Two days before the coronation of William and Mary, Lord Churchill was created Earl of Marlborough, and was sworn a member of the Privy Council and a lord of the bedchamber.  This elevation was owing to his military talents, which no one appreciated better than the King, who however never personally liked Marlborough, and still less his ambitious wife.  He was no stranger to their boundless cupidity, though he pretended not to see it.  He was politic, not being in a position to dispense with the services of the ablest military general of his realm.

William III. was a remarkably wise and clearheaded prince, and saw the dangers which menaced him,—­the hostility of Louis XIV., the rebels in Ireland, and the disaffection among the Jacobite nobility in England, who secretly favored the exiled monarch.  So he rewarded and elevated a man whom he both admired and despised.  William had many sterling virtues; he was sincere and patriotic and public-spirited; he was a stanch Protestant of the Calvinistic school, and very attentive to his religious duties.  But with all his virtues and services to the English nation, he was not a favorite.  His reserve, coldness, and cynicism were in striking contrast with the affability of the Stuarts.  He had no imagination and no graces; he disgusted the English nobles by drinking Holland gin, and by his brusque manners.  But nothing escaped his eagle eye.  On the field of battle he was as ardent and fiery as he was dull and phlegmatic at Hampton Court, his favorite residence.  He was capable of warm friendships, uninteresting as he seemed to the English nobles; but he was intimate only with his Dutch favorites, like Bentinck and Keppel, whom he elevated to English peerages.  He spent only a few months in England each year of the thirteen of his reign, being absorbed in war most of the time with Louis XIV. and the Irish rebels.

William found that his English throne was anything but a bed of roses.  The Tories, in the tumults and dangers attending the flight of James II., had promoted his elevation; but they were secretly hostile, and when dangers had passed, broke out in factious opposition.  The high-church clergy disliked a Calvinistic king in sympathy with Dissenters.  The Irish gave great trouble under Tyrconnel and old Marshal Schomberg, the latter of whom was killed at the battle of the Boyne.  A large party was always in opposition to the unceasing war with Louis XIV., whom William hated with implacable animosity.

The Earl of Marlborough, on the accession of William, was a moderate Tory, and was soon suspected of not being true to his sovereign.  His treason might have resulted in the return of the Stuarts but for the energy and sagacity of Queen Mary, in whose hands the supreme executive power was placed by William when absent from the kingdom.  She summoned at once the Parliament, prevented the defection of the navy, and ferreted out the hostile intrigues, in which the lord-treasurer Godolphin was also implicated.  But for the fortunate naval victory of La Hogue over the French fleet, which established the naval supremacy of England, the throne of William and the Protestant succession would have been seriously endangered; for William was unfortunate in his Flemish campaigns.