had a strong sense of religion, and was most warmly attached to protestantism. His convictions sprung from earnest thought and attention, and his actions were in almost all instances prompted by conscientious motives. One stain, however, is indelibly fixed upon his character, and that is, that when he ascertained (as he himself confessed that he had done), that he had been deceived in reference to the alleged disobedience of the M'Donalds of Glencoe, he did not punish those who had been guilty of the massacre. William married on the 4th November, 1677, Mary, the eldest daughter of James II. She died of small-pox, without leaving any issue, on the 28th December, 1694. When parliament settled the crown on William and his queen, a new oath of allegiance and supremacy was instituted for the old one, under the name of the Bill of rights. This Archbishop Sancroft, with seven bishops and several temporal peers, refused to subscribe, and in consequence they and their party obtained the name of "Nonjurors." During the reign of William the first public lottery was drawn in 1694; Chelsea hospital, which was begun in the reign of Charles II., was completed; and as a memento of the victory of La Hogue, Greenwich palace was given up to be used as an hospital for wounded and disabled sailors. Peter the Great of Russia lodged in 1698 at the house of the celebrated John Evelyn at Deptford, where he worked as a ship carpenter. William was a great friend to the czar, and his portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller hangs in Windsor castle. On his departure William gave him a ship, for which Peter presented him with a ruby valued at £10,000, with which the crown of England is now adorned. During William's reign Daniel Defoe, John Locke, Matthew Henry, John Flamstead (the first astronomer royal), H. Purcell (the musician), Archbishops Sancroft and Tenison, Bishop Burnet, and Sir Isaac Newton, shed lustre on various branches of literature and art. The principal authorities for the reign of William are Burnet, Harris, Oldmixon, Evelyn, and Lord Macaulay, with many others who are enumerated in the notes of the last-mentioned writer.—H.
WILLIAM IV., King of Great Britain and Ireland and of Hanover, third son of George III., was born at Buckingham House, London, on the 21st of August, 1765. Prince William Henry, as he was called, entered the navy in 1779 as a midshipman, and in 1786 received his captain's commission. Having shown a tendency to disobey the orders of the admiralty, he was, although promoted through various stages until he became admiral of the fleet in 1801, left without active employment after 1790. In 1791 he formed his connection with Mrs. Jordan the actress; it lasted for twenty years, and produced a family of ten children, known as the Fitzclarences, and of whom the eldest son was created Earl of Munster in 1831. The prince himself was created Duke of Clarence and St. Andrews and Earl of Munster in 1789, when a provision was made for him by parliament. A whig from an early period, he supported the Fox-Grenville ministry of 1806, and spoke frequently in the house of peers. When in England, he resided at Bushy park, of which he had been appointed ranger in 1797. On the 11th of July, 1818, the duke of Clarence married the Princess Adelaide, the eldest daughter of the duke of Saxe-Meiningen; neither of the two daughters whom she bore him surviving infancy. In 1827 he became heir-presumptive to the throne by the death of his elder brother, the duke of York, and in the April of the same year he was appointed lord high admiral under the Canning ministry, resigning office in the following autumn, after the death of its head. The death of George IV. on the 26th of June, 1830, raised the duke of Clarence to the throne. Popular from the frankness of his manner and his reputation for liberalism, the successor of George IV. ascended the throne on the eve of a crisis in the history both of Europe and of England. A month afterwards the revolution of July overturned the Bourbon
monarchy, and gave a new and irresistible impulse to the movement for parliamentary reform in England. The duke of Wellington, whom King William found premier at his accession, was retained by him in office. The duke's declaration against parliamentary reform at the opening of the new parliament on the 2nd of November, 1830, produced a general irritation; and the duke, alarmed by some threats of violence, announced that their majesties would not attend the mayoral banquet at the Guildhall on the 9th. On the 16th, after the defeat of the ministry on Sir Henry Parnell's motion for the revision of the civil list, the Wellington ministry resigned. The king sent for Earl Grey, and the first reform ministry was in office. In the period of political storm which followed, and which did not terminate until the June of 1832, when the peers passed the reform bill by a large majority, the king had a difficult part to play. Of his sincere wish for parliamentary reform there seems no doubt; but he appears to have been alarmed by the uncompromising activity of the reformers, and he more than once hesitated to take the steps which the whig ministers considered necessary to the success of the measure. The second reading of the reform bill had been carried by only a majority of one in the house of commons on the 22nd of March, 1831, when on the 19th April the reform ministers were defeated by a majority of eight on General Gascoyne's motion against a reduction of the number of members of the house. This triumph the opposition followed up on the 20th by a refusal to go into the consideration of a question of supply, a step which was even considered tantamount to a refusal of the supplies. The ministers wished the king to dissolve parliament, and he hesitated. It was by an extraordinary pressure upon him, of which a curious account is given in Mr. Roebuck's History of the Whig Ministry (vol. ii. p. 148), that he was hurried down on the afternoon of the 22nd to the house of peers, then like the other house in a state of great excitement, and the fiat of dissolution was pronounced. The second reform bill, having been carried by a large majority in the new house of commons, was rejected by the peers on the 3rd of October, 1831, and parliament was prorogued. After the prorogation came the Bristol riots, which appear to have frightened King William, and to have relaxed his zeal for parliamentary reform, at least as his ministers proposed to carry it. The second reading had been carried in the lords on the 13th of April, 1832, when on the 7th of May the ministers were defeated on Lord Lyndhurst's motion for postponing the consideration of the disfranchising clauses of the bill. The ministers insisted on a creation of peers sufficient in number to carry the bill in its integrity. The king refused, and Lord Grey, with his colleagues, resigned. It was then that the king's popularity suffered temporary eclipse, and that the cry was echoed throughout the country, "The queen has done it all;" Queen Adelaide being supposed to have been all along an active opponent of the measure. On the resignation of Lord Grey the king requested Lord Lyndhurst, in conjunction with the duke of Wellington, to form a ministry, but their efforts were unsuccessful, and the king was forced to negotiate with Lord Grey. According to Mr. Roebuck, in an interview on the 17th May, 1832, between the king and Lords Grey and Brougham, Lord Brougham insisted on receiving a written promise that peers should be created, and according to the same authority, it was given. However this may be, the attitude of the country was menacing in the extreme, and on the 17th of May undoubtedly a circular was addressed at the king's command by his private secretary. Sir Herbert Taylor, to the opposition peers, which led a hundred of them to withdraw from the discussion on the reform bill, and procured the acceptance of the measure by the upper house without recourse to a creation of peers. Thenceforth King William's sympathies were with the new conservative opposition, slowly but surely organized by Sir Robert Peel. The posthumous memoirs of that statesman have disclosed the efforts—the unsuccessful efforts—made by the king after the resignation of Lord Grey and Lord Althorp in July, 1834, to bring about a coalition between Sir Robert and the moderate conservatives on the one hand, and Lord Melbourne and the moderate liberals on the other. Alarmed at the policy of the whigs in the matter of the Irish church. King William watched his opportunity. Eagerly welcoming Lord Melbourne's intimations of ministerial weakness when Lord Althorp, raised to the upper house by the death of his father. Earl Spencer, in November, 1834, could not remain chancellor of the exchequer, the king intimated to Lord Melbourne that his services were no longer required, and sent for the duke of Wellington. The Peel-Wellington ministry fell in the April of 1835, and the king was obliged to have recourse to Lord Melbourne and the whigs. King William died at Windsor on the 20th of June, 1837. "His benevolent concern for his people," says Miss Martineau, "his confiding courtesy to his ministers who were with him (whoever they might be), and his absence of self-regards, except where his timidity came into play, made him truly respectable and dear in comparison with his predecessors. When his weakness was made conspicuous by incidents of the time, it seemed a pity that he should have been accidentally made a king; but then again some trait of benignity or patience or native humility would change the aspect
