William III of Orange
William of Orange invaded England to secure its resources against Louis XIV and became its king as a side effect. Born in 1650 at The Hague a week after his father's death, he was the posthumous head of the house of Orange in a republic that had abolished the office his family held, and he was raised by a states party that intended him to have no career. The French invasion of 1672 gave him one. The republic collapsed politically, the de Witt brothers were torn apart by a mob in The Hague, and William was made stadtholder at twenty-one; he opened the dykes, flooded the country and held Amsterdam. Louis XIV was the fixed point of his life thereafter. He married his cousin Mary, James II's daughter, in 1677, which put him near the English succession, and accepted the invitation of seven English peers in 1688 with a fleet of some 500 ships. The English convention offered him the crown jointly with Mary, and he made it clear he would not accept a regency or rule as a consort. What he wanted from the arrangement was England in the war, and he got it: the Nine Years' War from 1689 and the alliance that fought the Spanish Succession after his death. The Bill of Rights, the Toleration Act, the Bank of England and the funded national debt all date from the reign. He beat James at the Boyne in 1690 and authorised the Glencoe massacre in 1692. He died in 1702 after his horse stumbled on a molehill.
- Lived: 1650 CE – 1702 CE
- Nationality: British
- Roles: king, stadtholder, military_leader
