The effect of this was to place almost supreme power in his hands.  Had the prince at this moment set his heart upon obtaining the title of sovereign, he would have had but little difficulty in gratifying his ambition.  Leading statesmen like the Council-Pensionary Fagel, the experienced Van Beverningh, and Valckenier, the most influential man in Amsterdam, would have supported him.  But William was thoroughly practical.  The freeing of the Provinces from the presence of the enemy was but the beginning of the task which he had already set before himself as his life-work, i.e. the overthrow of the menacing predominance of the French power under Louis XIV.  His first care was the restoration of the well-nigh ruined land.  The country outside the water-line had been cruelly devastated by the invaders, and then impoverished by having for a year and a half to maintain the armies of occupation.  Large tracts on the borders of Holland, Utrecht and Friesland, submerged by the sea-waters through the cutting of the dams, had been rendered valueless for some years to come, while those parts of Holland and Zeeland on which the enemy had not set foot had been crushed beneath heavy taxes and the loss of commerce.

The position of the three provinces, Utrecht, Gelderland and Overyssel, which had been overrun by the French at the opening of hostilities and held by them ever since, had to be re-settled.  They had, during this period, paid no taxes, and had no representation in the States-General.  Holland was in favour of reducing them to the status of Generality-lands until they had paid their arrears.  The prince was opposed to any harshness of treatment, and his will prevailed.  The three provinces were re-admitted into the Union, but with shorn privileges; and William was elected stadholder by each of them with largely increased powers.  The nomination, or the choice out of a certain number of nominees, of the members of the Town-Corporations, of the Courts of Justice and of the delegates to the States-General, was granted to him.  The Dutch Republic was full of anomalies.  In Utrecht, Gelderland and Overyssel we have the curious spectacle in the days of William III of the stadholder, who was nominally a servant of the Sovereign Estates, himself appointing his masters.  As a matter of fact, the voice of these provinces was his voice; and, as he likewise controlled the Estates in Zeeland, he could always count upon a majority vote in the States-General in support of his foreign policy.  Nor was this all.

Holland itself, in gratitude for its deliverance, had become enthusiastically Orangist.  It declared the stadholdership hereditary in the male-line, and its example was followed by Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland and Overyssel, while the States-General in their turn made the captain-and admiral-generalship of the Union hereditary offices.  Nor was gratitude confined to the conferring of powers and dignities which gave the prince in all but name monarchical authority.  At the proposal of Amsterdam, the city which so often had been and was yet to be the stubborn opponent of the Princes of Orange, William II’s debt of 2,000,000 fl. was taken over by the province of Holland; Zeeland presented him with 30,000 fl.; and the East India Company with a grant of 1/33 of its dividends.