1701.

In the evening he returned to Kensington in his coach, and the two ends of the fractured bone having been disunited by the jolting of the carriage, were replaced under the inspection of Bidloo, his physician. He seemed to be in a fair way of recovering till the first day of March, when his knee appeared to be inflamed, with great pain and weakness. Next day he granted a commission under the great seal to several peers, for passing the bills to which both houses of parliament had agreed; namely, the act of attainder against the pretended prince of Wales, and another in favour of the quakers, enacting, that their solemn affirmation and declaration should be accepted instead of an oath in the usual form.

LXX. On the fourth day of March the king was so well recovered of his lameness, that he took several turns in the gallery at Kensington; but, sitting down on a couch, where he fell asleep, he was seized with a shivering, which terminated in a fever and diarrhoea. He was attended by sir Thomas Millington, sir Richard Blackmore, sir Theodore Colledon, Dr. Bidloo, and other eminent physicians: but their prescriptions proved ineffectual. On the sixth he granted another commission for passing the bill for the malt tax, and the bill of abjuration; and being so weak that he could not write his name, he, in presence of the lord keeper and the clerks of parliament, applied a stamp prepared for the purpose. The earl of Albemarle arriving from Holland, conferred with him in private on the posture of affairs abroad; but he received his informations with great coldness, and said, "Je tire vers ma fin.—I approach the end of my life." In the evening he thanked Dr. Bidloo for his care and tenderness, saying, "I know that you and the other learned physicians have done all that your art can do for my relief; but, finding all means ineffectual, I submit." He received spiritual consolation from archbishop Tennison, and Bur- . net, bishop of Salisbury: on Sunday morning the sacrament was administered to him. The lords of the privy council and divers noblemen attended in the adjoining apartments; and to some of them who were admitted, he

spoke a little. He thanked lord Averquerque for his long and faithful services: he delivered to lord Albemarle the keys of his closet and scrutoire, telling him he knew what to do with them. He inquired for the earl of Portland; but being speechless before that nobleman arrived, he grasped his hand, and laid it to his heart, with marks of the most tender affection. On the eighth day of March he expired, in the fifty-second year of his age, after having reigned thirteen years. The lords Lexington and Scarborough, who were in waiting, no sooner perceived the king was dead, than they ordered Ronjat to untie from his left arm a black ribbon, to which was affixed a ring, containing some hair of the late queen Mary. The body being opened and embalmed, lay in state for some time at Kensington; and on the twelfth day of April was deposited in a vault of Henry's chapel in Westminster abbey. In the beginning of May, a will which he had intrusted with monsieur Schuylemberg was opened at the Hague. In this he had declared his cousin prince Frison of Nassau, stadtholder of Friesland, his sole and universal heir, and appointed the states-general his executors. By a codicil annexed, he had bequeathed the lordship of Breevert, and a legacy of two hundred thousand guilders, to the earl of Albemarle.

LXXI. William the third was in his person of the middle stature, a thin body, a delicate constitution, subject to an asthma and continual cough from his infancy. He had an aquiline nose, sparkling eyes, a large forehead, and a grave solemn aspect. He was very sparing of speech: his conversation was dry, and his manner disgusting, except in battle, when his deportment was free, spirited, and animating. In courage, fortitude, and equanimity, he rivalled the most eminent warriors of antiquity; and his natural sagacity made amends for the defects in his education, which had not been properly superintended. He was religious, temperate, generally just and sincere, a stranger to violent transports of passion, and might have passed for one of the best princes of the age in which he lived, had he never ascended the throne of Great Britain.

1701.

1701.

But the distinguishing criterion of his character was ambition. To this he sacrificed the punctilios of honour and decorum, in deposing his own father-in-law and uncle; and this he gratified at the expense of the nation that raised him to sovereign authority. He aspired to the honour of acting as umpire in all the contests of Europe; and the second object of his attention was, the prosperity of that country to which he owed his birth and extraction. Whether he really thought the interests of the continent and Great Britain were inseparable, or sought only to drag England into the confederacy as a convenient ally, certain it is, he involved these kingdoms in foreign connexions, which, in all probability, will be productive of their ruin. In order to establish this favourite point, he scrupled not to employ all the engines of corruption, by which the morals of the nation were totally debauched. He procured a parliamentary sanction for a standing army, which now seems to be interwoven in the constitution. He introduced the pernicious practice of borrowing upon remote funds; an expedient that necessarily hatched a brood of usurers, brokers, contractors, and stock-jobbers, to prey upon the vitals of their country. He entailed upon the nation a growing debt, and a system of politics big with misery, despair, and destruction. To sum up his characOldmixon. ter in a few words: William was a fatalist in religion, Boyer. Lamberty. indefatigable in war, enterprising in politics, dead to all Tracts. the warm and generous emotions of the human heart, a cold relation, an indifferent husband, a disagreeable man, an ungracious prince, and an imperious sovereign.

Burnet.

State

Tindal.
Ralph.

Voltaire.