from Melfort as to a contemplated invasion (Kennet, iii. 792). But while William seemed prepared to treat parliament with frankness as to the actual situation, the houses chose to settle down to a banquet of debate on the whole subject of his foreign policy in the past, including a discussion of the partition treaties, conducted in the commons with absolute recklessness of tone and language. Addresses by both houses (21 March), inveighing both against the policy of the treaties and the clandestine method of their conclusion, were followed by blustering resolutions for the impeachment of Portland, Somers, Orford, and Halifax (Montagu), which involved the two houses in conflict, and finally broke down on the dissolution of parliament. These transactions help to explain why William yielded (April) to his cabinet council in returning, to a letter from Philip announcing his accession, a reply addressing him as king of Spain (printed in Kennet, iii. 801). On the other hand, the growing popular feeling that the factiousness of parliament was obscuring the situation found expression in the Kentish petition (signed 29 April); and, though this was voted scandalous by the commons, the king was encouraged to present to both houses the memorials of the States-General (13 May) as to their immediate danger. Meanwhile the debates on the Act of Settlement had been carried on through the session, and the act received the royal assent on 12 June (for an analysis see Hallam, chap. xv.) With the aid of the whigs William had secured the ultimate succession of the house of Hanover; but the securities inserted in the act by the tories were unmistakably in a large measure intended as remonstrances against the system of government practised by him, or imputed to him. On 24 June he prorogued parliament, after the commons had voted an address leaving it to him to support his allies by a lasting peace or a necessary war (Kennet, iii. 810), and on 30 June he embarked for Holland, leaving orders for Marlborough to follow him with an English army.
He had thus carried through his main purpose; and the efforts in which he hereupon engaged (July and August) resulted (7 Sept.) in the renewal of the ‘grand alliance’—a name now first used (Von Noorden, i. 144, 164). Thus the die was cast before William knew of the decease of his father-in-law, James II, and the recognition by Louis XIV of the pretender of St. Germain as king of England (6 Sept.) William at once withdrew his ambassador, the Earl of Manchester, from Paris, and the city of London set the example of a loyal address denouncing the indignity offered to him by the French king. When he returned to England (4 Nov.) he found the country aflame with resentment, and addresses in various tones pouring in from all sides (Burnet, iv. 543). The spirit of faction was, however, far from extinct; and finding some of the tories whom he caused to be consulted intent upon continuing the impeachments, he took the advice of Somers (Hardwicke Papers, ii. 453) and dissolved parliament (11 Nov.) During the elections he this time bore himself with caution; but their result encouraged him to trust himself once more to the whigs, and to begin transforming the government in this sense (December).
The admirable speech, said to have been written by Somers, with which on 30 Dec. William opened his last parliament, was followed by loyal addresses, and the king at once laid before the houses the treaties of the ‘grand alliance.’ On 9 Jan. 1702 the commons brought in a bill for the further security of the king's person and of the protestant succession, and on the following day determined that the proportion of the land forces contributed by England should, in accordance with the ‘grand alliance’ treaties, be forty thousand men. On 20 Feb. the lords passed a bill sent up by the commons for the attainder of the pretended Prince of Wales; and after much debate the security bill, which imposed upon all persons employed in church or state an oath abjuring the pretender and acknowledging William as the rightful and lawful king, which in the commons had been made obligatory by a single vote only, was likewise passed on 24 Feb. Further difficulties had been caused by the insertion in this bill of a clause relative to the Princess Anne, whose succession William was in some quarters unjustly supposed to view with disfavour (Stanhope, p. 34).
During the whole of this winter his health had been bad; he had consulted many eminent physicians in different parts of Europe by letter; at the Hague he had remained in seclusion, disturbed by rumours of a renewed design against his life (see Klopp, ix. 416, as to the escape of the dangerous Count Boselli from the Bastille; and cf. Lexington Papers, p. 259). On his return to England he had so far kept up the appearance of health as to ride and even hunt at Hampton Court; in his last letter to Heinsius, of 20 Feb., it was the health of his trusted friend that engaged his solicitude (this letter concludes the series in Ranke). On this very day his favourite horse Sorrel, which he was riding through the park at Hampton Court, stumbled on a molehill, causing him to fall and break his collar-bone. He was taken
