440

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

ciup. ments to freedom of debate, the right of the nation to a pure

- 188 'g ~ and merciful administration of justice according to the spiritof its own mild laws, were solemnly affirmed. All these thingsthe Convention claimed, in the name of the whole nation, asthe undoubted inheritance of Englishmen. Having thus vin-dicated the principles of the constitution, the Lords and Com-mons, in the entire confidence that the deliverer would holdsacred the laws and liberties which he had saved, resolvedthat William and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, shouldbe declared King and Queen of England for their joint andseparate lives, and that, during their joint lives, the ad-ministration of the government should be in the Prince alone.After them the crown was settled on the posterity of Mary,then on Anne and her posterity, and then on the posterity ofWilliam.

Arrival of By this time the wind had ceased to blow from the west.

Mary. The ship in which the Princess of Orange had embarked layoff Margate on the eleventh of February, and, on the follow-ing morning, anchored at Greenwich.* She was receivedwith many signs of joy and affection: but her demeanourshocked the Tories, and was not thought faultless even bythe Whigs. A young woman, placed, by a destiny as mourn-ful and awful as that which brooded over the fabled houses ofLabdacus and Pelops, in such a situation that she could not,without violating her duty to her God, her husband, and hercountry, refuse to take her seat on the throne from which herfather had just been hurled, should have been sad, or at leastserious. Mary was not merely in high, but in extravagant,spirits. She entered Whitehall, it was asserted, with a girlishdelight at being mistress of so fine a house, ran about therooms, peeped into the closets, and examined the quilt of thestate bed, without seeming to remember by whom those mag-nificent apartments had last been occupied. Burnet, whohad, till then, thought her an angel in human form, couldnot, on this occasion, refrain from blaming her. He was themore astonished because, when he took leave of her at theHague, she had, though fully convinced that she was in the* London Gazelle, Feb. 14. 108f; Cillers, Feb. 15.