William III, also called William of Orange 1650-1702
Stadtholder of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, and King of Great Britain and Ireland

Born in The Hague, he was the posthumous son of William II of Orange and Mary (1631-60), eldest daughter of Charles I of Great Britain. Following the assassination of the Grand Pensionary Jan De Witt he was chosen Stadtholder of the Netherlands in 1672 and appointed to command the army. An inexperienced soldier, he defied all odds and, by opening the dykes to flood the countryside, was able to halt the advance of the French army and negotiate favourable peace terms at Nijmegen in 1678, concentrating thereafter on defeating French ambition in Europe. Great Britain, who had been an ally of France, was forced out of the war following a highly successful propaganda campaign linking the French alliance with British fears of Catholicism and arbitrary government. In 1677, in an attempt to retrieve the situation, Charles II agreed to a marriage between William and Mary, eldest daughter of James, Duke of York (James VII and II). When James became King of Scotland and England (1685), his policy of Catholicization provided William with the opportunity for invading his father-in-law's kingdoms in the name of his wife. He landed at Torbay on 5 November 1688, following an invitation from seven British notables (the Immortal Seven), ostensibly to protect the Protestant religion and traditional parliamentary liberties, but he was more concerned to mobilize British resources in money and manpower for the continental war-effort. James then fled to France, and William and Mary were crowned in February 1689. The successive defeats of James's supporters at Killiecrankie (July 1689) and on the Boyne (1690) and the surrender of Limerick (1691) effectively ended Jacobite resistance, and William turned his attention to the Continental war, which was ended indecisively at the Peace of Ryswick (1697). Never popular in Great Britain, William found his position materially weakened by the death of Mary in 1694. His reign nevertheless brought stability at home after a period of considerable political unrest, and the financing of the war led directly to the establishment of a system of National Debt and to the founding of the Bank of England (1694). He transferred control of the standing army to parliament (1698) and introduced greater freedom of the press (1695). He died after a fall when his horse stumbled over a molehill, and was succeeded by Mary's sister, Queen Anne.

Bibliography: Stephen B Baxter, William III (1966)