William III (of Orange) (1650–1702) King of England, Ireland, and Scotland (1689–1702). William III was
STATHOLDER of Holland and took over effective rule of the
UNITED PROVINCES (1672–1702) after the crisis of the French invasion in 1672. In 1677 he married his cousin,
MARY of England, and was invited in 1688 by seven leading English politicians to save England from his Roman Catholic father-in-law,
JAMES II. In what became known as the
GLORIOUS REVOLUTION, he landed at Torbay, met with virtually no resistance, and in 1689 jointly with Mary accepted from Parliament the crown of England. He defeated James II's efforts to establish a base in Ireland by the victory of the
BOYNE and suppressed the highlanders of Scotland. He commanded the Dutch army in the Netherlands and although he scored only one victory, at Namur in 1695, he was able to win a favourable peace at
RYSWICK two years later. He was never popular in England and relied heavily on Dutch favourites, such as the soldier Arnold Keppel, 1st Earl of Albemarle (1669–1718). Although he preferred the
WHIGS to the
TORIES, he tried to avoid one-party government. His reputation was affected by his failure to honour the Treaty of Limerick, a treaty (1691) in which William guaranteed political and religious freedom to Irish Catholics, and the massacre of
GLENCOE (1692).
