William III of Orange (King Billy) (1689 – 1702)

William and his wife Mary were crowned joint monarchs of England, Scotland and Ireland on February
1689. William was the grandson of Charles de 1rst and his wife Mary, was James I’s daughter. Mary was
the heir to the throne and married William, who was Dutch. They had to stick to some rules.
1. No rising armies unless the parliament agreed to it.
2. No rising of money without parliament’s approval.
3. No royal power to lay down the law.
4. The king and Queen couldn’t appoint or punish judges.
5. They couldn’t make wat without parliaments consent.
6. Parliament could decide who could have the crown and wouldn’t be catholic.
Their accession, known as the ‘Glorious Revolution’, marked an important transition towards
parliamentary rule as we know it today. William took over the throne from his predecessor, the Catholic
James II, and ensured the primacy of the Protestant faith in Britain. He was not a popular ruler, he
thought of Holland and his intimates were Dutchmen. He never gave confidence to English generals or
statesmen. He was small, deformed, and suffered from asthma and had a tubercular lung. The smoke of
London gave him cough and he spent his time in the country. He was a cold man without social arts or
graces.
His virtues were those of the soldier-bravery in mortal danger, calm in adversity and had a great sense of
duty. In governing England was highhanded, he was autocrat and disliked the quarrels of Whigs and
Tories, but he was patient with them. He knew that he was surrounded by traitors and that many Tories
and Whigs were in touch with James II. Yet, he ignored this and employed false men if he thought they
could be useful. He was happier when he was on the battlefield. But he wasn’t a good soldier or a
diplomat and statesman. Aside from ruling England and Holland, he agreed on an alliance against France
and fought a long war from 1689 to 1692.
William kept power on his own hands as far as possible. He insisted on having complete control over the
army and over foreign affairs, he did not allow Parliament to meet when he was abroad, and he rarely
took and English minister with him when he went to the Continent. Acting as his own prime minister, he
controlled policy and made appointments as he considered appropriate. He used all the powers of the
crown which had not been taken away and resisted any reduction on those powers. He was a strong and
energetic ruler. The Tories thought of him as the enemy of their church. William used his rights with vigor.
In the first part of the reign, the Whigs had a majority in the Commons, and irritated by the King’s
appointment of both Whigs and Tories to the ministry, the Whigs set themselves to annoy the
government. They voted for money for only short periods, they made inquiries into military and naval
mishaps, they set up committees to audit the accounts, they forced William to cancel grants made to his
favorites, and they dealt with affairs of the East India Company, which had previously been the province
of the Crown. William, was naturally irritated, but the Tories also opposed him because they lacked
enthusiasm for the war and they wanted to reduce the size of the army. Furthermore, some of them were
in correspondence with James II.
William kept bringing Whigs into the government until, between 1694 and 1698, the ministry was largely
Whig, although a Tory, Sidney Godolphin, who was an official in the treasury was an indispensable civil
servant who remained in office. The leading Whigs were known as the Junto. Lord Keper Somers helped
to solve legal problems which had arisen during the Revolution. Charles Montagu was an able financier,
Thomas Lord Wharton (violent & irreligious) organized the Court party. Edward Russell, (Lord Orford; able
but bad tempered) was a sea captain and naval administrator. The best work of Tories was the founding
of the Bank of England in 1694. The bank helped to finance the war and since the government wasn’t
required to pay the debt, it was the beginning of the national debt.
His decisive victory over James at the Battle of the Boyne is celebrated annually in Northern Ireland on 12
July. In Europe, William was successful in his lifelong struggle to contain the military ambitions of Louis
XIV, the Catholic king of France. After the peace of Ryswick in 1697, the country turned away from war. A
new leader in the Commons, Robert Harley, angered the King by demanding a reduction in the cost of
government, a smaller army than William advised, and an end to royal gifts to favorites.
His wife Queen Mary died in 1694. England was then ruled by oligarchy through parliament, the king had
a role but by no means a commanding one. Part of that role was to put forward religious tolerance, in a
fundamentally intolerant country. Another part was to smash the French. When he died in 1702, the
crown passed to Mary’s sister: Anne.