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

AS KING
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Parliament had declared,if Halifax had been so deeply
concernedin thelast and worstpart of CharlesII.'smisrule
as was supposed, if Godolphin had been, as was
evident,a party to every measure of James II.,William
ought not to have made them his trusted servants.
If the King was really interested in securing freedom
to Englishmen, he ought not to have displayed such
pettish readiness to leave England to itself when
Parliament did not grant him all the revenue he
wanted. Nor can anything excuse his concern in the
Irish grants or in the partition treaties.
In answer to an address in 1690, he promised to
make no grant of the Irish forfeitures till the matter
had been decided in Parliament. While bills for its
settlement were being discussed, it was discovered that
he had granted away the whole of the land, although
Parliament had expressly reserved two-thirds for the
public service. And these lavish grants were made,
chiefly to Dutch favourites and an English mistress,
at a time when England was in a wretched condition.
The historian of the future will be content to accept
the forcible statement ofMr. Lecky.1
Again, in 1697 the enormous grants of royal rights
in Wales to the Duke of Portland caused much comment.
Stronger still, perhaps, is the case against
William in the matter of the partition treaties. He
carried on the whole of the negotiations without consulting
any of his English ministers. His Dutch
favourite, Portland, induced the Lord Chancellor to
1" History ofEngland in the Eighteenth Century,"vol.i.p. 16.