William III of England Quotes (1650-1702)

“De Witt's administration coincided with the greatest period of prosperity and the greatest cultural and artistic achievements of Dutch history. Later, looking back in less prosperous times to this golden age, men tended to blame William III for beginning the decline of the Republic. But William did not inherit a golden age. He inherited the Water Line, a defeated army, a country half occupied and more than half beaten. That William's age was less prosperous than de Witt's is at least partially the Pensionary's fault. That the Republic survived at all, that time was given for it to have a silver age if not another golden one, is due very largely to the Prince.”

“The steps which were taken, at that time, to compose, to reconcile, to unite, and to discipline all Europe against the growth of France, certainly furnish to a statesman the finest and most interesting part in the history of that great period. It formed the master-piece of King William's policy, dexterity, and perseverance. Full of the idea of preserving, not only a local civil liberty, united with order, to our country, but to embody it in the political liberty, the order, and the independence of nations united under a natural head, the King called upon his Parliament to put itself into a posture to preserve to England the weight and influence it at present had on the counsels and affairs ABROAD. "It will be requisite Europe should see you will not be wanting to yourselves."”

“I considered him as a person raised up by God to resist the power of France, and the progress of tyranny and persecution: the series of the five princes of Orange, that was now ended in him, was the noblest succession of heroes that we find in any history: and the thirty years, from the year 1672 to his death, in which he acted so great a part, carry in them so many amazing steps of a glorious and distinguishing providence, that in the words of David he may be called, the man of God's right hand, whom he made strong for himself: after all the abatements that may be allowed for his errors and faults, he ought still to be reckoned among the greatest princes that our history, or indeed that any other, can afford.”

“King William was a brave and warlike king: he would have been glad of more power than he ought to have; but his parliaments kept him within due bounds against his will. To the Revolution we again owe our liberties.”

“James II's replacement by William III in February 1689 was one of the most decisive changes of monarch in England since the coming of the first William in 1066. Even on a personal level the change was dramatic. James II had been devotedly Catholic, blinkered and narrowly English in outlook. He was hostile to the pretensions of parliament, impatient of the restrictions that the law imposed on his powers. William, though James's nephew by blood, was anything but English in most ways. While he indulged his wife's Anglicanism, his personal sympathies lay with the starkly un-English Calvinism of the Dutch Reformed Church. His favourite friends were as foreign as his accent. His intelligence was acute and his tastes cosmopolitan. His political preoccupations were European, far removed from the average Englishman's insularity. He had no great love of representative institutions, but had learned to live with them in the United Provinces and accepted that he must do so in England.”

“Despite the considerable opposition he faced, William achieved much as King. He retained the crown; guided the nation through a protracted war; established Britain as central to the anti-French alliance; committed the nation to the Hanoverian succession; oversaw the transformation of public finances; altered the relationship between Church and State; and worked with Parliament. This last point distinguished him from Charles II and James II. They preferred to use the legislature only occasionally, managing to reign without it for long periods. William had no such choice. And though he was not always able to get his way—witness his failures over triennial parliaments and Irish estates—he was able to avoid a fundamental breakdown in relations between Crown and Parliament. That was not easy, for he was a foreign invader who spent vast amounts of English tax revenues abroad. Fundamental to his success was his Protestantism and his appreciation of the need to rule through Parliament via English ministers. These were no small matters, for James had failed on both counts. Moreover, as time passed, William was able to tie more and more of the political nation to his regime.”

“To have been a Sovereign, yet the champion of liberty,—a revolutionary leader, yet the supporter of social order, is the peculiar glory of William. Till his accession the British Constitution was in its Chaos. It had contained, from a very remote period, the simple elements of an harmonious government. But they were in a state not of amalgamation, but of conflict,—not of equilibrium but of alternate elevation and depression. The tyranny of Charles the first produced civil war and anarchy. Tyranny had now again produced resistance and revolution. And, but for the wisdom of the new King, it seems probable that the same cycle of misery would have been again described.”

“[T]hat great religious radical, King William...intended to raise a goodly fabric of charity, of concord, and of peace, and upon which his admirers of the present day are endeavouring to build the dungeon of their Protestant Constitution. If the views and intentions of King William had been such as are now imputed to him, instead of blessing his arrival as an epoch of glory and happiness to England, we should have had reason to curse the hour when first he printed his footstep on our strand. But he came not here a bigoted polemic, with religious tracts in one hand, and civil persecution in the other; he came to regenerate and avenge the prostrate and insulted liberties of England; he came with peace and toleration on his lips, and with civil and religious liberty in his heart.”

“After Westphalia brought peace to Europe, the second half of the seventeenth century saw a further spread of resident ambassadors, with Louis XIV’s France leading the way, and French replaced Latin as the lingua franca. There was, however, still scope for summitry, for instance during Peter the Great’s tour of Western Europe in 1697–8. His meetings with William III of England helped bring Russia belatedly into the European diplomatic orbit. In due course, the czar created a “Diplomatic Chancellery” and a network of foreign embassies on the European model.”

“William III. is now termed a scoundrel, but was not James II. a fool? The character of William is generally considered on too small a scale. To estimate it properly, we must remember that Louis XIV. had formed a vast scheme of conquest, which would have overthrown the liberties of all Europe, have subjected even us to the caprice of French priests and French harlots. The extirpation of the Protestant religion, the abolition of all civil privileges, would have been the infallible consequence. I speak of this scheme not as a partisan, but from the most extensive reading and information on the topic. I say that William III. was the first, if not sole cause, of the complete ruin of this plan of tyranny. The English revolution was but a secondary object, the throne a mere step towards the altar of European liberty. William had recourse to all parties merely to serve this great end, for which he often exposed his own life in the field, and was devoured by constant cares in the cabinet.”