Behind the Palace Doors by Michael Farquhar

Author:Michael Farquhar [Farquhar, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-679-60453-2
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

William loved Mary, too, though for much of their marriage he treated her more as an ornament than a true equal—a dynamic she seemed to encourage by her deference to him in all matters. He often preferred the company of his male friends and his mistress, Elizabeth Villiers, which wounded Mary deeply. In time, however, he came to appreciate his wife’s political sense and admired the way she managed the kingdom during his frequent absences. Their shared isolation in England also drew the couple closer.

“There was a union of their thoughts, as well as of their persons,” wrote Gilbert Burnet, who spent much time with the co-monarchs, “and a concurring in the same designs, as well as in the same interests.… He was to conquer enemies, and she was to gain friends.… While he had more business, and she more leisure, she prepared and suggested what he executed.”

It was only when Mary contracted smallpox in 1694 that William’s deepest feelings for her burst forth. “He cried out that there was no hope for the Queen,” Burnet recalled, astonished by the usually undemonstrative king’s great show of emotion, “and that from being the happiest, he was now going to be the miserablest creature upon earth.” The king was even more expressive to his friend the prince of Vaudémont: “You know what it is to have a good wife. If I were so unhappy as to lose mine, I should have to retire from this world.”

On December 28, 1694, Queen Mary II succumbed to smallpox at age thirty-two. William was inconsolable, fainting at his wife’s deathbed and shutting himself away for weeks on end. He even gave up his mistress in her honor. “If I could believe any mortal man could be born without the contamination of sin,” the king told his confessor, “I would believe it of the Queen.”

The reaction in France to Mary’s death was significantly more subdued. Her father forbade anyone at his court to mourn her, and requested that Louis XIV do the same. It was, James said, a mighty affliction for him to see “a child he loved so tenderly persevere to her death in such a signal state of disobedience and disloyalty.”

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