William II 1626-50
Stadtholder of the United Provinces of the Netherlands

Born in The Hague, he was the son of Stadtholder Frederick Henry (1625-47). Anglo-Dutch diplomacy established what would prove a fateful marital linkage of the houses of Orange and Stuart by William's marriage (1641) to Mary, daughter of Charles I. Fat, dissolute and lazy, William followed his father in office in 1647. Dutch independence was recognized at the end of the Thirty Years War in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), but William supported the French in their war with Spain in the hope of conquering part of the Spanish Netherlands. He arrested his leading opponents in Holland and then besieged Amsterdam, winning an advantageous compromise, but died of smallpox soon after. His posthumous son was the future William III of Great Britain and Ireland.