William started a new coalition against Louis in October 1681 by making a treaty with Sweden, and subsequently with the em pire, Spain and several German princes. After absorbing Stras bourg (1681), Louis invaded Spanish Flanders and took Luxem bourg (1684). Even then the new league would not fight and allowed Louis to retain his conquests by the truce of Regensburg (1685), but none the less these humiliations gave rise to a more closely-knit and aggressive coalition, which was organized in 1686 and known as the League of Augsburg.
The English Crown.—From 1677 onwards William had care fully watched the politics of England. On the accession of James II. in 1685 he forced the duke of Monmouth to leave Holland, and sought to dissuade him from his ill-starred expedition to England. He apparently tried to conciliate his father-in-law in the hope of bringing him into the League of Augsburg. By November 1687 he saw that James would not join the league against Louis, and he turned for support to the English opposition. He caused his chief minister Fagel to write a letter expressing his disapprobation of the religious policy of James, which was published in November 1687. But he made it clear that he would not interfere unless he received a definite invitation. On June 3o, 1688 Admiral Herbert, disguised as a blue-jacket, set out from England with a letter from seven influential Englishmen, asking William to "bring over an army and secure the infringed liberties" of England.
William landed at Torbay (Nov. 5, 1688). After a few days of hesitation, many influential noblemen declared for him in differ ent parts of the country. James, who had at first joined his army at Salisbury, fell back to London and tried to negotiate. (For his flight connived at by William, see JAMES II.) William, on the ad vice of an assembly of notables, summoned a convention parlia ment on Jan. 22, 1689. He was proclaimed joint-sovereign of Eng land in conjunction with his wife, Mary (Feb. 13, 1689).
Bank of England, by lending his support to a counter-institution, the Land Bank, which ignominiously collapsed. Though he was not blind to the commercial interests of England, he was neglectful, of the administration and affairs of her oversea colonies. But though he was unable to extract the best results from parliament he was always able to avert its worst excesses. In spite of strong personal opinions to the contrary, he accepted the Triennial Act (1694), the vote reducing the army to io,000 men (1697), the vote disbanding his favourite Dutch Guards (1699) and even (November 1699) a bill rescinding the grants of forfeited Irish estates, which he had made to his favourites. The main cause of the humiliations William suffered from parliament lay in his incapacity to understand the party or cabinet system. In his view the best way to govern was to have both parties represented in the ministry, so that, as Whig and Tory fell out, the king came by his own. This method was unsuccessful, and affairs went most smoothly when the parliamentary majority held the same views as the ministry. William possessed an experience of the workings of representative government in Holland, and his mistakes are by no means so pardonable as were, for example, those of the Georges, who had been absolute monarchs in their own country. William's unpopularity with his new people was, on the whole, un justified, but his memory is rightly darkened by the stain of the "Massacre of Glencoe." In 1692 he signed an order for the "ex tirpation" of the Macdonalds, a small clan in the vale of Glencoe. It is improbable that he meant his order to be literally executed, it is not certain that he knew they had taken the oath of allegiance to him. None the less, when the massacre was carried out with cir cumstances of revolting barbarity, William behaved as he had done after the murder of De Witt. Popular pressure forced him to bring the murderers to justice, to punish and dismiss them from his service. But shortly afterwards they were all received into favour ; "one became a colonel, another a knight, a third a peer." These and other actions indicate that William could show on occasion a cold and cynical ruthlessness. The master aim of his life was the restoration of the "Balance of Power," by the over throw of the predominance of France. This was the real aim of William in going to England in 1688. He had set off to secure an ally against Louis, and he came back from his expedition with a crown on his head and a new nation at his back, united in its detestation of popery and of France.