with Louis the Fourteenth, of which the conditions were not only in many respects highly advantageous to the French monarch, but, one of the articles actually placed the whole of the frontier towns of Flanders at his disposal; thus enabling him to pour his troops into that country whenever it might be advisable to renew the war. So unlooked for a termination to all his hopes, so unmerited a reward for all his exertions and anxiety, was naturally a severe blow to the Prince of Orange. He received the news of the treaty having been ratified at Nimeguen, on the day which succeeded the battle of St. Denis, and is said to have been deeply affected by the unwelcome tidings.

From the period of signing the treaty of Nimeguen, till the establishment of William on the throne of England, we find but little interest in the struggle which he occasionally maintained with the ambitious Louis. The greatest blow he received from that monarch, was in 1681, when he deprived him of his principality of Orange. It was not, however, till 1683 that hostilities were actually renewed, when the French opened the campaign by pouring their troops

* When it was reported to William that the French King had destroyed the walls of Orange, the Prince was unable to disguise his indignation. "I will one day," he said, "make him feel what it is to have exasperated a Prince of Orange."Dalrymple, vol. i. p. 187.

into the Spanish Netherlands.

Fortunately, circumstances arose which shortened the duration of the war, and on an approaching junction of the Dutch and Spanish forces, Louis once more consented to a peace, the articles of which were signed at Ratisbon, on the 15th of August, 1684, for a period of twenty years. From this time to William's invasion of England in 1688, there is little in the personal history of that monarch sufficiently interesting to record.

When the intolerant and tyrannical conduct of the misguided James became so utterly oppressive, as to stir up a feeling of resistance on the part of his subjects, it was on the Prince of Orange, as the accredited champion of the Reformed religion in Europe, and as having married the nearest Protestant_heir to the throne, that the nation fixed its hopes in the hour of difficulty and need. Complaints had long continued to reach him from all quarters, and although, with his natural caution and reserve, he refrained from either expressing violent opinions, or making imprudent promises, still it was evident to all who approached his person, that whatever reached him from England was greedily listened to and carefully treasured up.

The celebrated Association who signed the invitation to the Prince of Orange to invade England, and who bound themselves in the most solemn manner to join his standard immediately

on his landing, was composed of the Earls of Devonshire, Danby, and Shrewsbury, Lord Lum

ley, the Bishop of

and Henry Sidney: was drawn up in

London, Admiral Russell,

the document itself, which Sidney's hand-writing, and

signed 30th June, 1688, was discovered among King William's papers after his death. The receipt of this important document must, on many accounts, have been extremely palatable to the Prince of Orange. In addition to the ordinary motives of ambition, and the natural thirst for aggrandizement, there were many circumstances which rendered any invitation from the English nation, to assist them against their legitimate sovereign, of the first interest and importance. Not only would success enable him on some future occasion to array himself proudly against the arms of France, and to punish the arrogance of Louis the Fourteenth, a monarch to whom he seems to have borne the strongest personal dislike, but there was also between James and himself the fiercest opposition of interests and religion: past injuries also, some real and some imaginary, were not forgotten; there

* Henry Sidney, brother of Algernon Sidney, and youngest son of Robert, second Earl of Leicester. He is the beau Sidney of De Grammont's Memoirs. For the share which he had in effecting the Revolution, William subsequently created him, on the 25th of April, 1694, Earl of Romney. He died, without leaving issue, in 1704, when his titles became extinct.

existed the natural apprehension of their recurrence; and, moreover, James and himself were equally inflamed by that morbid jealousy, which almost invariably exists between a reigning monarch and his expectant heir. In addition to these circumstances, the Queen of England's recent delivery of a Prince of Wales,-an event which in all human probability would exclude the next succession of the Princess of Orange,-appears to have urged on the Prince to those violent measures, to which we find him immediately afterwards having recourse. Everything, indeed, combined in favour of the invader, and to a mind even less penetrating than that of William, the result must have been sufficiently apparent. felt confident in his own genius and resources; he would be followed by his own veteran troops, considered among the bravest and best disciplined in Europe: disaffection was alive in every quarter of England; the allegiance of neither his army or navy could be relied upon by the unhappy James; and, moreover, while it would be in the power of the invader to concentrate his whole force, and to march, if it suited his views, even into the metropolis itself, the troops of his fatherin-law must unavoidably be scattered over various parts of England, employed in quelling different insurrections.

He

The preparations, which were diligently carried on by the Prince of Orange for the purpose of

invading England,-in consequence of the almost universal belief that the forces he was concentrating were intended to act against France,appear in the first instance to have excited but slight apprehensions in the mind of James. In the mean time, the Prince's operations were pursued with a degree of activity and vigour, equally characteristic of the man, and suitable to the importance of the design. In all other respects, they were conducted with the utmost secrecy and caution, in order to excite as little as possible the jealousy of other States. Occasionally some transient suspicions appear to have passed over the mind of James, but they seem to have been dissipated, almost as soon as they occurred, by either the solemn assurances of the Dutch Ambassador, or similar hypocritical denials from the Prince himself.* As late as the 18th of September, 1688, scarcely more than six weeks before the landing of the Prince of Orange,—Barillon writes from England to Louis the Fourteenth, -"His Majesty entered into a discussion of the advices come from Holland, and said that in such important affairs nothing ought to be neglected, but that his opinion was, the Prince of Orange did not dare to undertake anything against England in the present conjuncture." Even when the infant Prince of Wales had ceased to be prayed for

* Macpherson, vol. i. p. 157.