MM Video: William of Orange

Favorite Royal Images: King William III

Depending on the calendar (Julian or Gregorian) this was the day in history that the battles of the Boyne and Aughrim were fought, either way, a good day for King Billy and a bad day for King Jamie. Here we have a portrait of the little Prince of Orange and future King William III of England painted by the Dutch master Jan de Baen who also worked for King Charles II during his exile and who turned down an offer to be court painter for the Elector of Brandenburg. And I think I've already mentioned how much I like portraits of royal figures trying to look like a conquering Caesar -no matter their age or background.

MM Video: William of Orange

Willem III, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of the United Netherlands came to power in 1667 and faced a number of problems. An expanding France was a threat to the west and republicans opposed to the rule of the House of Orange were a problem at home. However, Willem successfully thwarted the French and became the Protestant champion of Europe. He married Princess Mary Stuart of Great Britain (daughter of King James II) and in 1688 invaded England with a Dutch army to depose his father-in-law and take the British Crown, welcomed by the Protestant Parliament. He defeated an effort by King James II to restore himself in Ireland at the battle of the Boyne and ruled as King William III of Great Britain and Ireland for the rest of his life. Absent for long periods while he fought the French in the Low Countries his liberal supporters in Britain set up the modern style of British constitutional monarchy as we know it today. There were successes at sea but defeats on land nonetheless, William III managed to make peace with France before his death in 1702. He was succeeded by Queen Anne in Britain and Willem IV as Stadtholder of the Netherlands. His legacy is most strongly felt today in Ireland by the Protestant supporters of the union with Britain, known because of William III as the "Orange" party.

Anniversary of Orange Elevation

Today marks the anniversary of the enthronement of King William III and Queen Mary II following the Dutch invasion led by William of Orange, since called the "Glorious Revolution" which deposed the lawful monarch, his father-in-law, King James VII of Scotland and II of England. Of course, it was not as bad as most revolutions in that the British monarchy was not abolished altogether but it certainly saw its weakening and was a major triumph for the same faction that had murdered King Charles I and so hindered and harassed King Charles II; that is, the faction which wanted the absolute power in the country to be Parliament rather than the Crown. They had never really been defeated on the battlefield and so, even when forced to agree to the recall of Charles II, they never considered themselves beaten and still acted like the masters of the Crown. It was this spirit which caused them to so bedevil Charles II on the subject of the succession.
Of course, Charles II would have none of their intereference and insisted that the succession was in the hands of God alone and no one on earth could tamper with it. Because of that, James II became King after him and the Parliament plotted his overthrow and replacement by a pock-marked, asthmatic, hunchbacked Dutch republican simply on the grounds that he was a Protestant and would be content to let Parliament rule the British Isles so long as it served the interests of the United Provinces in their war against the Kingdom of France. The "Glorious Revolution" and the eventual coronation of William III and Mary II set another dangerous precedent and it is hard for me to determine how any monarchist can regard the affair as a totally good thing. Putting aside, for a moment, the villainy of treason against the legitimate, lawful monarch, what about the treason of a daughter against her father? For children to honor their parents is a Biblican command -not a suggestion.
Since that time Parliament has been the power in the British Isles (in fact if not name) and they know it and every monarch that has sat on the throne since have known it. Things might have been different had events at the Boyne or Culloden gone differently but it was not to be. The Stuarts were gone and the Oranges, later the Hanoverians, were the new Royal Family. Given the recent speculation over the possible amendment of the Act of Settlement, and all the uproar over that, I find it humorously ironic that it is the monarchists of the proud, Protestant Orange camp who most object to any change in the succession, to lifting the ban on Catholic marriages and to any changes that might effect the succession in the future. I wonder if they are aware that it was their own ideological forefathers who set the precedent of Parliament having control of the succession in the first place?