He was certainly paying a bitter price.
All the great nobles were dissatisfied. The King had a keen dislike of party, and his ideal of government was a cabinet comprising of the best men of every faction to advise a ruler free to decide the final issue of every question. He had tried this scheme in England, equally honouring Whig and Tory, and taking his ministers from the rival ranks.
The plan had been an utter failure; each faction wanted the supreme control. The Whigs wanted the King to become their champion, and avenge them indiscriminately on every Tory; the Tories, who had always been opposed to William, refused to work with the Whigs; Danby, created Marquess of Caermarthen at the Coronation, was furious because he had not the privy seals; Halifax, to whom they had been given, grudged Danby the Marquisate; the two Secretaries, Shrewsbury and Nottingham, were scarcely on speaking terms; Russell, now Lord Orford, and Herbert, now Lord Torrington, quarrelled fiercely over the naval affairs; at the Treasury Board, Lord Mordaunt, now Earl of Monmouth and Lord Delamere, both hot Whigs, did their best to disparage their colleague, Lord Godolphin, who, of all the Government, was the quietest man and the one most esteemed by the King; Clarendon, the Queen's uncle, had refused to take the oaths; and his brother Rochester was suspected of plotting with James. There was, in fact, scarcely one Englishman, even among those who had accompanied William to England, whom he could trust, yet the advancement and favour he showed his Dutch friends was made the matter for perpetual and noisy complaint.
On the other hand, the Church of England, which owed its very existence to the Revolution, proved itself unreasonable and ungrateful; it refused stubbornly to grant any concessions to Non-conformists, and wished severe penalties visited on the Papists.
Added to this, the home government was rotten to the core, the army and navy in a miserable state, the people overtaxed, business disorganised, the treasury empty, credit low, every one discontented, Ireland in the possession of James, a revolt in Scotland, and, on the Continent, the French making unchecked progress, and the Dutch beginning to complain that they were being neglected for the English.
When it is considered that the man who was to face and overcome these difficulties was disliked, distrusted, misunderstood, and betrayed on every hand, it can be no wonder that even his brave soul was drooping.
His position was in every way complex. By nature imperious, arrogant, of the proudest blood in Europe, he had a high idea of the kingly prerogative, and by instinct leant to the Tories; but the Whigs claimed him as peculiarly their champion, and it was undoubtedly to their influence that the Revolution was due. As King of England he was head of the Anglican Church and swore to uphold it; but he was a Calvinist himself, and the whole tenor of his life had been towards that broad toleration which the Church regarded with abhorrence. He was avowedly latitudinarian and set his face resolutely against any form of persecution for religious belief, and while this attitude cost him the support of the Church, his refusal to treat the Catholics harshly lost him the alliance of the Dissenters, who regarded him as disappointingly lukewarm in the true cause.
A gentle treatment of the Papists was essential to William's foreign policy, since he had promised his Catholic allies—Spain, the Emperor, and the Pope, to protect those of this persuasion—and it was, besides, his own conviction of justice and the general good. He had therefore forced through Parliament the Toleration Act, which was, however, too limited to heal the internecine disorders of religious parties; he had then endeavoured to bridge the schism between Nonconformists and Anglicans by the Comprehension Bill, but the measure was before its time and failed to pass.
Many of the bishops and clergy having refused to take the oaths and been obliged to resign, William had been forced to make new appointments, every one of which, including that of his chaplain, Dr. Burnet, to Sarum, caused universal dissatisfaction.
There had been a mutiny in the army which had to be repressed by Dutch troops—a further grievance to the English, who began to bitterly resent foreign soldiers in their midst; yet on these troops alone could the King rely.