Erik Visits a Non-American Grave, Part 1,953

This is the grave of King William III and Queen Mary II of England.

More interesting than the biographies themselves here is the issues around the Glorious Revolution. The very short version of how Mary became Queen while her husband William of Orange somewhat stumbled in a co-rule he wasn’t overly interested in compared to the greater joy of killing Spaniards in wars on the continent is that Mary was born in England in 1662 when her uncle Charles II was King. This was of course just after the Restoration after the Cromwellian disaster. Also, fuck the Puritans, now and forever. Anyway, Charles II had no legitimate heirs. So when he died, his brother James II became King. He was Mary’s father. But James had converted to Catholicism, even though his daughters were raised as Anglicans. English leaders might have lived with this, but two things happened–James II decided he wanted to be an old-school king who ruled as one, wanting nothing to do with the Parliament nonsense, and then he remarried and had a legitimate male heir, meaning the potential for England to again become Catholic was real. Civil war in England was quite possible. James II’s attempt to prosecute bishops failed, his political standing collapsed, and Parliament invited William of Orange and Mary to become the co-monarchs of the country.

Now, William III was half-British himself, the son of Mary, daughter of Charles I. These people were all more inbred than the far end of a Kentucky holler. William and Mary weren’t half-Protestants like some nobles. They really believed in it. That made them popular in England when they were invited to take over in 1688. When William invaded, most of James’ army fled and that was the end.

That said, William was a lot more interested in fighting the Nine Years’ War on the continent than governing England or the Netherlands for that matter. So Mary ruled when he was gone and he ruled when he was there. They agreed on this. Gender roles would be upheld, but she would rule in his name. And he was gone a lot. But the thing about waging a lot of wars is that they cost a lot of money. And these kings and elites didn’t care one bit how the waging of wars made people poor. Or dead. They just didn’t matter. From a military perspective, William’s wars worked out pretty well. The English and their Dutch allies basically controlled the seas after 1692. A big loss was suffered at Namur in the same year and the French nominally won quite a few of the battles, but the casualties they were able to inflict on the French kept serious French advances at bay. Of course none of these seventeenth century wars were really definitive, more of a shuffling of power and control over different places. But still, in the end, the war helped William reputation and hurt Louis XIV’s. Oh, but all of this led to pretty severe inflation and food supply issues at home. Taxation was doubled and there was a run on the Bank of England. Overall, as well, William was pretty decent at military reforms, professionalized the Dutch armies, and was probably a mixed bag as a commander in the field. Still, if measured by limiting French domination of Europe, William was more or less successful.

Mary wasn’t any pushover either. While she did live these gender norms when she could, she remained in charge when he was in Europe. She arrested her cousin, the Earl of Clarendon, for his plotting to get James II back on the throne. She was deeply involved with the daily running of the Church of England as well. She was generally quite healthy and at nearly 6 feet tall, quite unusual in her height for that time. She exercised a lot and was far healthier than your average lazy, spoiled royal. Alas, none of that protected one from smallpox. While smallpox was not necessarily a death sentence in Europe and it was in the Americas, it certainly could kill and it took out Mary in 1694. She was 32 years old.

William was pretty devastated. There’s long been rumors, dating back to his own life, that William was a homosexual and historians have debated this ever since. I have no thoughts, though certainly he was often ver close with men at court. But he did genuinely love Mary and was really torn up by her death. But he had to move on. There were still real threats, including a 1696 plot to kill him and restore James to the throne. This was broken up before it got too serious. The French stopped intervening after this, accepting that William was going to remain king. William also got involved in trying to split up the Spanish empire and destroying Spanish power as Charles II of Spain was dying. All the European powers were interested in this; not even the French really wanted the Spanish to be powerful again. The Spanish had of course wasted their vast fortune from the Americas killing Protestants and were already in decline as those mines in Mexico and Peru stopped producing so much silver. When Charles basically gave much of the Spanish holdings in Europe to the French, this led to the War of the Spanish Succession, which started in William’s lifetime and outlived him.

In the end, William and Mary didn’t have any heirs. either. These royals in England were really bad at producing heirs in this era. Parliament stepped in here, as it became clear that William did not have long to live. In 1701, Parliament passed the Act of Settlement, which set up a clear legal system that would exclude Catholics from the throne. When William died in 1702, at the age of 51, the crown went to her sister Anne, who also didn’t have any heirs. Incidentally, Anne and Mary loathed each other and didn’t speak in the last couple of years of Mary’s life. William had fallen off his horse and broke his collarbone and then pneumonia set in. So finally, in 1714, it went to George of Hanover, who became King George I. That came out of the Act of Settlement, which had moved succession to the Hanovers if Anne didn’t produce an heir. He didn’t even speak English, but he was James I’s great grandson and thus the closest in line to the throne who was a Protestant. Stability was restored to the English crown.

William and Mary are buried in Westminster Abbey, London, England. There’s obviously more to say here, but this post is long enough,

There aren’t monarchs in America of course, so I can’t do my usual “if you want me to visit this or that person, you can donate to cover the required expenses here” bit. But I will say that while I of course did not use grave money to visit the UK, it does cost money for the longest historical series in the history of the internet to continue and I do appreciate the rare times when someone helps that happen. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.