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The House Of Stuart |
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William III and Mary II
1688-1702 1688-94
Early Years
William III of Orange was born at The Hague on 4th November, 1650. He was the posthumous son of William II of Orange and of Mary Stuart, the eldest daughter of Charles I and Henrietta Maria of France. His grieving mother had given birth to him in a chamber draped with black mourning. William's father, the Prince of Orange, had died but a week previously on 27th October, of smallpox.
William was not a healthy child, small and thin, with a slightly hunched back, he suffered very badly from asthma all his life. Tragically, William also lost his mother when he was but nine years old. On a visit to England after the Restoration of her brother, Charles II, she had contracted smallpox and died there. Being left alone at this early age, he developed a strong sense of self reliance. William received an excellent education and was brought up in Holland in the Protestant, Calvinist faith.
His future wife and first cousin, Mary Stuart, was born at St. James Palace on 30th April, 1662, the eldest daughter of the future James II of England and his first wife Anne Hyde, daughter of Edward, Earl of Clarendon. Anne Hyde had been a maid of honour to William's mother, Mary Stuart. Mary's parents secret marriage had been occasioned by the fact that Anne was pregnant with his child. Although Charles II welcomed Anne into the family, the Queen-Mother, Henrietta Maria, felt James had married beneath him and opposed the marriage venomously. The child, a son, had died young.
Catherine of Braganza, the wife of Mary's uncle, Charles II, then king, was barren, making Mary the next in line to the throne after her father. Mary was always her father's favourite daughter. Her mother died, probably of breast cancer, in 1671. Her father, by then a Catholic convert, remarried, his new bride, the beautiful Italian Mary Beatrice of Modena was only four years older than her new step-daughter. Mary and her sister Anne, on the orders of her uncle, King Charles II, were brought up as firm Anglicans.
The Marriage of William and Mary
The marriage of the first cousins was arranged for diplomatic motives by Charles II. It did not get off to a very auspicious start, on first sight of William, Mary wept inconsolably. At twenty-seven, he was not an attractive prospective partner, with his thin, hunched body, extremely large aquiline nose and piercing eyes. Mary's sister Anne unkindly referred to him as 'Caliban', after the mythical Greek ogre of monstrous appearance. Her father consented reluctantly to the match.
The wedding took place on 4th November, 1677 and was a dismal affair, the bride cried throughout while her father looked on anxiously, the Groom was austere and uncomfortable, with only King Charles II smiling and joking in attempt to lighten the dour atmosphere. After such an unpromising start, the marriage surprisingly proved to be a successful one, though it was never to produce any children.
The Joint Sovereigns
Mary was displaced in the Line of Succession on the birth of her half brother, James Francis Edward, in 1688. The English, weary of James pro-Catholic policies, and faced with the prospect that he now had a catholic heir to continue his work, invited William to England to redress the situation.
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William arrived in England on 5th November, 1688. James II, deserted by many of his followers and unnerved it is reported, by recently reading of the fates of the deposed Kings Richard II and Henry VI, fled to France. A convention was set up to determine the government of the country in January, 1689, which came to the decision that James could be said to have abdicated.
The crown was accordingly offered to Mary, however William would not agree to rule only in his wife's name, which he considered humiliating. The crown was consequently offered to William and Mary jointly. On her arrival in England, Mary was widely criticised for having no respect for the father whose throne she had come to take and she and Anne were compared to the unfilial daughters of King Lear. James himself wrote bitterly to Mary, disowning her and laying a curse upon her. A devout woman, Mary's actions bore heavily on her conscience in the years to come.
William III and Mary II formally promised to rule according to law and to be guided by Parliament. The Declaration of Rights designated the succession was to go to Mary's children, then Anne's, failing those it was to pass to any children of William (who was strictly speaking only third in line to the throne) by another marriage. It declared that no Catholic could become either sovereign or consort and imposed a new Oath of Allegiance. Secondly, it decreed that no monarch could keep a standing army in time of peace except with the consent of Parliament.
William never inspired the loyalty of his English subjects and was always dismissed as an arrogant foreigner who was chillingly reserved. The smog ridden air of London badly affected the chronic asthma he had suffered from since childhood and gave him a constant deep cough. The court was accordingly moved to the Tudor palace of Hampton Court, outside London. He spent much of his time campaigning abroad, in Ireland opposing James' attempt to win back the throne in 1690 and in the Netherlands from 1691 to 97.