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William (reigned 1689-1702) and Mary (reigned 1689-94) were offered the throne as joint monarchs. They accepted a Declaration of Rights (later a Bill), drawn up by a Convention of Parliament, which limited the Sovereign's power, reaffirmed Parliament's claim to control taxation and legislation, and provided guarantees against the abuses of ...
- Anne
On William's death in 1702, his sister-in-law Anne...
- Anne
William III and Mary II were England’s first and only joint sovereigns, with Mary sharing equal status and power. William and Mary came to the throne after the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 when Mary’s father, James II, was deposed for trying to enforce Catholic tolerance in England.
Feb 9, 2010 · Following Britain’s bloodless Glorious Revolution, Mary, the daughter of the deposed king, and William of Orange, her husband, are proclaimed joint sovereigns of Great Britain under Britain’s...
- Missy Sullivan
- Overview
- Early life
- Stadholder
William III (born November 14 [November 4, Old Style], 1650, The Hague, Netherlands—died March 19 [March 8], 1702, London, England) stadholder of the United Provinces of the Netherlands as William III (1672–1702) and king of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1689–1702), reigning jointly with Queen Mary II (until her death in 1694). He directed the Eu...
The son of William II, prince of Orange, and of Mary, the daughter of Charles I of England, William was born at The Hague in November 1650, eight days after his father’s death. As stadholder of five of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, William II had recently incurred the enmity of a powerful minority of a republican oligarchy that dominated the province of Holland and the city of Amsterdam. After his death this party determined to exclude the house of Orange from power, and the Act of Seclusion (1654) debarred the prince of Orange and his descendants from holding office in the state.
William III’s education, nevertheless, was, from the first, the training of a ruler. Contemporaries agree that he was a boy of great vivacity and charm, but frequent quarrels between his mother and his paternal grandmother disturbed his childhood and may have helped to breed the habit of reserve that was intensified by the difficulties of his later life. In 1660, after his uncle Charles II’s restoration to the English throne, the Act of Seclusion was rescinded. Shortly afterward his mother died, leaving him to the guardianship of his grandmother and of his uncle Frederick William, elector of Brandenburg.
Early in 1666 he was made a ward of the States General, the representative assembly of the United Provinces. Under Johan de Witt, the grand pensionary of Holland, he acquired a specialized knowledge of public business. His exceptional promise and the popular devotion he had inherited made it impossible to deny him all advancement, but the Perpetual Edict (1667) decreed that the offices of stadholder and captain general, formerly held simultaneously by the princes of Orange, should never again be held by the same person.
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In 1671 it became clear that Louis XIV of France and Charles II of England were planning a joint attack on the United Provinces, and demands for William’s appointment as captain general became insistent. He was appointed in February 1672, though at first with very limited authority. In March and April Charles and Louis declared war, and in June French troops crossed the Rhine River and overran three provinces in as many weeks. The Dutch navy was able to hold the English in check, but the army had been neglected and was ill-trained and ill-equipped. As a last expedient the polders, or low-lying areas, were flooded, and William, with his few unseasoned troops, was left to defend the “water line.”
Panic broke out in the country, and there were angry demands for the prince’s elevation to the stadholderate. The few dissenters were overruled, and on July 8 (New Style) he was proclaimed stadholder by the States General, later ratified by the provincial estates of the occupied provinces. One of his first acts, done with the States’ approval, was to refuse the ruinous peace terms offered by the two kings. Civil disorders, however, were not over. On August 20 Johan de Witt and his brother, who were unjustly suspected of treachery, were murdered by an infuriated mob at The Hague. William was in no way implicated in the crime and was enraged when he heard of it, but, because of the number of the murderers and perhaps because of the general revolutionary situation, he failed to bring them to justice.
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Sep 13, 2024 · Glorious Revolution, in English history, the events of 1688–89 that resulted in the deposition of James II and the accession of his daughter Mary II and her husband, William III, prince of Orange and stadholder of the United Provinces of the Netherlands.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Aug 11, 2022 · King James VII and II’s most determined political opponents formally invited William of Orange, now married to the king's daughter Mary, to invade Britain and take the throne, in the so-called 'Glorious Revolution'.
In Scotland, William achieved notoriety for authorizing the massacre of the MacDonald clan at Glencoe in 1692, when the clan accidentally missed the deadline for swearing allegiance to the new regime by five days.
