of Louis had given mortal offence to the emperor and king of Spain ; 

 the apprehensions which experience had taught the United Provinces 

 to entertain of the projects of the French king naturally rendered the 

 court of their stadtholder the centre of negociations against him ; and 

 various causes of hatred and fear enabled William to combine the 

 States themselves and the Protestant princes of Germany, with the 

 two Roman Catholic monarchs of the house of Austria and other 

 powers, in the celebrated league which was concluded against Louis 

 XIV. at Augsburg, in 1687. To the completeness of that great 

 European confederacy nothing was wanting but the accession of 

 England; and this was obtained, in the only manner which the 

 alliance of her new king, James II., with France rendered practicable, 

 by his insane attempt to overthrow the national faith. 



From his marriage, William had abstained from taking part in tho 

 struggle of parties in England ; and though, through his activity in 

 thwarting the schemes of the French king, he had not been able to 

 escape the displeasure of his uncle Charles II., he had lived on decent 

 terms with his father-in-law, and since his accession had proffered 

 him aid in suppressing the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth. But 

 when he publicly refused to support the repeal of the Test Act, James 

 began both to treat him as an enemy and to take injurious measures 

 against the United Provinces ; and, on the other hand, all the English 

 Protestants turned their eyes to the Prince of Orange for the protec- 

 tion of their liberties and faith. On the invitation of the principal 



