William had his own reasons for marrying Mary. He hoped their union would cement an Anglo-Dutch alliance against Louis XIV and bring another important ally into his struggle with the French king. Many in Protestant England were deeply suspicious of the new Catholic monarch. When his wife gave birth to a son in the summer of it confirmed their worst fears of a Catholic succession. Alarmed by the situation, a group of James's Protestant opponents secretly invited William to invade England and oust his father-in-law.
William III (of Orange)
Many Englishmen supported William and, after some prominent English nobles defected to the invader, James II chose not to fight. He was subsequently captured and then allowed to escape to exile in France. The new monarchs could not rule with the same direct power as their predecessors.
Their initial mismatch seems to have made for a happy marriage. James planned to use Ireland as a base from which to invade England and recover his throne. In response William raised a huge invasion force, the largest Ireland had ever seen. In July he decisively defeated James at the Battle of the Boyne.
James fled once again to France. For the next eight years he was often away fighting, leaving his wife to rule in his absence. Inconsolable with grief, he fainted at her bedside. He continued to rule alone. His health, which had never been strong, deteriorated rapidly. He died on 8 March.
William III of Orange. Early years William was born on 4 November in The Hague. William the autocrat Brought up to believe he was an instrument of God, William could be impatient with others. William and Mary In , William married his cousin Mary. He never doubted, and gratefully recognized, Mary's own contribution to the device of the joint monarchy, and her death on 27 December prostrated him for months.
With whatever reservations, the couple had accepted the radical drift of the traditionally based Declaration of Rights in February ; and subsequent statutory changes in treason law and judicial tenure coincided with William's own preferences. But his rule in Scotland, where he delegated too much, is a blight on his record; and those terms in the Act of Settlement of which placed limits upon the executive were unmistakably censorious. His conduct of the war against France, once Jacobite forces had been defeated in Ireland in , placed him and his ministries under unrelenting parliamentary scrutiny, the more severe since coherent political parties were still in germination.
How much the reforms in British public finance, for example the founding of the Bank of England in , owed to initiatives from William is uncertain, since such reforms had begun under Charles II. What is clear is that William's contribution to the disclosure of foreign policy to Parliament opened a new era in crown—Parliament relations, even if this was occasioned by strident criticism of his use of prerogative power in this area. When he died on 8 March he had won a measure of international recognition for Britain's protestant succession, and had endeavoured to resolve peaceably, in partnership with Louis XIV, the problem of the Spanish succession.
No British king has stood higher than William in international renown. A Personal Portrait 2 vols. He was also stadholder of the United Netherlands from to As perhaps the pivotal European figure of the late 17th century, William of Orange remains most noted for having fought France, the dominant power in Europe, to a standstill in three wars. In this process he reunited his native Netherlands and became king of England.
Navigation menu
In his English role William fostered the legal bulwarks of the Glorious Revolution of As William drew England into his wars against France, he concluded more than a century's isolation for England and initiated a series of victories that later yielded Great Britain a worldwide empire. Eight days before William was born at The Hague on Nov. William's mother was Mary, the oldest daughter of Charles I of England.
The De Witt brothers, Jan and Cornelius, heads of an urban and commercial coalition, assumed power and pursued a policy of autonomy for the seven provinces of the Netherlands. The house of Orange, aristocratic leader of the landed interests, had stood for unity as the only means of protection against foreign interests. Despite the De Witts' control over his education, William nurtured plans to restore the stadholdership. In the meantime, the young prince prepared himself, mastering four languages, studying politics and war, and exercising the Spartan self-control and taciturnity for which he became famous.
In the prince's popularity rose dramatically when Louis XIV of France made the first of his many attempts to conquer the Dutch. Public exasperation greeted the De Witts' inactivity while Louis's armies occupied neighboring Flanders. When the southern Dutch provinces were invaded in , William was advanced quickly from captain general in February to stadholder in July.
William Iii (england) | theranchhands.com
In August a panicked mob murdered the De Witts, and a year later William's office was made hereditary. The war with France raged from to , and while William battled against armies that were sometimes five times the size of his own, he built an alliance with Spain, Denmark, and Brandenburg. Despite a near-fatal bout with smallpox in and a severe arm wound in , William wrung from the French a recognition of Dutch independence in the Treaty of Nijmegen in With England as the Netherlands' partner there could be no doubt about maintaining Dutch independence.
The match was advanced by the pro-Dutch English minister, the Earl of Danby, and after the marriage William slowly intruded himself into English politics. He ostensibly visited Charles II in to seek aid against renewed French hostilities, but he actually came to observe the increasing antagonism of the Whigs to the proposed succession of York, whose autocracy and Roman Catholicism displeased many Englishmen.
- William III of England - Wikipedia;
- Anton mit dem großen Hut (German Edition)!
- William IV, Prince of Orange.
- Jewish Mysticism.
- Mary II of England.
- WILLIAM III and MARY II.
William quietly let it be known that if Charles should die without issue, he would be willing to be named regent over his father-in-law in case James should be excluded from the throne. During the War of the League of Augsburg , William brought to the alliance the overwhelming support of England in James II's precipitate illegalities in favor of his Roman Catholic subjects after he became king in alienated most English leaders, who in turn sought the alternative earlier suggested by William.
William invaded England in November with a force of 15, Met by many of England's important men, he proceeded under such careful circumstances that not one shot was fired. James's flight to France in December cleared the path for William and Mary to assume the vacated throne.
Their reign became the only jointly held monarchy in English history.
William III
In May England declared war on France. Between and William, equipped with an army often numbering 90,, remained mostly in the field, leaving duties at home in Mary's hands. In Ireland, William defeated an attempt by French and Irish troops to dethrone him, nearly being killed in the Battle of the Boyne in July Sporadic campaigning continued until lengthy negotiations finally resulted in the Treaty of Ryswick September , in which Louis XIV recognized William as the legitimate ruler of England Mary had died in William's domestic relations in England were intermittently strained because he understood little of the compromise required under the parliamentary system of broad-based consultation and administration.
He was the last English king to use the veto extensively, although he usually yielded to Parliament's wishes rather than risk losing support for his wars. William fostered the Toleration Act of and the establishment of the Bank of England to fund the war debt in He assented to the Declaration of Right and to the Triennial Act. William's frequent absences from England and his reliance upon Dutch counselors accounted for his general unpopularity. However, the discovery of the Turnham Green Plot against his life in prompted a personal loyalty lasting until the end of his reign.
In William fell from his horse, seriously undermining his fragile health. He died on March 8, , as he was constructing a new alliance against France for the War of the Spanish Succession. The most thorough of the modern biographies, focusing particularly on William III's role and importance during England's crisis with France, is Stephan B. An anecdotal glimpse into William's private life is provided by Nesca A.
Robb's highly readable William of Orange: Three indispensable works on William's age are John B.
Peter Geyl, Orange and Stuart, trans. Print this article Print all entries for this topic Cite this article. The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.
William III
Copyright The Columbia University Press. Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia. Modern Language Association http: