No doubt the colonies would have objected to and resisted such an arrangement with a very hot resentment, and no one in authority in London dreamed for a moment of taking either Lord Culpeper’s or Colonel Nicholson’s advice in the matter; but it was none the less obvious that the King and his officers must contrive some way, if they could, by which they might use the colonies as a single power against the French in America, if England was indeed to make and keep an empire there. If King James, who leaned upon France as an ally and prayed for the dominion of the Church of Rome, had seen this, it was not likely that William of Orange, who was the arch-enemy of France and the champion of Protestantism against Rome, would overlook it. He was no sooner on the throne than England was plunged into a long eight years’ war with the French. And so it happened that the colonies seemed to reap little advantage from the “glorious revolution” which had put out a tyrant and brought in a constitutional King. William of Orange, it presently appeared, meant to unite groups of colonies under the authority of a single royal governor, particularly at the north, where the French power lay, as James before him had done; giving to the governors of the principal colonies the right to command the military forces of the colonies about them even if he gave them no other large gift of power. He did more than James had done. Being a statesman and knowing the value of systematic administration, he did systematically what James had done loosely and without consistent plan. The Board of Trade and Plantations, which he organized to oversee and direct the government of the colonies, did more to keep their affairs under the eye and hand of the King than any group of James’s ministers had been able to do. The great Dutch King was determined to wield England and her possessions as a single imperial power in the game of politics he was playing in Europe.