William III. was the posthumous son of William II. of Orange (1626-50) by Mary (1631-60), the eldest daughter of Charles I. of England. He was born at the Hague on 4th November 1650. The alliance of his house with the Stuarts aroused the jealousy of Cromwell; and by his influence the baby-prince and any of his lineage were declared to be excluded from the Stadtholdership of the United Provinces. The restoration of Charles II. in England improved his nephew's prospects; and on the murder of De Witt in 1672 (a murder at which William connived) he was chosen Stadtholder. The republic was at this time carrying on an apparently hopeless contest with its powerful neighbour, Louis XIV. of France; but by the valour and wisdom of the young Stadtholder, who announced his readiness 'to die on the last dyke,' the war was in 1678 terminated by the treaty of Nimegueu in a manner advantageous and honourable for the United Provinces. On 4th November 1677 William had married his cousin, the Princess Mary (born 30th April 1662), elder daughter by Anne Hyde of the Duke of York, afterwards James II.—a political match, which did not at first prove a happy one. Until the birth of her half-brother on 10th June 1688 Mary was heir to the English crown; naturally William gave no countenance to Monmouth's expedition (1685), and as naturally that birth was a blow to William's ambition and to his hopes of stemming the renewed aggression of France, against which with consummate diplomacy he had in 1686 formed a great European league. But James's tyranny was estranging from him the affections of every class of his subjects; the eyes of all Englishmen were turning towards the Stadtholder as their only hope; and, on the day that the Seven Bishops were acquitted, seven Englishmen of high position, both Tories and Whigs, invited him to come over and redress their grievances. Having once formed his resolution, William conducted the operations with great secrecy and skill. On 5th November 1688 he landed at Torbay with an army of 15,000, composed of English and Dutch. His success was rapid and bloodless. Men of all parties came over to him; on 23d December James fled the kingdom; and, the throne having been declared vacant by the Convention Parliament, on 13th February 1689 William and Mary (she had landed the day before) were proclaimed king and queen of Great Britain and Ireland. The assembling of a free parliament had been, he professed, his sole object; but his acceptance of the warming-pan fiction, and his refusal to have any share in the government save as king in his own person and for the term of his life, sufficiently reveal his aims.
James's adherents held out for some time in Scotland and Ireland, but the fall of Dundee at Killiecrankie ended their resistance in the former country (July 1689), whilst in the latter their last stronghold, Limerick, had to surrender (October 1691). William thus was left free for his continental campaigns, in which, great soldier though he was, he found himself outmatched by Luxembourg. The latter's death in 1695 was a turning-point in the war, which yet was ended only by the peace of Ryswick (1697), a peace distasteful to William, but highly popular with his English subjects. In spite of his sterling qualities, and of the debt that they owed him, he and they were never in sympathy; his foreign birth, his reserve, his very ill-health were against him. The death by smallpox on 28th December 1694 of his wife, for whom, though not faithful to her, he sorrowed inconsolably, materially injured his position. His schemes were thwarted by parliament; continual plots for his assassination were hatched by James's adherents; and the death in 1700 of Charles II. of Spain, and the succession of Philip of Anjou, was another blow to his policy. He pursued it, however, with unflagging vigour till his death, which took place at Kensington on 8th March 1702. His horse (it had been Sir John Fenwick's) a fortnight before had stumbled over a molehill and thrown him: hence the Jacobite toast, 'To the little gentleman in black velvet.' During his reign the Bank of England was established, the modern system of finance introduced, ministerial responsibility recognised, the liberty of the press secured, and the British constitution established on a firm basis.
See the articles BANKING (p. 711), BOYNE, DARIEN SCHEME, ENGLAND (p. 353), FENWICK, GINCKELL, GLENCOE, HOLLAND (p. 743), JACOBITES, JAMES II., LA HOGUE, LONDONERRY, LOUIS XIV., MARLBOROUGH, NEERWINDEN, NONJURORS, RIGHTS (DECLARATION OF), SCHOMBERG, SCOTLAND (p. 245), SENEFFE, STEINKERK, &c.; the Histories of Burnet and Macaulay; the autobiographical Memoirs of Queen Mary, edited by Dr Doebner (1885); and H. D. Traill's William III. ('Twelve English Statesmen' series, 1888).