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

FAULTS AND VICES 97
withheld for years, maintained during the whole of
his life an illicit connection with Elizabeth Villiers
(who squinted abominably), on whom he settled an
estate of ,£25,000 a year, making her brother (whose
wife he introduced to the confidence of the Queen)
a peer; and Lord Macaulay passes it over as an instance
of the commerce of superior minds. In James
conjugal infidelity is a coarse and degrading vice; in
William it is an intellectual indulgence hardly deserving
serious reprehension."
Nor can it easily be denied by any one who has read
Burnet or Macaulay that Mr. Paget was justified in
adding, " In like manner, the inroads upon law attempted
by James, under the mask of regard for the
rights of conscience, are justly and unsparingly denounced,
whilst the ambition which urged William,
by the cruel means of domestic unkindness, to fix
his grasp prospectively on the crown of England,
long before any necessity for such an invasion of
the constitution had arisen, is wise foresight, regard
for religious freedom, the interests of Protestantism,
and the attainment of the great object of his life —
the curbing the exorbitant power of France."
Perhaps it cannot be said in blame of William that
he did anything, like Charles II.,to make vice popular.
Vice certainly with him lost none of its grossness, and
he was no more cheerful or kind to others when drunk
than when sober. " He loved," wrote Leopold von
Ranke, " a pot of beer more than a delicate repast."
His love of eating appears to have been carried to
c