William III
King of England, Scotland and Ireland
 William III and II (14 November 1650–8 March 1702; also known as
William Henry and William of Orange) was Prince of Orange from his
birth, King of England and Ireland from 13 February 1689, and King of
Scotland from 11 April 1689, in each case until his death. He won the
English, Scottish and Irish Crown following the Glorious Revolution,
during which his uncle and father-in-law, James II, was deposed. In
England, Scotland and Ireland, ruled jointly with his wife, Mary II,
until her death on 28 December 1694. He reigned as "William II" in
Scotland, but "William III" in all his other realms.
William was appointed to the Dutch post of Stadtholder on 28 June
1672, and remained in office until he died. A Protestant, William
participated in many wars with the powerful Roman Catholic King of
France, Louis XIV. He was heralded by many as a champion of
Protestantism; it was partly due to such a reputation that he was able
to take the Crown of England, many of whose people were fervent
anti-Catholics (though his army and fleet, the biggest since the Armada,
were a more important reason for his success).
Early reign
William, the son of William II, Prince of Orange and Mary, Princess
Royal and Princess of Orange, was born in The Hague. Eight days before
he was born, his father died from smallpox; thus, William became the
Sovereign Prince of Orange at the moment of his birth. He was also
related to the English Royal Family; his mother was the daughter of King
Charles I.
William II was the Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht,
Gelderland and Overijssel. All five provinces, however, suspended the
office of Stadtholder upon William II's death. During the "First
Stadtholderless Era," power was de facto held by Johan de Witt. In about
1667, as William III was nearing the age of eighteen, the pro-Orange
party attempted to restore the Prince to power by securing for him the
offices of Stadtholder and Captain-General. So as to prevent the
restoration of the influence of the House of Orange, de Witt procured
the issuance of the Eternal Edict (or Perpetual Edict), which declared
that the Captain-General or Admiral-General of the Netherlands could not
serve as Stadtholder in any province. Furthermore, the office of
Stadtholder itself was abolished in the province of Holland. (Other
provinces soon followed suit.)
The year 1672 was calamitous for the Netherlands, becoming known as
the "disaster year." France, under Louis XIV, invaded the Netherlands;
the French also had the aid of the English. The great French army
quickly overran most of the Netherlands, though Holland managed to
remain safe. De Witt failed to secure peace with France, and was
overthrown. (Afterwards, he and his brother, Cornelis de Witt, were
brutally murdered by an angry mob in The Hague.) In the meantime, the
Eternal Edict was declared void, and William III was elected Stadtholder
of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht. He was also appointed Captain-General
and Admiral-General of the Netherlands. Gelderland and Overijssel did
not elect William to the post of Stadtholder until 1675.
William III continued to fight against the invaders from England and
France (see Third Anglo-Dutch War), afterwards allying himself with
Spain. He made peace with the nation he would later come to rule,
England, in 1674. To strengthen his position, he endeavoured to marry
his first cousin Mary, the daughter of James, Duke of York (the future
James II). The marriage occurred on 4 November 1677; the union was an
unhappy one and fruitless. Finding a war with both England and the
Netherlands disadvantageous, the King of France, Louis XIV, made peace
in 1678. Louis, however, continued his aggression, leading William III
to join the League of Augsburg (an anti-French coalition which also
included the Holy Roman Empire, Sweden, Spain and several German states)
in 1686.
In 1685, William's father-in-law came to the English Throne as James
II, a Roman Catholic who was unpopular in his Protestant realms. William
attempted to conciliate James, whom he hoped would join the League of
Augsburg, whilst at the same time trying not to offend the Protestant
party in England. But by 1687, it became clear that James II would not
join the League. To gain the favour of English Protestants, William
expressed his disapproval of James's religious policies. Seeing him as a
friend, many English politicians began to negotiate an armed invasion of
England.
Glorious Revolution
William was at first opposed to the project of invasion. Meanwhile,
in England, James II's second wife, Mary of Modena, bore a son (James
Francis Edward), who displaced William's wife to become first in the
line of succession. Public anger was also inspired by the trial of seven
bishops who had publicly opposed James II's religious policies and had
petitioned him to reform them. The acquittal of the bishops signalled a
major defeat for the Government of James II, and encouraged further
resistance to its activities.
Still, William was reluctant to invade, believing that the English
People would not react well to a foreign invader. He therefore demanded
that the most eminent English Protestants first invite him to invade. On
30 June 1688—the same day the bishops were acquitted—a group of
political figures known as the "Immortal Seven" complied, sending him a
formal invitation. William began to make preparations for an invasion;
his intentions were public knowledge by September 1688. With a Dutch
army, William landed in England on 5 November 1688. James's support
dissolved almost immediately; Protestant officers defected from the
English army, and influential noblemen across the country declared their
support for the invader. Though the invasion and subsequent overthrow of
James II is commonly known as the "Glorious Revolution," it was in
reality a coup d'état.
James at first attempted to resist William, but saw that his efforts
would prove futile. He sent representatives to negotiate with William,
but secretly attempted to flee on 11 December. He was caught by a group
of fishermen, brought back to London, but successfully attempted to
escape on 23 December. William actually permitted James to leave the
country, for he did not wish to make him a martyr for the Roman Catholic
cause.
In 1689, a Convention Parliament summoned by the Prince of Orange
assembled, and much discussion relating to the appropriate course of
action ensued. William III was insecure about his position; he wished to
be King in his own right, rather than a mere consort. The only precedent
for a joint monarchy in England was one from the sixteenth century: when
Queen Mary I married the Spanish Prince Philip, it was agreed that the
latter would take the title of King. But Philip II remained King only
during his wife's lifetime, and restrictions were placed on his power.
William, on the other hand, demanded that he be King even after his
wife's death. Although some individuals proposed to make her the sole
ruler, Mary, remaining loyal to her husband, refused.
On 13 February 1689, Parliament passed the Declaration of Right, in
which it deemed that James, by attempting to flee on 11 December 1688,
had abdicated the government of the realm, and that the Throne was
thereby vacant. The Crown was not offered to James's eldest son, James
Francis Edward (who would have been the heir-apparent under normal
circumstances), but to William and Mary as joint Sovereigns. It was,
however, provided that "the sole and full exercise of the regal power be
only in and executed by the said Prince of Orange in the names of the
said Prince and Princess during their joint lives".
William and Mary were crowned together at Westminster Abbey on 11
April 1689 by the Bishop of London, Henry Compton. Normally, the
coronation is performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, but the
Archbishop at the time, William Sancroft, refused to recognise James
II's removal. On the day of the coronation, the Convention of the
Estates of Scotland—which was much more divided than the English
Parliament—finally declared that James was no longer King of Scotland.
William and Mary were offered the Scottish Crown; they accepted on 11
May. William was officially "William II," for there was only one
previous Scottish King named William (see William I).
Revolution Settlement
William III encouraged the passage of the Toleration Act of 1689,
which guaranteed religious toleration to certain dissenters. The Act,
however, only extended to a limited group of individuals:
non-Christians, those who disbelieved in the Holy Trinity and Roman
Catholics were all excluded. Thus, the Act was not as wide-ranging as
James II's Declaration of Indulgence, which attempted to grant freedom
of conscience to people of all faiths.
In December 1689, one of the most important constitutional documents
in English history, the Bill of Rights, was passed. The Act—which
restated and confirmed many provisions of the earlier Declaration of
Right—established restrictions on the royal prerogative; it was
provided, amongst other things, that the Sovereign could not suspend
laws passed by Parliament, levy taxes without parliamentary consent,
infringe the right to petition, raise a standing army during peacetime
without parliamentary consent, deny the right to bear arms to Protestant
subjects, unduly interfere with parliamentary elections, punish members
of either House Parliament for anything said during debates, require
excessive bail or inflict cruel or unusual punishments. William was
opposed to the imposition of such constraints, but he wisely chose not
to engage in a conflict with Parliament and agreed to abide by the
statute.
The Bill of Rights also settled the question of succession to the
Crown. After the death of either William or Mary, the other would
continue to reign. Next in the line of succession was Mary II's sister,
the Princess Anne, and her issue. Finally, any children William might
have had by a subsequent marriage were included in the line of
succession. Non-Protestants, as well as those who married Roman
Catholics, were excluded from the succession.
Rule with Mary II
William continued to be absent from the realm for extended periods
during his war with France. England joined the League of Augsburg, which
then became known as the "Grand Alliance." Whilst William was away
fighting, his wife, Mary II, governed the realm for him, but acted on
his advice. Each time he returned to England, Mary gave up her power to
him unbegrudgingly. Such an arrangement lasted for the rest of Mary's
life.
Although William was accepted as Sovereign by most in England, he
faced considerable opposition in Scotland and Ireland. The Scottish
Jacobites—those who believed that James II was the legitimate
monarch—won a stunning victory on 27 July 1689 at the Battle of
Killiecrankie, but were nevertheless subdued within a month. William's
reputation suffered following the Massacre of Glencoe (1692), in which
hundreds of Scotsmen were murdered for not properly pledging their
allegiance to the new King and Queen. Bowing to public opinion, William
dismissed those responsible for the massacre, though they still remained
in his favour; in the words of the historian John Dalberg-Acton, 1st
Baron Acton, "one became a colonel, another a knight, a third a peer,
and a fourth an earl".
In Ireland, where the rebels were aided by the French, fighting
continued for much longer, although James II had been forced to flee the
island after the Battle of the Boyne (1690). The victory in Ireland is
commemorated annually by the Orange March. After a French fleet was
defeated by the Anglo-Dutch Navy at La Hogue in 1692, the naval
supremacy of the English became apparent, and Ireland was conquered
shortly thereafter. At the same time, the Grand Alliance fared poorly on
land. William lost Namur, a part of his Dutch territory, in 1692, and
was disastrously beaten at the Battle of Landen in 1693.
Mary II died of smallpox in 1694, leaving William III to rule alone.
Although he had previously mistreated his wife and kept mistresses,
William deeply mourned his wife's death. Although he was brought up as a
Calvinist, he converted to Anglicanism. His popularity, however,
plummetted during his reign as a sole Sovereign.
William is assumed by most modern scholars to have been bisexual. He
had several male favourites, including a Rotterdam bailiff Van Zuylen
van Nijveld. He granted English dignities to two of his Dutch courtiers:
Hans Willem Bentinck became Earl of Portland, and Arnold Joost van
Keppel was created Earl of Albemarle.
Later years
In 1696, the Dutch province of Drenthe made William its Stadtholder.
William continued to wage war against France until 1697, when the Treaty
of Ryswick was agreed to. His arch-rival, Louis XIV, agreed to recognise
him as King and give no further assistance to James. The Jacobites did
not pose any further serious threats during William's reign.
As his life drew towards its conclusion, William, like many other
European rulers, was concerned with the question of succession to the
Throne of Spain, with which were associated vast territories in Italy,
the Low Countries and the New World. The King of Spain at the time was
Charles II, an invalid with no prospect of having children; amongst his
closest relatives were Louis XIV (the King of France) and Leopold I,
Holy Roman Emperor. William sought to prevent the Spanish inheritance
from going to either monarch, for he feared that such a calamity would
upset the balance of power. William and Louis XIV agreed to the First
Partition Treaty, which provided for the division of the Spanish Empire:
Duke Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria (whom William himself chose) would
obtain Spain, whilst the remaining territories would be divided between
France and the Holy Roman Emperor. The Spaniards, however, were shocked
by William's boldness; they had not been previously consulted on the
dismemberment of their own empire, and strove to keep the Spanish
territories united.
At first, William and Louis ignored the wishes of the Spanish court.
When, however, the Bavarian Prince selected to inherit Spain died of
smallpox, the issue was reopened. In 1700, the two rulers agreed to the
Second Partition Treaty (also called the Treaty of London), under which
the territories in Italy would pass to a son of the King of France, and
the other Spanish territories would be inherited by a son of the Holy
Roman Emperor. This arrangement infuriated both the Spanish—who still
sought to prevent the dissolution of their empire—and the Holy Roman
Emperor—to whom the Italian territories were much more useful than the
other lands. Unexpectedly, the invalid King of Spain, Charles II,
interfered as he lay dying in late 1700. Unilaterally, he willed all
Spanish territories to Philip, a grandson of Louis XIV. The French
conveniently ignored the Second Partition Treaty and claimed the entire
Spanish inheritance. Furthermore, Louis XIV alienated William III by
recognising James Francis Edward Stuart—the son of the former King James
II, who had by then died—as King of England. The subsequent conflict,
known as the War of the Spanish Succession, continued until 1713.
The Spanish inheritance, however, was not the only one which
concerned William. His marriage with Mary II had not yielded any
children, and he did not seem likely to remarry. Mary's sister, the
Princess Anne, had borne numerous children, all of whom died during
childhood. The death of William, Duke of Gloucester in 1700 left the
Princess Anne as the only individual left in the line of succession
established by the Bill of Rights. As the complete exhaustion of the
line of succession would have encouraged a restoration of James II's
line, Parliament saw fit to pass the Act of Settlement 1701, in which it
was provided that the Crown would be inherited by a distant relative,
Sophia, Electress of Hanover and her Protestant heirs if the Princess
Anne died without surviving issue, and if William III failed to have
surviving issue by any subsequent marriage. (Several Roman Catholics
with genealogically senior claims to Sophia were omitted.) The Act
extended to England and Ireland, but not to Scotland, whose Estates had
not been consulted before the selection of Sophia.
Like the Bill of Rights before it, the Act of Settlement not only
addressed succession to the Throne, but also limited the power of the
Crown. Future Sovereigns were forbidden to use English resources to
defend any of their other realms, unless parliamentary consent was first
obtained. To ensure the independence of the judiciary, it was enacted
that judges would serve during good behaviour, rather than at the
pleasure of the Sovereign. It was also enacted that a pardon issued by
the Sovereign could not impede an impeachment.
Death
In 1702, William—who did not remarry—died of complications resulting
from a fall off his horse. It was believed by some that his horse had
stumbled into a mole's burrow and as a result many Jacobites toasted
"the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat."
William was buried in Westminster Abbey alongside his wife. The reign
of William's successor, Anne, was marked by attempts to extend the
provisions of the Act of Settlement to Scotland. Angered by the English
Parliament's failure to consult with them before choosing Sophia of
Hanover, the Estates of Scotland enacted the Act of Security, forcing
Anne to grant the Royal Assent by threatening to withdraw troops from
the army fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession. The Act provided
that, if Anne died without a child, the Estates could elect the next
monarch from amongst the Protestant descendants of previous Scottish
Kings, but could not choose the English successor unless various
religious, political and economic conditions were met. In turn, the
English Parliament attempted to force the Scots to capitulate by
restricting trade, thereby crippling the Scottish economy. The Scottish
Estates were forced to agree to the Act of Union 1707, which united
England and Scotland into a single realm called Great Britain;
succession was to be under the terms established by the Act of
Settlement.
William's death also brought an end to the Dutch House of Orange,
which had governed the Netherlands since the time of William the Silent
(William I). The five provinces over which William III ruled—Holland,
Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel—all suspended the office of
Stadtholder after William III's death. The remaining two provinces—Friesland
and Groningen—were never governed by William III, and continued to
retain a separate Stadtholder, Johan Willem Friso. Under William III's
will, Friso was to inherit the Principality of Orange. The Principality,
however, was also claimed by the Prussian King Frederick I.
Johan Willem Friso died in 1711, leaving his claim to his son,
William. Under the Treaty of Utrecht, which was agreed to in 1713,
Frederick I allowed the King of France, Louis XIV, to take the lands of
Orange; William Friso, or William IV, was left with the meaningless
title of "Prince of Orange." William IV was also restored to the office
of Stadtholder in 1747. (From 1747 onwards, there was one Stadtholder
for the entire Republic, rather than a separate Stadtholder for each
province.)
Legacy
William's primary achievement was to hem in France when it was in a
position to impose its will across much of Europe. His life was largely
opposed to the will of the French King Louis XIV. This effort continued
after his death during the War of the Spanish Succession.
Another important consequence of William's reign involved the ending
of a bitter conflict between Crown and Parliament that had lasted since
the accession of the first monarch of the House of Stuart, James I, in
1603. The conflict over royal and parliamentary power had led to the
English Civil War during the 1640s and the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
During William's reign, however, the conflict was settled in
Parliament's favour by the Bill of Rights 1689, the Triennial Act 1694
and the Act of Settlement 1701.
Style and arms
The joint style of William III and Mary II was "William and Mary, by
the Grace of God, King and Queen of England, France and Ireland,
Defenders of the Faith, etc." when they ascended the Throne. (The claim
to France was only nominal, and had been asserted by every English King
since Edward III, regardless of the amount of French territory actually
controlled, see English Kings of France) From 11 April 1689—when the
Estates of Scotland recognised them as Sovereigns—the style "William and
Mary, by the Grace of God, King and Queen of England, Scotland, France
and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, etc." was used. After Mary's death,
William continued to use the same style, omitting the reference to Mary,
mutatis mutandis.
The arms used by the King and Queen were: Quarterly, I and IV
Grandquarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lis Or (for France) and Gules
three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England); II Or a lion
rampant within a tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); III
Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland); overall an escutcheon
Azure billetty and a lion rampant Or.
Source: Wikipedia (18th
Febraury, 2005)
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