“I do not think it necessary to employ many words in expressing my surprise and grief at the death of the Duke of Gloucester. It is so great a loss to me, as well as to England, that it pierces my heart with affliction.”[[340]]
By this melancholy event the strength of the Jacobite party was considerably augmented. The Princess, indeed, still leaned to that faction. The part which she had acted in the Revolution had occasioned her incessant regret. Zeal for the Protestant religion, the popular outcry, and the persuasion that the Prince of Wales’s birth was an imposture, had, at that eventful period, influenced her conduct. Upon the death of her son, however, her feelings were awakened towards her own family. She wrote to inform James the Second of her calamity. She began to regard her brother’s legitimacy with different views from those which, during the irritations between her and her mother-in-law, she had been disposed to entertain.[[341]] She privately solicited her father’s sanction for her acceptance of the crown in case of the King’s death; and, far from being averse to the restoration of her own family, she declared her resolution to make a restitution of the crown, whenever it was in her power to perform what she considered an act of justice.[[342]]
The decline in William’s bodily health, and mental energy, rendered these negociations by no means unimportant, for the King’s mind had been harassed by a series of trying and aggravating events. His distress and irritation upon the disbanding of his guards, and his exclamation, “If I had a son, by God these guards should not leave me!” betrayed the humiliation and the bitterness of spirit from which the unhappy monarch suffered; and it is well known that he even meditated relinquishing that crown which had cost him his peace of mind. Wasted with vexation, asthmatic, dropsical, his Majesty had recourse to wine to recruit his cheerfulness. Even in a state of partial inebriation, William was still the politician. He wished to have it supposed that he intended to settle the succession upon the reputed Prince of Wales, in order that his real design, of entailing it upon the Electress of Hanover, might not transpire prematurely. In one of those parties in which the King relaxed himself, in company with the infamous Lord Wharton, whom he always called “Tom,” he said to his lordship, “Tom, I know what you wish for—you wish for a republic.” “And not a bad thing, sir, neither,” was the reckless peer’s reply. “No, no,” returned the King, “I shall disappoint you there. I shall bring over King James’s son upon you.” Lord Wharton, with a low bow, and an affectation of deep reverence, answered, sneeringly, “that is as your Majesty pleases.” William was not displeased at the answer thus elicited.[[343]]
When the succession was, by act of parliament, entailed upon the Princess Sophia of Hanover, a woman of rare endowments, of science, knowledge of the world, and personal accomplishments, it was the office of Lord and Lady Marlborough, by their endeavours, to prevent any opposition on the part of Anne; and they are supposed to have employed their influence, since, independent of their advice, she adopted no measure.[[344]] The Prince of Denmark took little share in public affairs, and was merely the affable, obliging cipher that nature had originally intended him to appear.
Upon the death of James the Second, and the proclamation of his son, in France, King of England, a storm was suddenly aroused in the British dominions. Both Whigs and Tories at this time were averse to the restoration of the Stuarts. It has been alleged, as a reason for this indifference, that the Tories being in power, and having place, had little more to desire. The Whigs were bound by the principles which actuated them at the Revolution. All parties were indignant that the King of France should presume to name a King of England, without consulting the English people.
The summoning of a new parliament which entered into all William’s views for war, and the conclusion of what is called by historians the Second Alliance, were events which rapidly followed the indignity imposed at St. Germains. Not satisfied with those proceedings, the House of Commons attainted the young Pretender, a boy of twelve years old, and framed a bill, which passed into a law, requiring all persons in public stations to abjure him. A similar act, attainting the exiled Queen, Mary of Modena, was also contemplated; but the peers, high-minded generally as a body, refused to countenance the measure.
William, conscious of his decay, signed this treaty, the last to which he put his name. He appointed the Earl of Marlborough general of the troops in Flanders, and ambassador at the same time, knowing his great abilities both as a general and as a diplomatist, and believing he could best serve his country by placing such a trust in such a man. The final actions of the sovereign were those of a benefactor to his country. The last charter which he signed was the East India Charter, then esteemed, as a political measure, of great importance. The last act of parliament to which he gave his consent, was that fixing the succession in the House of Hanover. The last message which he sent to Parliament was a recommendation of an union between England and Scotland: this was five days before his death.
Broken with premature decay, for he was now only in the fifty-second year of his age, William, whilst planning a war which he calculated to finish with glorious success in four years, received his death-stroke. Some say that he was mounted on a charger once belonging to the unfortunate Sir John Fenwick, whose death was imputed to William as an act of injustice; others, that he was on a young and ill-trained horse, when, by the stumbling of the animal, he was thrown, and dislocated his collar-bone. The King was near Hampton Court at the time of the accident. The bone was set, and might have united without difficulty; but his Majesty had business at Kensington, whither, disregarding pain, he went in his coach. The bandage of the setting was unloosed, but was set again. Fever came on; a cough, fatal to so debilitated a frame, succeeded. The King, retaining his composure to the last, gave his consent, when on his deathbed, to the act of attainder against the Pretender, in compliance, it is said, with the entreaties of the Princess Anne,[[345]] who was terrified at the anticipated result of his death without the act being completed.
And now William prepared to meet that Creator, whose precepts, as given to us through his Son, he had in many respects studied to obey; though the snares of a political career, and the peculiar situation in which his elevation to the throne had raised him in this country, had presented to him incessant temptations. Since the death of his Queen, the King had been devoted to Lady Orkney, to whom he had made a grant of some lands in Ireland, which, in common with those given to Lord Portland, and other followers, had been revoked by parliament. Yet, whilst unfaithful to Mary during her lifetime, and degrading the pure memory of her character, and her enthusiastic attachment to himself, by putting such a successor in her place in his affections, William cherished the memory of his lost wife. Fastened to his arm was found a ribbon attached to a gold ring, in which was some hair of Queen Mary. Unknown to any of his attendants, the reserved monarch had carried this relic about him, and it was discovered only when the last offices of laying out the body were performed.[[346]]
On his deathbed, William’s affections seemed to be restored to their wonted channel. Lord Portland, whose faithful services had been of late superseded by the attractive qualities of Keppel Lord Albemarle, stood near him. The dying King looked steadfastly at him, endeavoured to speak to him, but was unable. He placed Portland’s hands upon his heart, and in that position expired. His last words, uttered with composure, were these, “Je tire vers ma fin.” It is remarkable, that upon the post-mortem examination, when almost every important organ of the suffering monarch’s emaciated frame was found to be diseased, his head was alone exempted from any trace of disease.[[347]] Hence his eye, that eagle eye, which his foe, the Duke of Berwick, could not regard at the Battle of Landen without admiration, retained its brilliancy and its searching keenness of expression to the last.[[348]]