estigation by flight. He
might therefore, with perfect equity, be considered as a pretender. And
thus the crown had legally devolved on the Princess of Orange. She was
actually Queen Regnant. The Houses had nothing to do but to proclaim
her. She might, if such were her pleasure, make her husband her first
minister, and might even, with the consent of Parliament, bestow on him
the title of King.

The persons who preferred this scheme to any other were few; and it
was certain to be opposed, both by all who still bore any good will to
James, and by all the adherents of William. Yet Danby, confident in his
own knowledge of parliamentary tactics, and well aware how much, when
great parties are nearly balanced, a small flying squadron can effect,
was not without hopes of being able to keep the event of the contest in
suspense till both Whigs and Tories, despairing of complete victory, and
afraid of the consequences of delay, should suffer him to act as umpire.
Nor is it impossible that he might have succeeded if his efforts had
been seconded, nay, if they had not been counteracted, by her whom he
wished to raise to the height of human greatness. Quicksighted as he was
and versed in affairs, he was altogether ignorant of the character of
Mary, and of the feeling with which she regarded her husband; nor was
her old preceptor, Compton, better informed. William's manners were dry
and cold, his constitution was infirm, and his temper by no means bland;
he was not a man who would commonly be thought likely to inspire a fine
young woman of twenty-six with a violent passion. It was known that he
had not always been strictly constant to his wife; and talebearers
had reported that she did not live happily with him. The most acute
politicians therefore never suspected that, with all his faults, he had
obtained such an empire over her heart as princes the most renowned
for their success in gallantry, Francis the First and Henry the Fourth,
Lewis the Fourteenth and Charles the Second, had never obtained over the
heart of any woman, and that the three kingdoms of her forefathers were
valuable in her estimation chiefly because, by bestowing them on him,
she could prove to him the intensity and disinterestedness of her
affection. Danby, in profound ignorance of her sentiments, assured her
that he would defend her rights, and that, if she would support him, he
hoped to place her alone on the throne. [637]

The course of the Whigs, meanwhile,