Jesuits; and the court of Rome, for whom he had lost all, repaid him only with indulgencies and pasquinades.

Amid all his misfortunes, Lewis XIV. who was an accomplished gentleman, as well as a great king, treated him with much tenderness and respect; but some of the French courtiers were less polite than their sovereign. "There," said one of them in the hearing of James," is a simpleton, who has lost three kingdoms for a mass."

From this period the constitution of England, which had fluctuated for so many ages, was fixed. The nation, represented by its parliament, determined the long contested limits between the king and the people. They prescribed to the prince of Orange the terms by which he was to rule, and chose him for king, jointly with Mary, who was the next protestant heir to the crown. They were crowned by the title of William III. and Mary, king and queen of England. The prince saw his ambition at length gratified; and his wisdom was repaid with that crown, which the folly of his predecessor had given away.

CHAP. LXX.

Of William the Third.

HAD it not been for the influence of the Jesuits over James, the prince of Orange might

have found his views upon the crown frustrated. The conduct of James gave him advantages which he could not otherwise have hoped for. Few were in the prince's secret, and when a convention of the states was called there seemed reason to believe, that had not James abdicated his throne, it would not have been filled by the prince and princess of Orange. Even then it was not done without long debates.

King William's chief object was to humble the power of France, and his reign was spent in an almost uninterrupted course of hostilities with that power, which were supported by England, at an expence she had never known. before. But at length the treaty of Ryswick put an end to those contentions, in which England had engaged without policy, and came off with out advantage. In the general pacification, her interests seemed entirely deserted; and for all her blood and treasure, the only equivalent she had received, was the king of France's acknowledgment of king William's title to the

crown.

The king, after being freed from foreign war, laid himself out to strengthen his authority at home. He conceived hopes of keeping up the forces that were granted him in time of war, during the continuance of peace. But he was not a little mortified to find that the commons had passed a vote, that all the forces in English pay, exceeding seven thousand men, should be forthwith disbanded; and that those retained should be natural English subjects.

A standing army was this monarch's greatest delight. He had been bred up in camps, and knew no other pleasure, but that of reviewing troops, or dictating to generals. He professed himself, therefore, entirely displeased with the proposal; and his indignation was kindled to such a pitch, that he actually conceived a design of abandoning the government. His ministers, however, diverted him from his resolution, and persuaded him to consent to passing the bill. Such were the altercations between the king and his parliament; which continued during this reign. He considered his commons as a set of men desirous of power, and consequently resolved upon obstructing all his projects. He seemed but little attached to any party in the house. He veered from whigs to tories, as interest, or immediate exigence demanded.

England he considered as a place of labor, anxiety, and altercation. He used to retire to his seat at Loo, in Holland, for those moments, which he dedicated to pleasure and tranquility. It was in this quiet retreat that he planned the different successions of Europe, and labored to undermine the politics of Lewis XIV. his insidious rival in power, and in fame. Against France his resentment was ever levelled; and he made vigorous preparations for entering into a new war with that kingdom, when death interrupted the execution of his schemes.

He was naturally of a very feeble constitution, and it was now almost exhausted, by a life of continual action and care. He endeavored to conceal the increase of his infirmities, and repair

his health by riding. In one of his excursions to Hampton-court, his horse fell under him, and he himself was thrown off with such violence, that his collar bone was fractured. This, in a robust constitution, would have been a trifling misfortune, but to him it was fatal. Perceiving his end approach, the objects of his former care still lay next his heart; and the fate of Europe seemed to remove the sensations he might be supposed to feel for his own. The earl of Albemarle arriving from Holland, he conferred with him in private, on the posture of affairs abroad. Two days after, having received the sacrament from archbishop Tennison, he expired, in the fifty-second year of his age, after having reigned thirteen years.

CHAP. LXXI.

The Character of King William.

He was a prince of great vigor of mind, firmness of temper, and intrepidity of spirit; but ungraceful in his person and address, disgustingly cold in his manner, and dry, silent, and solitary in his humor.

To a happy concurrence of circumstances, and a steady perseverence in his plans, rather than to any extraordinary talents, either in civil or military capacity, he owed that high reputation, and extensive influence which he had so long enjoyed among the princes of Christen

dom. He was, however, an able politician, and a good soldier, though not a great commander.

He has been severely, and justly blamed, for those intrigues, which he employed to dethrone his uncle and father-in-law. But as William's heart seems to have been as dead to the sympa. thetic feelings, as his soul was insensible to the charms of literature, and the beauties of the elegant arts, it is possible, that while guiding the great political system, he might be led by the allusions of ambition, to think the ties of blood, and even the right of inheritance, a necessary sacrifice to the welfare of Europe, and the interests of the reformed religion.

England, at least, was obliged to him for abetting her cause, in her grand struggle for liberty and a protestant succession. But she has dearly paid for these blessings, by being involved in wasting foreign wars, in some measure rendered necessary indeed, by the supineness of her two preceding princes, but in which she ought naturally to have had no concern; by the introduction of the contagious practice of corrupting parliaments, in order to engage them to support those wars; and by their unavoidabie consequence, a ruinous national debt, which daily accumulating, and increasing the influence of the crown, threaten to leave us neither liberty nor property.