William III of Orange
(1650 - 1702) Holland - U.K.
King
King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1688, son of William II of Orange and Mary, daughter of Charles I, he was made stadtholder of the Netherlands in 1672 to esist the French invasion of his country. He forced Louis XIV to make peace in 1678, and henceforward concentrated on building up an European alliance against the French threat.
In 1677 he married his cousin Mary, daughter of the future James II, and, when invited by the English opposition to Jame's rule, invaded England in 1688 and accepted the crown as joint sovereign with Mary in 1689, as William III of England. He spent much of his reign campaigning, first in Ireland, where in 1690 he defeated James II at the Boyne, and later against the French in the Flanders.
Allegedly, his lover was William Bentinck.
It may be worth while here to insert a passage from Macaulay's History of England. It deals with the remarkable intimacy between the Young Prince William of Orange and "a gentleman of his household ", William Bentinck. Prince William's escape from a malignant attack of small-pox
"was attributed partly to his own singular equanimity, and partly to the intrepid and indefatigable friendship of Bentinck. From the hands of Bentinck alone William took food and medicine, by Bentinck alone William was lifted from his bed and laid down in it. 'Whether Bentinck slept or not while I was ill,' said William to Temple with great tenderness, ' I know not. But this I know, that through sixteen days and nights, I never once called for anything but that Bentinck was instantly at my side.' Before the faithful servant had entirely performed this task, he had himself caught the contagion." But also Bentnick recovered.
Macaulay, History of England, ch. VII
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