4 - Courtly reformation, the war, and the English nation

Summary

ENGLISH XENOPHOBIA AND ANTI-WAR SENTIMENT

William III was always extremely vulnerable to anti-Dutch xenophobia in England. Throughout the 1690s, his national origins, his policies, and his personal behaviour, all laid him open to accusations that he was a foreign monarch, with foreign interests at heart. The very Revolution which had brought William to power had been an affront to English sensibilities. Recent studies by Jonathan Israel have shown that the expedition of 1688 was, at base, a Dutch invasion. The adventure was launched in the interests of the United Provinces; Hollanders had provided most of William's navy and army; and those few English soldiers who had defected to the Orange camp were held at arm's length. As the new king took power, his continental priorities, and especially his overriding desire to protect the Netherlands from French aggression, became steadily more apparent. During his first weeks in London, William ordered the English navy to attack Louis XIV's fleet and urged the constitutional convention to come to the Low Countries' military aid. Even before he was crowned, he sent regiments of English soldiers to Flanders to defend the Provinces' borders. Once he was king, William's ambition to secure his original territories involved his new realm in the sort of European entanglement which she had avoided for nearly a century. All this suggested a distance from the English and their concerns. The monarch appeared determined to uphold Dutch interests, whatever the cost to his new subjects.