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 met with no support; and Mary's letter to Danby, together with Anne's disavowal of the exertions of her agents, furnished the basis of a settlement in accordance with William's views. After a plain expression of them to Halifax, Danby, Shrewsbury, and others, the conference between the two houses on 6 Feb. ended in a resolution that the throne was vacant, and that the Prince and Princess of Orange should be declared king and queen. The declaration of right, drawn up by a committee of the commons, recapitulated the grievances against the government of the late king, and ordered the succession, after the decease of William and Mary, to be to her issue, then to the Princess Anne and her issue, and then to that of William. Mary arrived from the Hague on 12 Feb., and on the following day in the banqueting house at Whitehall, the declaration having been read, the crown was formally tendered to her consort and herself by Halifax in the name of the estates of the realm, and accepted. William's gravity of bearing once more strongly impressed observers (, Diary, 21 Feb. For an account of the transactions in the convention, see and, and the summary in , Constitutional History, chap. xiv.)

William met his first parliament with a body of counsellors formed out of the chief men who had helped to bring about, or rallied to, his government, the whigs necessarily securing the greater share of the subordinate offices of state, while his chief Dutch followers were provided with places in the household. The oath of allegiance caused no serious difficulties except among the clergy. The coronation of William and Mary was solemnised on 11 April, Bishop Compton of London performing the ceremony and Burnet preaching the sermon (, Diary;, Brief Relation, i. 520). William failed to obtain from parliament more than a temporary settlement of his revenue, or an assent to the religious policy which he had at heart; for, though it passed the Toleration Act (24 May), the comprehensive bill was shelved. The bill of rights (25 Oct.) reasserted in a legislative form the substance of the declaration of right, including the order of succession there established, without naming the house of Brunswick. In Scotland the convention met on 14 March; and after the throne had been declared vacant and a claim of right voted, showing forth fifteen reasons why James had forfeited the crown, William and Mary were proclaimed king and queen. In accordance with Carstares's ‘Hints to the King’ (see, p. 38), William's assent was given to the act abolishing episcopacy in Scotland (1 July); his desire to effect a union between the two kingdoms in church and state had to be indefinitely postponed. The death of Dundee at Killiecrankie (27 July 1689) was followed by a general laying down of arms on the part of the clans, pending the hoped-for arrival of James in person. On the other hand William was much blamed for neglecting Ireland (, Diary, 2 March), where James opened a parliament which declared itself independent of the English, and where soon Londonderry and Enniskillen alone held out for the new government. But no conflict took place between James's forces and those of Schomberg, who arrived in August.

The English parliament having on 19 April promised to support William should he declare war against France, it was declared accordingly on 7 May. A few days later (12 May) the foundation, of what was not yet known as the ‘grand alliance,’ was laid by a treaty of alliance between the united provinces and the empire. To this treaty William acceded as king of England on 9 Sept. 1689, in a document neither countersigned nor communicated to parliament; and in the next year followed the accessions of Spain and Savoy. The purport of the compact was the maintenance of the treaties of Westphalia and the Pyrenees; but a secret article undertook to support the emperor's claims to the Spanish succession in the event of the death of the reigning king (for this article see, i. 271 n.; cf. as to the beginnings of the ‘grand alliance,’ , iv. 492; , ii. 67). On 27 Jan. 1690, seriously disheartened by the violence of the whigs, more especially in insisting upon exceptions to his project of indemnity, William prorogued parliament, and shortly afterwards it was dissolved. Its successor met on 20 March. After obtaining a more favourable, but still only in part permanent, settlement of his revenue (, iv. 77), carrying through a broad act of grace (not of indemnity) accounted by Macaulay (chap. xv.) ‘one of his noblest and purest titles to renown,’ and helping to bring about the dropping of the much-vexed abjuration bill, William prorogued parliament, and, though pressed to proceed to Scotland (Stair Annals, i. 144), took his departure for Ireland (4 June). Burnet (iv. 83) describes him as ‘very cloudy’ on the previous day, doubtless in part owing to Fuller's disclosures of Jacobite designs (, chap. xv.; as to the alarm with which Portland and other