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alternatehistory.com
This is a timeline I've been working on as of late, one of my few pre-1900 timelines. Since it has a PoD in the late seventeenth century, this TL will not be as detailed as the readers of my post-1900 TLs are used to. I hope everyone will enjoy it nonetheless.
An Orange on the Throne
Chapter I: Birth of a Union, 1689-1704.
William III was a sovereign Prince of Orange of the House of Orange-Nassau by birth. From 1672 he governed as Stadtholder William III of Orange over five out of seven provinces of the Dutch Republic, namely Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland, and Overijssel. From 1689 he reigned as William III over England and Ireland (it is a coincidence that his regnal number was the same for both Orange and England). As King of Scotland, he is known as William II. In what became known as the “Glorious Revolution”, on November 5th 1688 William invaded England in an action that ultimately deposed King James II & VII and won him the crowns of England, Scotland and Ireland.
He acted on the invitation of parliament in London: they suspected that James II was a Catholic when he produced a Catholic heir. His attempts to establish religious freedom for Catholics and Protestant nonconformists against the wishes of the Anglican establishment strengthened these fears, as well as the resentment toward the Stuart dynasty’s tendency of personal rule. His brother-in-law William had a good claim on the throne with him being married to James’s sister Mary. After Henry VIII’s separation from the Catholic Church and several Protestant movements thereafter, the established elites were paranoid about Papist plots. James II struck back, but was ultimately defeated in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 and his son-in-law and daughter claiming the throne as King William III and Queen Mary II.
A significant minority rejected the rule of William and Mary, holding that the divine right of kings was authority directly from God, not delegated to the monarch by parliament. This large minority of noblemen and clergymen refused to pledge allegiance to William and Mary, resulting in the aforementioned Battle of the Boyne, the result of which brought James II to flee to France. There were also the French-Irish “Jacobites” (as supporters of the Stuarts were known), but they were pacified by the 1691 Treaty of Limerick. Members of the Irish Catholic gentry kept their lands and were allowed to bear arms as long as they pledged allegiance to the new King and his wife. Soldiers had the option of leaving for France, in support of the exiled James II, or joining William’s army. William III was thanked by the House of Commons and received the title Earl of Athlone.
A series of Jacobite risings also took place in Scotland, where Viscount Dundee raised Highland forces and won a victory on July 27th 1689 at the Battle of Killiecrankie, but he died in the fight and a month later Scottish Cameronian forces subdued the rising at the Battle of Dunkeld. William offered Scottish clans that had taken part in the rising a pardon provided they signed allegiance by a deadline, and his government in Scotland punished a delay with the Massacre of Glencoe of 1692, which became infamous in Jacobite propaganda as William had countersigned the orders. Bowing to public opinion, William dismissed those responsible for the massacre, though they still remained in his favour; in the words of a modern historian “one became a colonel, another became a knight, a third a peer, and a fourth an earl.”
He also had issues with parliament since he attempted to create a balance between Whigs and Tories, which, however, made it impossible to pursue policy effectively. He then started to support the Tories since they defended his royal prerogative, but they were unaccommodating when he asked for continuation of the war against France, ruled by his nemesis Louis XIV. As a result, William began to prefer the Whig faction known as the “Junto” and their government was responsible for the creation of the Bank of England. William’s decision to grant the Royal Charter in 1694 to the bank, a private institution owned by bankers, is his most relevant economic legacy. It laid the financial foundation of the English take-over of the central role of the Dutch in the Anglo-Dutch union. The Bank of Scotland was founded in 1695.Although established only a year after its English counterpart, the Bank of Scotland was a very different institution. Where the Bank of England was established specifically to finance defence spending by the English government, the Bank of Scotland was established by the Scottish government to support Scottish business, and was prohibited from lending to the government without parliamentary approval (Scotland’s parliament since, in theory, the Kingdom of Scotland was an independent country that happened to share a monarch with its southern neighbour).
In 1696, the Dutch territory of Drenthe made William its Stadtholder. In the same year, Jacobites plotted to assassinate William III in an attempt to restore James to the English throne, but failed, causing a considerable surge of support for the former. In accordance with the Treaty of Rijswijk of 1697, which ended the Nine Years’ War, Louis recognised William III as King of England, and undertook to give no further assistance to James II. Thus deprived of French dynastic backing after 1697, Jacobites posed no further serious threats during William's reign.
His greatest problem, however, was the succession to the English and Scottish thrones. William had married his wife Queen Mary II, who was his first cousin, in 1677 and by the time of their ascension of the English and Scottish thrones, eleven years later, the marriage had still not yielded any heirs at all. Parliament in London was worried about that since the best heir was Princess Anne, who was a Protestant member of the Stuart dynasty. That she was a Protestant was good, but all of her children had predeceased her, meaning that her Catholic half brother James Francis Edward would have the best claim to the throne.
In September 1692, however, it was discovered that Mary, who had been deemed infertile, was in fact pregnant, which assuaged the fears of the ruling elite but did not take them away. By that time she had been pregnant for quite a while and to everyone’s relief, apart from supporters of the Jacobites, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy in December 1692 on Christmas Eve. She and her husband were overjoyed and gave their son names honouring both their families: Prince William Frederick Henry Louis John Edward, at the time just known as Prince William or, more colloquially, as “Prince Billy”. The name included Dutch-Orangist as well as Stuart names, much to the satisfaction of remaining Catholics, but Louis was also among the names. It is commonly accepted that this was done to annoy King Louis XIV of France, who was the archrival of William III.
Given that he was an only child his parents gave him everything they could. They gave Prince William the best medical care that existed during the late seventeenth century and of course made sure that his food was well prepared and pre-tasted (there was a fear of Jacobite plots, even towards heirs of William III, but no such plot existed, disproving horrid propagandistic claims toward the Jacobites). After William agreed to peace with King Louis XIV of France in 1696, Prince William was doted on by his father and mother even more, for as long as they lived. Because he was an only child he received much more parental attention than the average royal offspring, most royal children in Europe being raised by nannies.
It was also made sure that the young Prince William, the later King William IV, got the best private teachers to educate him in matters of state, but also in subjects like history, theology, philosophy, economics, English, Dutch, French, Latin and Ancient Greek languages, military tactics and also things like dancing, singing, declamation of poetry and etiquette. History was said to be the subject the Prince enjoyed, a luxury that many other people didn’t have since history wasn’t commonly taught in schools, except to princes to provide examples of good and bad rule. He detested dancing, singing and poetry, but his education nonetheless made him a cultured man. Besides his royal education, Prince William had the luxury of building on the political experience of both his parents. His education combined with his charm made him a person who excelled at networking, meaning he could get things done in parliament through his friends in that institution.
William III died in March 1702 at age 51 due to pneumonia, leaving his wife as Queen of England and Scotland. Their son, only eight years old, would later become Stadtholder of the provinces of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland, Overijssel and Drenthe (Drenthe had not had representation in the Dutch Estates-General until 1696 because it’d been too poor to pay taxes). His distant cousin John William Friso de facto acted as regent for Prince William in the Dutch Republic. Said distant cousin got even more power because Mary decided to raise her son at her court in London. For now, the office of Stadtholder remained vacant.
Sadly she would not live to see him grow up and become a great King. In late 1703, she contracted smallpox and isolated herself as much as possible to prevent the spread of infection, not even allowing her son to see her so he wouldn’t be infected. It made the young man’s eleventh birthday a rather sad occasion rather than a joyous one, despite the presents he got. His mother Queen Mary II died only two weeks later on January 7th 1704 at age 41, leaving her son a goodbye letter. While Jacobites called it divine punishment, most of the country mourned and her funeral was the first royal funeral attended by both Houses of Parliament. In an exceptionally cold winter she lay in state at Banqueting House, Whitehall, and was buried on March 10th 1704 in Westminster Abbey, the traditional coronation and burial site of English (later British) monarchs. Her son – who was already Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, Prince of Orange and Count of Nassau – was crowned King William IV of England, Scotland and Ireland.