friends of the king regarded his Irish journey, see Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1689–1690, Introd. p. xxvi, and letters there cited). Provision had been made by parliament for the conduct of the government by the queen during his absence in their joint names [see Mary II]. After landing at Carrickfergus (14 June) and proceeding to Belfast (see two contemporary accounts ap. Trevor, vol. ii. App. iv.), William assumed the command of his forces, and marched towards Drogheda, crossing the Boyne and leaving the town to his right. On 30 June he was faced on the other side of the river by the Irish-French army under James, inferior in numbers to his own; and on 1 July, fording the Boyne, drove the Irish into flight, the French covering their retreat and the escape of his adversary [see James II]. Delighted to find the enemy before him, he displayed his usual courage in the action, in which he was slightly wounded, together with extraordinary endurance: he was nineteen hours in the saddle. A false rumour of his death having reached Paris, the bells of Notre-Dame were rung (for contemporary authorities on the battle see Macaulay, chap. xvi., and Ranke, vol. vi. appendix; cf. Burnet, iv. 201, and Luttrell, ii. 71 et al.) Drogheda fell, and William entered Dublin, where he received the news of the defeat of the Anglo-Dutch fleet at Beachy Head, followed by that of Luxemburg's victory at Fleurus. He advanced on Limerick, but, after an unsuccessful assault (27 Aug.), raised its siege and sailed for England, where he was well received at Bristol (6 Sept.). The victory of the Boyne had effectively prevented James II from making Ireland a stepping-stone for the reconquest of England, and the reduction of the island was completed by the capitulation of Limerick (July 1691), the terms of which show that, after the departure of James, the Irish fought only for their own hand.
William's chief energies were now directed to raising the ways and means for the continental war in support of the ‘confederacy abroad,’ which in his speech of 2 Oct. he vigorously commended to parliament (Kennet, iii. 566). On 18 Jan. 1691 he set out for Holland, where, after a perilous landing (Burnet, iv. 129; cf. Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1690–1, p. 250), he met with a splendid reception at the Hague, and addressed the congress of allies in the tone of their acknowledged leader (Wagenaar, ap. Klopp, v. 238). But before he could bring up the force of fifty thousand men collected by him, Mons had fallen (9 April); and though after a visit to England, in which he haughtily trod down the insidious ashes of Preston's disclosures, he resumed the campaign, it remained devoid of result. During the winter 1691–2 he remained intent upon the great European struggle. Parliament voted the poll-tax that was to enable him to take the field with a force of sixty-four thousand men. He prorogued it, however (24 Feb. 1692), after for the first time using his power of veto, in order to protect the crown against a new charge (his action as to the bill for securing fixed salaries to the judges is explained by Macaulay, chap. xviii.) Before the dissolution Marlborough, who had concerted with James a series of operations, beginning with a motion in the lords for the exclusion of all foreigners from the service of England, was dismissed from all his employments, and a rupture ensued of the friendly relations between the sovereigns and the Princess Anne (January).
Little importance can at the time have been attached by William to an incident which, besides leading to the political overthrow of one of his most trusted Scottish advisers, was to cast a deep shadow over his own fame [see Dalrymple, Sir John, first Earl of Stair; and Dalrymple, Sir James, first Viscount Stair]. William's letter of 11 Jan. 1692 to Sir Thomas Livingstone, which sanctioned a rigorous treatment of any highland rebels failing to take advantage of the indemnity granted to such as should come in by 1 Jan., and the additional instructions signed by him on 16 Jan., prove that he wished an example to be made of the Macdonalds of Glencoe, if their case could be distinctly shown to fall outside of the indemnity. William's responsibility is not affected by the glosses put upon his orders by the master of Stair, who was attending him as joint secretary for Scotland; nor is it reasonable to press the literal meaning of the term ‘extirpation’ employed by him as to the treatment, in a particular event only, of the Macdonalds. While he could not be aware of the method by which his orders were to be carried out, the line of action which in a certain event he approved manifestly failed to strike him as extraordinary. After having become known at Paris in March and in London in April 1692, the massacre was in the following year discussed in the Scottish parliament by the enemies of the master of Stair and his father, the lord president; but it was not till April 1695 that the king granted a commission of inquiry, whose report, issued 20 June, exonerated him while condemning the master of Stair. The latter having resigned office, William issued a
