Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

PRIVATE CHARACTER 95
that the issue of the Princess Anne should be preferred
in the succession to any issue that he might have by
any other wife than the Princess. All this he delivered
to them in so cold and unconcerned a manner, that
those who judged of others by the dispositions that
they felt in themselves, looked on it all as artifice and
contrivance."
The suspicions may have been well or ill grounded,
but they were certainly not unnatural when William's
past diplomatic successes were remembered. And
on this occasion, as before, William obtained exactly
what he wanted, and we may admit his ability.
But when some special points of his character are
considered,it is difficult to see how any defence can
be set up for him. " He had no vice," says Bishop
Burnet, " but of one sort, in which he was very
cautious and secret." When contemporaries accused
William of the vilest and basest crimes, they no doubt
did him cruel wrong; but of this saying of Burnet's
Lord Stanhope wrote very justly: "It is no light
charge that is here implied. It is no light quarter
from which the charge proceeds. It comes from a
familiar friend and a constant follower — from one
who owed to William not only his return from exile
but his episcopal rank — from one who had no imaginable
motive to deceive us, and who was most
unlikely to be himself deceived." Indeed, it is impossible
to condemn his predecessors and absolve
William III. It is only tooevident that throughout his
life William was immoral as Charles II. and James II.