Human passions envenom the best intentions, and corrupt the most sincere souls. William was accused of feeling intense distrust of his Parliament; his most intimate counsellors were personally attacked. Burnet, the preceptor of the little Duke of Gloucester, only surviving son of the Princess Anne, was insulted, as well as Somers. When the report concerning the confiscations was finally presented in Parliament, the gifts accorded to the Dutch favorites and to the Countess of Orkney (formerly, when Elizabeth Villiers, devotedly attached to the Prince of Orange), were violently attacked. "We were sent here to fly in the king's face," said the partisans of the report. William III. was at the same time reproached for the indulgence he had shown towards the Irish. A part of the property confiscated had been restored to the despoiled families. "All has been given to Dutch favorites, to French refugees and Irish papists," it was said. Carried away by leaders as violent as imprudent, the Commons annulled all the royal grants, and joined to this arbitrary and unjust bill, a law regulating the land tax for the following year. This move compelled the House of Lords either to pass both bills or to reject both, in defiance of the financial needs of the state. "Affairs are very bad in Parliament," wrote the king to Heinsius; "I say this to you with a deep feeling of grief, and filled with apprehension that this will end badly some day. You can have no idea what these men are; it is necessary to live in the midst of them and to be acquainted with every circumstance, in order to judge of them."
The wisdom of the House of Lords, and the prudence of the king, prevailed against the violence of party struggles in the Commons. The peers passed the bill, but not without protest and attempted amendments, which, however, were rejected; the king gave it his sanction, but the same day that the lower house voted that his Majesty be supplicated not to admit foreigners into his councils, Parliament was prorogued to the second of June. For the first time William did not close Parliament with an address. "Parliament was finally prorogued, yesterday," wrote he, to Holland: "I have never seen a session more vexatious. After having committed many blunders and more extravagances, they separated amidst great confusion; their intrigues are incomprehensible to any one who is not in the midst of them; a description of them is quite impossible." The king had likewise wisely demanded the seals of Lord Somers. The Tories were triumphant, but they failed to seriously disturb the equilibrium of the Constitution; they had struck a blow against justice, as well as against the royal prerogatives, and the privileges of the House of Lords. "They have entered a dangerous path," says Mr. Hallam; "they will be arrested by that force which has always maintained among us the equilibrium of the powers, the reflective opinion of a free people opposed to flagrant innovations, and soon shocked by the violence of party passions."
The death of the little Duke of Gloucester, on the 30th of July, 1700, threw an additional obstacle in the path of King William. His health was much broken, and for some time past public opinion in Europe had been seriously concerned regarding him, even questioning his survival of the King of Spain. The hopes of the Jacobites began to revive. The question was raised regarding the advisability of bringing the Prince of Wales to England, in order to educate him there in the Protestant religion; this sentiment also weighed upon Parliament, when, at the opening of the session of 1701, the Houses declared that in order to maintain the inheritance of the crown of England in a Protestant family, the throne should descend, in default of issue of William or the Princess Anne, to the Princess Sophia, Electress of Hanover, granddaughter of King James I., and her Protestant descendants. The great principle of hereditary monarchy was thus protected, but it was subordinated to the superior principle of religious faith; a bond of union necessary between the prince and his people, and the lack of which rendered the succession of the last heir of the Stuarts impossible. In the midst of the stormy session of 1701, while the dissatisfaction of Parliament with the Treaty of Partition was still intense, and while the trials of Portland, Orford, Somers, and Halifax (formerly Edward Montague), were in progress. King William had the consolation of seeing assured for the future those liberties and that religion which he had defended at the price of so many efforts, often so poorly recompensed. The upper house boldly declared the innocence of the accused nobles William had retained upon the list of Privy Councillors. He was wearied of party strife, exposed as he was to the anger and the attacks of all factions. "All the difference between them," said he, "is, that the Tories will cut my throat in the morning, while the Whigs will wait until afternoon."
The national sentiment of England, and the fears excited by the attitude of France, gained for him the strength and the popularity which the political complications and the unjust violence of parties had deprived him of.
Louis XIV. took possession in the name of his grandson of the seven barrier cities of the Spanish Netherlands, that the Holland troops had occupied in virtue of the peace of Ryswick. "The instructions that the Elector of Bavaria, governor of the Low Countries, had given to the different commandants of the places, were so well executed," says M. de Vault, in his report of the campaign of Flanders, "that we entered without opposition." The Dutch troops hastened to depart for their own country, and official relations between the States-General and France were broken off at once. King William realized the full importance of this first blow. "For twenty-eight years I have worked without relaxation, sparing neither trouble nor perils, in order to preserve this barrier to the republic," wrote he to Heinsius, on the 8th of February, 1701, "and behold all is lost in a single day, and without striking even a blow." And on the 31st of May: "I see that it is necessary to devote my entire attention to the war; and although, in the eyes of the entire world, I seem to desire war, yet there is no one perhaps who is more anxious to avoid it; but to live without security, and to only exist by the mercy of France, is the worst evil that could befall us."
The States-General made an appeal to England, and public opinion communicating its impulse to Parliament, induced the houses to vote considerable subsidies, increasing the naval forces to thirty thousand men, and deciding that ten thousand auxiliary troops should be sent to Holland immediately. William entrusted the command to the Duke of Marlborough, and he himself went to the continent in the beginning of July. The Count of Avaux was recalled from the Hague. "We flattered ourselves," said William III., "that we should see our States flourishing under the shadow of a long peace, but the affairs of Europe have changed their aspect. All nations bordering upon France are menaced: our repose then would be, at the least, as fatal to our kingdoms as to our allies."
On the 7th of September, 1701, the Grand Alliance between England, the States-General, and the Empire, as signed, for the second time, at the Hague. The powers engaged not to lay down their arms until they had reduced the possessions of King Philip V. to Spain and the Indies, re-established the barrier of Holland, assured an indemnity to Austria, and accomplished the definitive separation of the two crowns of France and Spain.
Prince Eugene of Savoy—Carignan, son of the Count of Soissons and of Olympia Mancini, began hostilities in Italy at the head of Austrian troops. Catinat met with grave reverses; Marshal Villeroi was placed in command of the armies of Louis XIV. The Duke of Savoy bore the title of his Generalissimo. In less than one year, he in his turn joined the grand alliance, notwithstanding the union of his daughters with the Duke of Bourgoyne and the King of Spain. For the second time William aroused all Europe against the inordinate ambition of France.
Negotiations were nevertheless being carried on, and the armies which were silently forming yet awaited the results of diplomatic efforts. King Louis XIV. destroyed with his own hands the last hopes of peace. On Good Friday (1701), James II., the deposed King of England, suffered an attack of paralysis; the waters of Bourbon, for a time, revived him. On the 13th of September, 1701, he was attacked for the second time, and immediately demanded the sacraments. Notwithstanding the irregularities of his private life, he was sincerely and piously attached to the faith which had cost him so dear. He exhorted the courtiers who surrounded his dying bed, and he begged Lord Middleton, the only Protestant who had remained faithful to him, to become a convert to the Catholic faith. He bade his son farewell. "I am about to leave this world, which has been for me a sea of tempests and storms," said he; "the Almighty has judged well in visiting me with great afflictions. Serve him with your whole heart, and never put the crown of England in the balance with your eternal salvation." Amidst the errors and criminal faults of his life, the only redeeming trait of his character was that he himself practised, during his life, the principles which he bequeathed his son. Philip II. once said: "I would sacrifice all my kingdoms to the defence of the Catholic faith": James II., more feeble and less shrewd, had risked and lost all in the struggle with a free people and an established religion.