- Written by L.C.Geerts
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The House of Nassau
Coat of Arms of the Counts of Laurenburg and Nassau
For further reading : Lines colored in :
ORANGE = line from William I "the Silent" to William III, 1544 - 1702, straight Male succession.
YELLOW = line from Johan William Friso to King William III of the Netherlands, 1702 - 1890, straight Male succession.
PINK = line from Queen Wilhelmina to Queen Beatrix, 1890 - present, Female succession.
The House of Orange-Nassau
Part 2
Frederick Henry 1584-1647, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders and Overijssel 1625-1647
Frederick Henry (Frederik Hendrik in Dutch) was born on(29 January 1584 in Delft as the youngest child of William the Silent and Louise de Coligny. His father William was Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, and Friesland. His mother Louise was daughter of the Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny, and was the fourth wife of his father. Frederick Henry was born six months before his father's assassination on 10 July 1584. The boy was trained to arms by his elder half-brother Maurice, one of the finest generalsof his age.
Frederick Henry married 4 April 1625 with Amalia of Solms-Braunfels (1602-1675), though she refused to become his lover and held out for marriage.
On the death of Maurice, a few weeks later, on 23 April 1625, Frederick Henry succeeded him in his paternal dignities and estates, and also in the stadtholderates of the five provinces of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Overijssel and Guelders, and in the important posts of captain and admiral-general of the Union.
Frederick Henry proved himself almost as good a general as his brother, and a far more capable statesman and politician. For twenty-two years he remained at the head of government in the United Provinces, and in his time the power of the stadtholderate reached its highest point.
The "Period of Frederick Henry," as it is usually styled by Dutch writers, is generally accounted the golden age of the republic. It was marked by great military and naval triumphs, by worldwide maritime and commercial expansion, and by a wonderful outburst of activity in the domains of art and literature.
The chief military exploits of Frederick Henry were the sieges and captures of Grol in 1627, 's-Hertogenbosch in 1629, of Maastricht in 1632, of Breda in 1637, of Sas van Gent in 1644, and of Hulst in 1645. During the greater part of his administration the alliance with France against Spain had been the pivot of Frederick Henry's foreign policy, but in his last years he sacrificed the French alliance for the sake of concluding a separate peace with Spain, by which the United Provinces obtained from that power all the advantages they had been seeking for eighty years.
Frederick Henry built the Country houses Huis Honselaarsdijk, Huis ter Nieuwburg, and for his wife Huis ten Bosch, and he renovated the Noordeinde Palace in The Hague. Huis Honselaarsdijk and Huis ter Nieuwburg are now demolished.
The treaty of Munster, ending the long struggle between the Dutch and the Spaniards, was not actually signed until January 30, 1648, the illness and death of the stadtholder having caused a delay in the negotiations.
Frederick Henry died on 14 March 1647 in The Hague. On Frederick Henry's death, he was buried with great pomp beside his father and brother at Delft. He left a wife, a son and four daughters :
- William II, 1626-1650, married Princess Royal Mary 1631-1660, daughter of King Charles I (1600-1649) of England, Scotland, and Ireland and his queen, Henrietssta Maria (1609-1669).
- Luise Henrietsste of Nassau (1627-1667), married Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg (1620-1688
- Henrietsste Amalia of Nassau, 1628
- Elisabeth of Nassau, 1630
- Isabella Charlotte of Nassau, 1632-1642
- Albertine Agnes of Nassau,1634-1696, married her nephew William Frederick, Count of Nassau-Dietz (1613-1664)
- Henrietsste Catherine of Nassau, 1637-1708, married John George II, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau (1627-1693)
- Hendry Louid of Nassau, 1639
- Maria of Nassau, 1642-1688, married Prince Maurice of the Palatine-Simmern, son of Louis Philip of Palatine-Simmern-Kaiserslautern
After his dead, the first period in which the Seven United Provinces had no Stadtholder began, called the first Stadtholderless period, which lasted from 1647 until 1672 and in Groningen and Frisia until 1702.
William II 1626-1650, Prince of Orange, nominated Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders and Overijssel 1647-1650
William II was born on 27 May 1626, the son of Frederick Henry of Orange and Amalia of Solms-Braunfels. William II’s ancestors governed in conjunction with the States-General, an assembly made up of representatives of each of the seven provinces but usually dominated by the largest and wealthiest province, Holland.
On May 2, 1641 William married Mary Henrietssta Stuart, the Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of King Charles I of England and Queen Henrietssta Maria in the Chapel Royal, Whitehall Palace, London.
In 1648 he opposed acceptance of the Treaty of Münster, despite the fact that it recognized the independence of the Netherlands. Secretly, William opened his own negotiations with France with the goal of extending his own territory under a centralized government. In addition, he worked for the restoration of his brother-in-law, Charles II (1630-1685), to the throne of England.
The Eighty Years War ended with the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia (Munster) in 1648. Almost the entire population of the Netherlands breathed in after a few warmongers. That became clear in 1649 when the States-General was planning to reduce the army to peace-strength. The province of Holland especially wanted to reduce the foreign troops and maintain only the Dutch troops, A logical wish, no European Country had such a huge foreign legion consisting of unreliable mercenaries. The only opponent was the 23-year-old Stadtholder William II of Orange-Nassau, this young ambitious man, still wet behind his ears, would resume the war against Spain with another ambitious child, the 12 year old king of France, the latter was notorious as Sun King and would later be the cause of the Disaster Year of Holland in 1672.
Willem II had another reason to hold its German-speaking mercenaries. His companions spoke the same language and possibly could use them later against the citizens of the Republic. and that was exactly what William II did when the States of Holland finally refused to finance the huge army.
In 1650 William II became involved in a bitter quarrel with Holland and the powerful regents of Dordrecht and Amsterdam about the reduction of the army, following the Treaty of Münster of 1948. Among them were Jacob de Witt (1589-1674), member of the States of Holland as deputy of Dordrecht, Andries Bicker (1580-1652), leader of the Arminians and member of the city council (vroedschap) of Amsterdam and his cousin Cornelis de Graef, President of the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC), and chief-councillor of the Admiralty of Amsterdam.
William opposed the reduction of the army which would diminish his powerbase. This resulted in William putting eight members of the States of Holland were kept prisoner in Castle Loevestein (near Gorinchem). Among them Jacob de Witt and five other prominent members of the States were arrested at the Binnenhof in The Hague (The burgomasters of Delft, Hoorn, Medemblik, Haarlem and Dordrecht). Together with his Dordrecht and Amsterdam supporters he decided to learn the Regents of Holland a lesson by occupying Dordrecht and Amsterdam.
The Siege of Dordrecht and Amsterdam
In addition he sent his cousin William Frederick of Nassau-Dietz with an army of 10 thousand troops with the aim of taking Amsterdam by force and to regain power while William went on the march towards Dordrecht with an army but, fortunately for Dordrecht, his troops got lost in a dense fog and he foiled this campaign and marched towards Amsterdam and joined his cousin William Frederick, besieging Amsterdam.
Attack on Amsterdam July, 30 1650
Meanwhile, The Frisian Stadtholder William Frederick approached the city to the distance of a cannon shot from the ramparts. He made his headquarters in a farmhouse called "Welna". His spies told him that the city was brought in a state of defense. The plan to take the city by surprise and without violence had failed. An envoy was send to the city council with a letter from Stadtholder William II of Orange-Nassau consisting of submission of the city to the Prince of Orange.
The main points of the submission came down to the following :
- Amsterdam would vote for the final nomination of the Prince and against the disposal of the foreign soldiers, in the States Assembly of Holland in The Haque.
- The Prince would like his ancestors, be received by the Vroedschap (city council).
- The soldiers would leave the city and the hired men would disband.
- Everything what had happened would be forgotten.
Initially the city seemed to be firm hold, but they were internally divided and after 3 days decided to accept the terms. On August, 3 a treaty was concluded between Willem II and the governance of the city.
Mayor Andries Bicker, a Republican and Arminian, got the blame and was fired. On 17 August the arrested members of the States of Holland were released from Castle Loevestein after the States reversed the reduction of the army size.
To the great scams of all peace-loving citizens the young brash William II died a few months later on November 6, 1650 of smallpox's and the threat of civil-war was thus avoided.
His son William III was born 8 days after his death . His son succeeded him after the Stadtholderless period in 1672, after the murder of Johan and Cornelis de Witt, as Stadtholder and became later, in 1689, King of England, Ireland and Scotland.
This was the beginning of the First Stadtholderless Period for the provinces Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders and Overijssel. During this period (1650-1672) the Dutch Republic reached the zenith of its economic, military and political Golden Age. The Golden age came to an end when the brothers Johann (Grand-Pensionary of Holland) and Cornelis de Witt from Dordrecht, both Republicans, were brutally slaughtered and murdered by Orangists in The Hague (August 1672), with the agreement of his son William III of Orange who, at that time, was grown to mans estate.
William III 1650-1702, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht 1672, Overijssel and Guelders 1675, King of England, Ireland and Scotland 1688, Stadtholder of Drenthe 1696
William Henry of Orange was born in The Hague on 14 November 1650, the only child of William II of Orange, and Mary, Princess Royal, eldest daughter of King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland, and sister of King Charles II and King James II. Eight days before William's birth, his father died from smallpox, thus William was the Sovereign Prince of Orange from the moment of his birth.
Immediately a conflict ensued between the Mary Princess Royal and William II's mother, Amalia of Solms-Braunfels, over the name to be given to the infant. Mary wanted to name him Charles after her brother, but her mother-in-law insisted on giving him the name William or Willem to bolster his prospects of becoming stadtholder.
William II had appointed his wife as his son's guardian in his will, however the document remained unsigned at William II's death and was void. On 13 August 1651 the Dutch Hoge Raad (Supreme Council) ruled that guardianship would be shared between his mother, his paternal grandmother and Frederick William, the Elector of Brandenburg, whose wife, Louise Henrietsste, was his father's eldest sister.
Childhood and education
William's mother showed little personal interest in her son, sometimes being absent for years, and had always deliberately kept herself apart from Dutch societssy. William's education was first laid in the hands of several Dutch governesses, and some of English descent, including Walburg Howard. From April 1656, the prince received daily instruction in the Reformed religion from the Calvinist preacher Cornelis Trigland, a follower of the Contra-Remonstrant theologian Gisbertus Voetius. In these lessons, the prince was taught that he was predestined to become an instrument of Divine Providence, fulfilling the historical destiny of the House of Orange.
From early 1659, William spent seven years at the University of Leiden for a formal education, under the guidance of ethics professor Hendrik Bornius (though never officially enrolling as a student). While residing in the Prinsenhof at Delft, William had a small personal retinue including Hans Willem Bentinck, and a new governor, Frederick Nassau de Zuylenstein, the illegitimate son of gis grandfather Frederick Henry of Orange. He was taught French by Samuel Chappuzeau (who was dismissed by William's grandmother after the death of his mother).
Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt and his uncle Cornelis de Graeff pushed the States of Holland to take charge of William's education. This was to ensure he would acquire the skills to serve in a future, though undetermined, state function; the States acted on 25 September 1660. This first involvement of the authorities did not last long. On 23 December 1660, when William was ten years old, his mother died of smallpox at Whitehall Palace, London while visiting her brother King Charles II.
In her will, Mary requested that Charles look after William's interests, and Charles now demanded the States of Holland end their interference. To appease Charles, they complied on 30 September 1661. In 1661, Zuylenstein began to work for Charles. He induced William to write letters to Charles asking him to help William to become stadtholder someday. After his mother's death, William's education and guardianship became a point of contention between his dynasty's supporters and the advocates of a more republican Netherlands.
The Dutch authorities did their best at first to ignore these intrigues, but in the Second Anglo-Dutch War one of Charles's peace conditions was the improvement of the position of his nephew. As a Countermeasure in 1666, when William was sixteen, the States of Holland officially made him a ward of the government, or a "Child of State". All pro-English courtiers, including Zuylenstein, were removed from William's company. William begged De Witt to allow Zuylenstein to stay, but he refused. De Witt, the leading politician of the Republic, took William's education into his own hands, instructing him weekly in state matters and joining him in a regular game of real tennis.
Exclusion from stadtholdership
At William's father's death, the provinces had suspended the office of stadtholder. The Treaty of Westminster, which ended the First Anglo-Dutch War, had a secret annex attached on demand of Oliver Cromwell, the Act of Seclusion, which forbade the province of Holland to appoint a member of the House of Orange as stadtholder. After the English Restoration, the Act of Seclusion, which had not remained a secret for very long, was declared void as the English Commonwealth (with which the treaty had been concluded) no longer existed. In 1660, Mary and Amalia (his mother and grandmother) tried to convince several provincial States to designate William as their future stadtholder, but they all initially refused.
In 1667, as William III approached the age of eighteen, the Orangist party again attempted to bring him to power by securing for him the offices of stadtholder and Captain-General. To prevent the restoration of the influence of the House of Orange, De Witt allowed the pensionary of Haarlem, Gaspar Fagel, to induce the States of Holland to issue the Perpetual Edict (1667).
The Edict declared that the Captain-General or Admiral-General of the Netherlands could not serve as stadtholder in any province. Even so, William's supporters sought ways to enhance his prestige, and on 19 September 1668, the States of Zeeland received him as First Noble. To receive this honour, William had to escape the attention of his state tutors and travel secretly to Middelburg.
A month later, Amalia allowed William to manage his own household and declared him to be of majority age. The province of Holland, the center of anti-Orangism, abolished the office of stadtholder and four other provinces followed suit in March 1670, establishing the so-called "Harmony". De Witt demanded an oath from each Holland regent (city council member) to uphold the Edict; all but one complied.
William saw all this as a defeat, but in fact this arrangement was a compromise: De Witt would have preferred to ignore the prince completely, but now his eventual rise to the office of supreme army commander was implicit. De Witt further conceded that William would be admitted as a member of the Raad van State, the Council of State, then the generality organ administering the defence budget. William was introduced to the council on 31 May 1670 with full voting powers, despite De Witt's attempts to limit his role to that of an advisor.
Conflict with republicans
In November 1670, William obtained permission to travel to England to urge Charles to pay back at least a part of the 2,797,859 guilder debt the House of Stuart owed the House of Orange. Charles was unable to pay, but William agreed to reduce the amount owed to 1,800,000 guilder. Charles found his nephew to be a dedicated Calvinist and patriotic Dutchman, and reconsidered his desire to show him the Secret treaty of Dover with France, directed at destroying the Dutch Republic and installing William as "sovereign" of a Dutch rump state.
The following year, the Republic's security deteriorated quickly as an Anglo-French attack became imminent. In view of the threat, the States of Gelderland wanted William to be appointed Captain-General as soon as possible, despite his youth and in experience. On 15 December 1671 the States of Utrecht made this their official policy. On 19 January 1672 the States of Holland made a Counterproposal: to appoint William for just a single campaign. The prince refused this and on 25 February a compromise was reached: an appointment by the States-General for one summer, followed by a permanent appointment on his twenty-second birthday.
Meanwhile, William had written a secret letter to Charles in January 1672 asking his uncle to exploit the situation by exerting pressure on the States-General to appoint William Stadtholder. In return, William would ally the Republic with England and serve Charles's interests as much as his "honor and the loyalty due to this state" allowed. Charles took no action on the proposal, and continued his secret war plans with his French ally.
"Disaster year" 1672
1672 became known as the "disaster year" (Dutch: rampjaar) because of the Franco-Dutch War and the Third Anglo-Dutch War in which the Netherlands were invaded by France under Louis XIV, England, Münster, and Cologne. Although the Anglo-French fleet was disabled by the Battle of Solebay, in June the French army quickly overran the provinces of Gelderland and Utrecht. William on 14 June withdrew with the remnants of his field army into Holland, where the States had ordered the flooding of the Dutch Water Line on 8 June.
Louis XIV, believing the war was over, began negotiations to extract as large a sum of money from the Dutch as possible. The presence of a large French army in the heart of the Republic caused a general panic, and the people turned against de Witt and his allies. On 4 July the States of Holland appointed William stadtholder, and he took the oath five days later. The next day, a special envoy from Charles, Lord Arlington, met with William in Nieuwerbrug. He offered to make William Sovereign Prince of Holland in exchange for his capitulation, whereas a stadtholder was a mere civil servant.
When William refused, Arlington threatened that William would witness the end of the republic's existence. William made his famous answer: "There is one way to avoid this, to die defending it in the last ditch". On 7 July, the inundations were complete and the further advance of the French army was effectively blocked. On 16 July Zeeland offered the stadtholderate to William. Johan de Witt had been unable to function as Grand Pensionary after having been wounded by an attempt on his life on 21 June.
On 15 August William published a letter from Charles, in which the English King stated that he had made war because of the aggression of the de Witt faction. The people thus incited, de Witt and his brother, Cornelis, were murdered by an Orangist civil militia in The Hague on 20 August.
After this William replaced many of the Dutch regents with his followers. Though William's complicity in the lynching has never been proven (and some 19th century Dutch historians have made an effort to disprove that he was an accessory before the fact) he thwarted attempts to prosecute the ringleaders, and even rewarded some with money, and others with high offices :
- Johan van Banchem, one of the leaders of the lynching of Johan and Cornelis de Witt, was rewarded for this crime with an appointment as baljuw of The Hague by William III. Johan Kievit, one of the instigators of the murder of Johan and Cornelis de Witt, received a full pardon for treason he had commited a few years before, for which he was sentenced to death, but he could escape to England, William III rewarded him by appointimg him as Pensionary of the city of Rotterdam.
- Johan Kievit's brother-in-law, Cornelis Tromp, held a grudge against De Witt, after having been dismissed from the navy in 1666, William III made him Admiral of the Dutch navy against the will of Michiel de Ruyter, who was a friend of Johan de Witt.
These, and other acts damaged his reputation in the same fashion as his later actions at Glencoe on 13th february 1692 in Scotland (A massacre in three settlements along the glen, Invercoe, Inverrigan, and Achnacon.
William III continued to fight against the invaders from England and France, allying himself with Spain and Brandenburg. In November 1672 he took his army to Maastricht to threaten the French supply lines. By 1673, the situation further improved. Although Louis took Maastricht and William's attack against Charleroi failed, Lieutenant-Admiral Michiel de Ruyter defeated the Anglo-French fleet three times, forcing Charles to end England's involvement by the Treaty of Westminster.
After 1673, France slowly withdrew from Dutch territory (with the exception of Maastricht), while making gains elsewhere. Fagel, the new Grand Pensionary of Holland, now proposed to treat the liberated provinces of Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel as conquered territory (Generality Lands), as punishment for their quick surrender to the enemy.
William refused but obtained a special mandate from the States-General to newly appoint all delegates in the States of these provinces. William's followers in the States of Utrecht appointed him hereditary Stadtholder on 26 April 1674. The States of Gelderland offered the titles of Duke of Guelders and Count of Zutphen on 30 January 1675. The negative reactions to this from Zeeland and the city of Amsterdam, where the stock market collapsed, made William ultimately decide to decline these honors, but instead he was appointed Stadtholder of Gelderland and Overijssel.
During the war with France, William tried to improve his position by marrying Mary Stuart (1662-1694), his cousin and daughter of James, Duke of York, later King James II, and eleven years his junior. Although he anticipated resistance to a Stuart match from the Amsterdam merchants who had disliked his mother (another Mary Stuart), William believed that marrying Mary would increase his chances of succeeding to Charles's kingdoms, and would draw England's monarch away from his pro-French policies.
Bishop Henry Compton married the couple on 4 November 1677. Mary became pregnant soon after the marriage, but miscarried. After a further illness later in 1678, she never conceived again. Throughout William and Mary's marriage, William had only one acknowledged mistress, Elizabeth Villiers, in contrast to the many mistresses his uncles openly kept. During the 1690s rumors of William's homosexual inclinations grew and led to the publication of many satirical pamphlets.
Peace with France, intrigue with England
After six years of war Louis sought peace with the Dutch Republic. Even so, tensions remained, William remained very suspicious of Louis, thinking the French king desired "Universal Kingship" over Europe, Louis described William as "my mortal enemy" and saw him as an obnoxious warmonger.
France's small annexations in Germany (the Réunion policy) and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, caused a surge of Huguenot refugees to the Republic. This led William III to join various anti-French alliances, such as the Association League, and ultimately the League of Augsburg (an anti-French coalition that also included the Holy Roman Empire, Sweden, Spain and several German states) in 1686.
After his marriage in November 1677, William became a possible candidate for the English throne if his father-in-law (and uncle) James were excluded because of his Catholicism. During the crisis concerning the Exclusion Bill in 1680, Charles at first invited William to come to England to bolster the king's position against the exclusionists, then withdrew his invitation, after which Lord Sunderland also tried unsuccessfully to bring William over but now to put pressure on Charles. Nevertheless, William secretly induced the States-General to send the Insinuation to Charles, beseeching the king to prevent any Catholics from succeeding him, without explicitly naming James.
After receiving indignant reactions from Charles and James, William denied any involvement. In 1685, when James II succeeded Charles, William at first attempted a conciliatory approach, whilst at the same time trying not to offend the Protestants in England. William, ever looking for ways to diminish the power of France, hoped James would join the League of Augsburg, but by 1687 it became clear that James would not join the anti-French alliance. Relations worsened between William and James thereafter.
In November, James's wife Mary of Modena was announced to be pregnant. That month, to gain the favour of English Protestants, William wrote an open letter to the English people in which he disapproved of James's religious policies. Seeing him as a friend, and often having maintained secret contacts with him for years, many English politicians began to negotiate an armed invasion of England.
Glorious Revolution
William at first opposed the prospect of invasion, but most historians now agree that he began to assemble an expeditionary force in April 1688, as it became increasingly clear that France would remain occupied by campaigns in Germany and Italy, and thus unable to mount an attack while William's troops would be occupied in Britain. Believing that the English people would not react well to a foreign invader, he demanded in a letter to Rear-Admiral Arthur Herbert that the most eminent English Protestants first invite him to invade.
In June, James's wife, Mary of Modena, bore a son (James Francis Edward Stuart), who displaced William's wife to become first in the line of succession. Public anger also increased because of the trial of seven bishops who had publicly opposed James's religious policies and had petitioned him to reform them. On 30 June 1688, the same day the bishops were acquitted, a group of political figures known afterward as the "Immortal Seven", sent William a formal invitation. William's intentions to invade were public knowledge by September 1688.
With a Dutch army, William landed at Brixham in southwest England on 5 November 1688. He came ashore from the ship Brill, proclaiming "the liberties of England and the Protestant religion I will maintain". William had come ashore with approximately 11,000 foot and 4,000 horse soldiers. James's support began to dissolve almost immediately upon William's arrival; Protestant officers defected from the English army (the most notable of whom was Lord Churchill of Eyemouth, James's most able commander), and influential noblemen across the Country declared their support for the invader.
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. A group of fishermen caught him and brought him back to London. He successfully escaped to France in a second attempt on 23 December. William permitted James to leave the Country, not wanting to make him a martyr for the Roman Catholic cause.
Proclaimed King
William summoned a Convention Parliament in England, which met on 22 January 1689, to discuss the appropriate course of action following James's flight. William felt insecure about his position; though only his wife was formally eligible to assume the throne, he wished to reign as King in his own right, rather than as a mere consort.
The only precedent for a joint monarchy in England dated from the sixteenth century, when Queen Mary I married the Spanish Prince Philip. Philip remained King only during his wife's lifetime, and restrictions were placed on his power. William, on the other hand, demanded that he remain as King even after his wife's death. Although the majority of Tory Lords proposed to acclaim her as sole ruler, Mary, remaining loyal to her husband, refused. The House of Commons, with a Whig majority, quickly resolved that the throne was vacant, and that it was safer if the ruler was Protestant.
There were more Tories in the House of Lords which would not initially agree, but after William refused to be a regent or to agree to remaining King only in his wife's lifetime, there were negotiations between the two houses and the Lords agreed by a narrow majority that the throne was vacant. The Commons made William accept a Bill of Rights, and on 13 February 1689, Parliament passed the Declaration of Right, in which it deemed that James, by attempting to flee, had abdicated the government of the realm, thereby leaving the Throne 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's removal. William also summoned a Convention of the Estates of Scotland which met on 14 March 1689, and sent a conciliatory letter while James sent haughty uncompromising orders, swaying a majority in favour of William. On 11 April, the day of the English coronation, the Convention finally declared that James was no longer King of Scotland. William and Mary were offered the Scottish Crown, they accepted on 11 May.
Revolution settlement
William III of England encouraged the passage of the Act of Toleration (1689), which guaranteed religious toleration to certain Protestant nonconformists. It did not, however, extend toleration as far as William wished, still restricting the religious liberty of Roman Catholics, non-trinitarians, and those of non-Christian 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 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 of Parliament for anything said during debates, require excessive bail or inflict cruel and unusual punishments.
William was opposed to the imposition of such constraints, but he 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. Roman Catholics, as well as those who married Catholics, were excluded.
Rule with Mary II
Although most in Britain accepted William as Sovereign, a significant minority refused to accept the validity of his claim to the throne, holding that the divine right of kings was authority directly from God, not delegated to the monarch by Parliament. Over the next 57 years Jacobites pressed for restoration of James and his heirs. Nonjurors in England and Scotland, including over 400 clergy and several bishops of the Church of England and Scottish Episcopal Church as well as numerous laymen, refused to take oaths of allegiance to William.
Ireland was controlled by Roman Catholics loyal to James, who arrived with French forces in March 1689 to join the war in Ireland and contest Protestant resistance at the Siege of Derry. William's navy relieved the city in July, and his army landed in August. After progress stalled, William personally intervened to lead his armies to victory over James at the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690, after which James II fled back to France. William's victory is commemorated annually by Northern Irish and Scottish Protestants on the The Twelfth of July.
The first of a series of Jacobite risings took place in Scotland, where VisCount Dundee raised Highland forces and won a stunning victory on 27 July 1689 at the Battle of Killiecrankie, but he died in the fight and a month later Scottish Cameronian forces subdued the rising at the Battle of Dunkeld. William offered Scottish clans that had taken part in the rising a pardon provided they signed allegiance by a deadline, and his government in Scotland punished a delay with the Massacre of Glencoe of 1692, which became infamous in Jacobite propaganda as William had Countersigned the orders.
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, "one became a colonel, another a knight, a third a peer, and a fourth an earl. "William's reputation in Scotland was further damaged when he refused English assistance to the Darien scheme, a colony which then failed disastrously.
Parliament and faction
Although the Whigs were William's strongest supporters, he initially favoured a policy of balance between the Whigs and Tories. The Marquess of Halifax, a man known for his ability to chart a moderate political course, gained William's confidence early in his reign. The Whigs, a majority in Parliament, had expected to dominate the government, and were disappointed that William denied them this chance. This "balanced" approach to governance did not last beyond 1690, as the conflicting factions made it impossible for the government to pursue effective policy, and William called for new elections early that year.
After the Parliamentary elections of 1690, William began to favour the Tories, led by Danby and Nottingham. While the Tories favoured preserving the king's prerogatives, William found them unaccommodating when he asked Parliament to support his continuing war with France. As a result, William began to prefer the Whig faction known as the Junto. The Whig government was responsible for the creation of the Bank of England. William's decision to grant the Royal Charter in 1694 to the Bank, a private institution owned by bankers, is his most relevant economic legacy.It laid the financial foundation of the English take-over of the central role of the Dutch Republic and Bank of Amsterdam in global commerce in the 18th century.
William dissolved Parliament in 1695, and the new Parliament that assembled that year was led by the Whigs. There was a considerable surge in support for William following the exposure of a Jacobite plan to assassinate him in 1696. Parliament passed a bill of attainder against the ringleader, John Fenwick, and he was beheaded in 1697.
War in Europe
William continued to be absent from the realm for extended periods during his war with France, leaving each spring and returning to England each autumn. 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, but acted on his advice. Each time he returned to England, Mary gave up her power to him without reservation, an arrangement that lasted for the rest of Mary's life. After the Anglo-Dutch fleet defeated a French fleet at La Hogue in 1692, the allies for a short period controlled the seas, and Ireland was pacified thereafter by the Treaty of Limerick. At the same time, the Grand Alliance fared poorly in Europe, as William lost Namur in the Spanish Netherlands in 1692, and was badly beaten at the Battle of Landen in 1693.
Mary II died of smallpox in 1694, leaving William III to rule alone. William deeply mourned his wife's death. Despite his conversion to Anglicanism, William's popularity plummeted during his reign as a sole Sovereign.
Henry Purcell composed a requiem for the burial ceremony of Mary II Stuart in the Westminster Abbey in London, March 5 1695, called "Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts".
Peace with France
In 1696, the Dutch territory of Drenthe made William its Stadtholder. In the same year, Jacobites plotted to assassinate William III in an attempt to restore James to the English throne, but failed.
In accordance with the Treaty of Rijswijk (20 September 1697), which ended the Nine Years' War, Louis recognized William III as King of England, and undertook to give no further assistance to James II. Thus deprived of French dynastic backing after 1697, Jacobites posed no further serious threats during William's reign.
As his life drew towards its conclusion, William, like many other European rulers, felt concern over the question of succession to the throne of Spain, which brought with it vast territories in Italy, the Low Countries and the New World. The King of Spain, Charles II, was 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 would obtain Spain, while France and the Holy Roman Emperor would divide the remaining territories between them. Charles II accepted the nomination of Joseph Ferdinand as his heir, and war appeared to be averted.
When, however, Joseph Ferdinand died of smallpox, the issue re-opened. 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 died in 1701, as King of England. The subsequent conflict, known as the War of the Spanish Succession, continued until 1713.
English succession
The Spanish inheritance 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 Princess Anne died without surviving issue, and if William III failed to have surviving issue by any subsequent marriage. (Several 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.
Death
In 1702, William died on 8 March of pneumonia, a complication from a broken collarbone, resulting from a fall off his horse, Sorrel. 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. William's death brought an end to the Dutch House of Orange, members of which had served as Stadtholder of Holland and the majority of the other provinces of the Dutch Republic since the time of William the Silent (William I). The five provinces of which William III was stadtholder, Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel, all suspended the office after his death. Thus, he was the last agnatic descendant of William I to be named Stadtholder for the majority of the provinces.
Under William III's will, Johan Willem Friso stood to inherit the Principality of Orange as well as several lordships in the Netherlands. He was an agnatic relative of the Princes of Orange, as well as a descendant of William the Silent through a female line. However, King Frederick I of Prussia also claimed the Principality as the senior cognatic heir, stadtholder Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange having been his maternal grandfather and William III his first cousin. Under the Treaty of Utrecht, which was agreed to in 1713, King Frederick William I of Prussia (who kept the title as part of his titulary) ceded the Principality of Orange to the King of France, Louis XIV.
Friso's son, William IV, shared the title of "Prince of Orange", which had accumulated high prestige in the Netherlands as well as in the entire Protestant world, with Frederick William after the Treaty of Partition (1732).
Legacy
William's primary achievement was to contain France when it was in a position to impose its will across much of Europe. His life was largely opposed to the will of Louis XIV of France. This effort continued after his death during the War of the Spanish Succession.
Another important consequence of William's reign in England involved the ending of a bitter conflict between Crown and Parliament that had lasted since the accession of the first English 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. William endowed the College of William and Mary (in present day Williamsburg, Virginia) in 1693.
Nassau, the capital of The Bahamas, is named after Fort Nassau, which was renamed in 1695 in his honor. Similarly Nassau County, New York a County on Long Island, is a namesake. Long Island itself was also known as Nassau during early Dutch rule. Though many alumni of Princeton University think that the town of Princeton, N.J. (and hence the university) were named in his honor, this is probably untrue. Nassau Hall, at the university campus, is so named, however. Princeton's school colors of orange and black are typically attributed to Princeton's connection to William and Mary.
The modern day Orange Institution is named after William III, and makes a point of celebrating his victory at the Boyne. New York City was briefly renamed New Orange for him in 1673 after the Dutch recaptured the city, which had been renamed New York by the British in 1665. His name was applied to the fort and administrative center for the city on two separate occasions reflecting his different sovereign status—first as Fort Willem Hendrick in 1673, and then as Fort William in 1691 when the English evicted Colonists who had seized the fort and city.
The House of Orange-Nassau 1544-1702
Princes of Orange
| Name | Rule time | Remarks |
| William I "the Silent" | 1544-1584 | Murderred at Delft |
| Philip William | 1584-1618 | Roman Catholic |
| Maurice | 1618-1625 | Stadtholder |
| Frederick-Henry | 1625-1647 | Stadtholder |
| Willism II | 1647-1650 | |
| William III | 1650-1702 | From 1689 King of England, Ireland and Scotland |
| Extinct in 1702 | ||