William III of England

EARLY LIFE 

William III was born in The Hague in the Dutch Republic on November 4, 1650.

He was baptised William Henry (Dutch: Willem Hendrik),

Portrait attributed to Thomas Murray, c. 1690

He was the only child of William II, Prince of Orange and Mary, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange. Eight days before he was born, his father died from smallpox.

Mary was the eldest daughter of King Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland and his wife, Henrietta Maria of France.

William's mother showed little personal interest in her son, sometimes being absent for years, and always deliberately kept herself apart from Dutch society

The restoration of Charles II in England and Scotland greatly enhanced the position of Prince William and his mother in Holland. In September 1660, she returned to England. She died of smallpox there on December 24, 1660, when William was just ten years old

In her will, Mary designated Charles II as William's legal guardian. Charles delegated this responsibility to William's paternal grandmother, the Princess Dowager Amalia, with the understanding that Charles's advice would be sought whenever it was needed. This arrangement did not prevent Charles from corresponding with his nephew.

PRINCE OF ORANGE 

Because his father had died eight days before he was born, William became the Sovereign Prince of Orange at the moment of his birth.

The picture below shows young Prince William portrayed by Jan Davidsz de Heem and Jan Vermeer van Utrecht within a flower garland filled with symbols of the House of Orange-Nassau, c. 1660

As a Protestant, William participated in several wars against the powerful Catholic King of France, Louis XIV, in coalition with Protestant and Catholic powers in Europe. Many Protestants heralded him as a champion of their faith.

William opened the dykes and floods huge areas of the Netherlands to protect Amsterdam and surrounding area from the French.

He forced Louis XIV of France to make peace in 1678 and henceforward concentrated on building up an European alliance against the French threat.

In 1677, William married his fifteen-year-old first cousin, Mary, the daughter of his maternal uncle James, Duke of York, later King James II of England.

GLORIOUS REVOLUTION 

King James II of England's attempts to restore Catholicism alienated his subjects and when a son was born to him this increased the chances of a Catholic dynasty. A group of seven conspirators, both Whig and Tory, met at Revolution House near Chesterfield to plot the overthrow of king and invite his daughter Mary and her husband William to invade England.

William of Orange blanketed England with 60,000 pamphlets before he made his landfall transforming a coup d’etat into an act of fraternal rescue.

William's flagship had the motto "The Protestant religion and the liberties of England and I will maintain it".

His fleet was beaten back to base in October 1688 by stormy weather. A few weeks later, on November 5, 1688, he landed his 15,000 strong army with 600 ships off Torbay in South West England.

Equestrian portrait of William III by Jan Wyck, commemorating the landing at Torbay

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James was incapacitated at Salisbury by severe nose bleeding and decided not to march against William at Exeter. The delay was a mistake. His military commander John Churchill and many of his men slipped away and James fled back to London where he threw the Great Seal of England into the Thames without putting up a fight.

William advanced to London unopposed, deposed James II and claimed the English throne.

Williams' Glorious Revolution was funded by the merchants of Amsterdam. They wanted to protect their financial interests by bringing the Netherlands and Britain closer together.

When Mary reached her ousted father James II's palace, the first thing she did was bounce on all the beds.

ENGLISH REIGN 

As William was unwilling to be the Queen's consort only, Mary and him were jointly proclaimed King and Queen on April 11, 1689. They were crowned at Westminster Abbey as joint monarchs by the Bishop of London. (The Archbishop of Canterbury refused to officiate).

William of Orange and Mary crowned as King and Queen of England in 1689

Parliament granted William in 1688 the first civil list of £700,000.

The Bill of Rights, which was passed by Parliament on December 16, 1689, was one of the most important constitutional documents in English history, It asserted liberties and rights of the nation and declared William and Mary, king and queen. The Act also made it illegal for royals to suspend laws without Parliament's consent or to raise money and gave freedom of speech to MPs in Parliament and freedom in elections. In addition, it precluded any Roman Catholic from ascending the throne.

The Bill of Rights

William's enemy, King Louis XIV of France, was protecting and supporting James in his efforts to return to the English throne. James landed at Kinsale, Ireland and the majority Roman Catholics there were reinforced by French forces led by Jacobites. William with Dutch and Huguenot support crashed his rebellion at the Battle of Boyne.

The Nine Years' War was fought between Louis XIV of France and a European coalition of the Holy Roman Empire led by Austria, Spain and Savoy. After he came to the throne, William III brought the Dutch and the English into the coalition against France,

The Anglo-Dutch Alliance defeated a French fleet at La Hogue in 1692. This stalled any thoughts by Louis and James of an invasion of England. On the other hand, the French under the command of the Duke of Luxembourg beat William's European coalition badly on land at the Battle of Landen in 1693.

Because of his war with France, William needed to raise funds. So he set up a bank which the government could borrow from. The bank was financed by public loans. That bank became known as the Bank of England.

In 1693 England's permanent national debt was started when William borrowed £1 million for the war debt.

Mary II, governed the realm for William, while he was away fighting, but acted on his advice. Each time he returned to England, Mary gave up her power to him ungrudgingly. Such an arrangement lasted for the rest of Mary's life.

Mary by Jan Verkolje, 1685

There was a widespread admiration in Britain for Mary and less so for the often absent William.

Mary II died of smallpox in 1694. By now William III's position had become so secure that he was able to rule alone, even though Mary's sister Anne was closer in line of the succession.

William took a cab from Margate to Kensington Palace in 1695. It took him a year to pay the fare and even then he only came up with half the money. The rest was left for Queen Anne to settle six years after his death.

In 1696 the window tax was introduced. This had an effect on English architecture way into the next century.

By the turn of the century William was becoming increasingly unpopular due to his gifts of land to his Dutch favourites.

BELIEFS 

Although William III was brought up as a Calvinist, he converted to Anglicanism. However one condition of him becoming king was a stop to repression of non-conformists and the 1688 Act of Toleration did this.

King William III administered a few Royal Touches to sick subjects but added "God grant you better health and more sense".

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

Short in stature, William had a permanently hooked nose and was pockmarked. He had long, dark hair and a Ronald Coleman type moustache.

Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1680s

 An anonymous Catholic wrote about the Protestant William's coronation:
"He has gotten part of the shape of a man
But more of a monkey, deny it who can:
He has the head of a goose, but the legs of a cran;
A dainty fine king indeed".

William was solitary by nature. He was cold with others and renowned for his terrible temper.

MARRIAGE 

William married his first cousin the 15 year old gossipy, chatty, kind, religious Princess Mary on November 4, 1677. The ceremony took place in St. James's Palace and was officiated by Bishop Henry Compton.

Mary II and William III

Mary was the niece of Charles II of England and daughter of James II, heir to the throne.

She was a loyal and subservient wife.

Out of the tree of life
William picked a plum in Mary
They were ripe for each other.

Mary suffered a miscarriage after less than a year of marriage, which may have permanently impaired her ability to have children.

Mary II died of smallpox in 1694. Although William had previously mistreated his wife and kept mistresses (the most well-known of which was Elizabeth Villiers), hw deeply mourned Mary's death.

William is assumed by most modern scholars to have been bisexual. He had several male favourites, including a Rotterdam bailiff called Van Zuylen van Nijveld.

HOBBIES AND INTERESTS 

The barking of his white pug called Kuntze raised the alarm and saved young William in 1672 during a Spanish raid at Mons.

When William III came to England, he brought his pugs. They wore little orange ribbons to their master’s 1689 coronation.

Both William and Mary had a passion for gardening. The royal couple brought the Dutch baroque style to British gardens with a team of Dutch gardeners and started a new, formal fashion in style.

William' and Mary's Dutch tastes had a marked influence on English pottery and interior decoration.

HOMES  

King William III suffered from an irritating asthmatic cough. His asthma was badly affected by the dank London river air and he disliked Whitehall Palace, their home in London. It was too near the River Thames, with its fog and floods, for William's fragile health.

William and Mary purchased Kensington Palace, which was further away from the Thames in 1689 as a royal residence from the Earl of Nottingham. Christopher Wren did extensive work on it.

Kensington Palace south front with its parterres, engraved by Jan Kip, 1724

William introduced Britain’s first street lighting when, to deter robbers, he had lanterns strung on the trees in Rotten Row, his private road between Whitehall and Kensington Palace.

In 1690 William and Mary introduced the concept of house and garden with their rebuilt Hampton Court Palace Garden. They created the Great Fountain Garden on Hampton Court's East Front to complement their elegant new baroque palace. At the time it was one of the wonders of Europe.

William and Mary lived mostly in Hampton Court and were not too put out when one of the maid servants they had bought with them from Holland set fire to Whitehall Palace and burned most of it down.

DEATH 

King William III had a horse called Sorrell who was blind in one eye. When Sorrell stumbled over a mole hill in Hampton Court Park, the English king fell off on breaking his collarbone.

William died of complications (pneumonia) from his injuries on March 8, 1702. Because his horse had stumbled into a mole's burrow many Jacobites toasted "the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat."

William was buried in Westminster Abbey alongside his wife.

Statue of an idealised William III by John Michael Rysbrack erected in Bristol  in 1736 By Ad Meskens

William died on a Saturday, as did the next five English Kings and Queens; Queen Anne, George I, George II, George III and George IV. The previous two King Williams (I and II) also died in horse related incidents.

Sources The Faber Book of English History in Verse, London on £1 A Day by Betty James