kept an anxious eye on St. Germain even while they attended the morning
levee at Whitehall.

What secured the permanence of the settlement was less the policy of
William than the blunder of the French monarch. Patience, foresight and
generosity had not availed to win for William more than a grudging
recognition of his kingship. He had received only a half-hearted support
for his foreign policy. The army, despite his protests, had been
reduced; and the enforced return of his own Dutch Guards to Holland was
deliberately conceived to cause him pain. But at the very moment when
his strength seemed weakest James II died; and Louis XIV, despite
written obligation, sought to comfort the last moments of his tragic
exile by the falsely chivalrous recognition of the Old Pretender as the
rightful English king. It was a terrible mistake. It did for William
what no action of his own could ever have achieved. It suggested that
England must receive its ruler at the hands of a foreign sovereign. The
national pride of the people rallied to the cause for which William
stood. He was king--so, at least in contrast to Louis' decision, it
appeared--by their deliberate choice and the settlement of which he was
the symbol would be maintained. Parliament granted to William all that
his foreign policy could have demanded. His own death was only the
prelude to the victories of Marlborough. Those victories seemed to seal
the solution of 1688. A moment came when sentiment and intrigue combined
to throw in jeopardy the Act of Settlement. But Death held the stakes
against the gambler's throw of Bolingbroke; and the accession of George
I assured the permanence of Revolution principles.



II