This speech, more impassioned than the utterances of William III. generally were, met with an eager echo from his people; the houses voted a levy of forty thousand sailors and fifty thousand soldiers; Holland had promised ninety thousand men; but the health of the King of England went on declining; he had fallen from his horse on the 4th of March, and broken his collarbone; this accident hastened the progress of the malady which was pulling him down; when his friend Keppel, whom he had made Earl of Albemarle, returned, on the 18th of March, from Holland, William received him with these words:  “I am drawing towards my end.”

He had received the consolations of religion from the bishops, and had communicated with great self-possession; he scarcely spoke now, and breathed with difficulty.  “Can this last long?” he asked the physician, who made a sign in the negative.  He had sent for the Earl of Portland, Bentinek, his oldest and most faithful friend; when he arrived, the king took his hand and held it between both his own, upon his heart.  Thus he remained for a few moments; then he yielded up his great spirit to God, on the 19th (8th) of March, 1702, at eight in the morning.  He was not yet fifty-two.

In a greater degree perhaps than any other period, the eighteenth century was rich in men of the first order.  But never did more of the spirit of policy, never did loftier and broader views, never did steadier courage animate and sustain a weaker body than in the case of William of Orange.  Savior of Holland at the age of twenty-two in the war against Louis XIV., protector of the liberties of England against the tyranny of James II., defender of the independence of the European states against the unbridled ambition of the King of France, he became the head of Europe by the proper and free ascendency of his genius; cold and reserved, more capable of feeling than of testifying sympathy, often ill, always unfortunate in war, he managed to make his will triumph, in England despite Jacobite plots and the jealous suspicions of the English Parliaments, in Holland despite the constant efforts of the republican and aristocratic party, in Europe despite envy and the waverings of the allied sovereigns.  Intrepid, spite of his bad health, to the extent of being ready, if need were, to die in the last ditch, of indomitable obstinacy in his resolutions, and of rare ability in the manipulation of affairs, he was one of those who are born masters of men, no matter what may at the outset be their condition and their destiny.  In vain had Cromwell required of Holland the abolition of the stadtholderate in the house of Nassau, in vain had John van Witt obtained the voting of the perpetual edict, William of Orange lived and died stadtholder of Holland and king of that England which had wanted to close against him forever the approaches to the throne in his own native countiy.  When God has created a man to play a part and hold a place in this world, all efforts and all counsels to the contrary are but so many stalks of straw under his feet.  William of Orange at his death had accomplished his work:  Europe had risen against Louis XIV.