During the king's absence Princess Anne had received all due honors, as first royal lady of the realm, and this gratified her ambition entirely; but when his majesty thought fit to confer upon his favorite, Bentinck, and his heirs forever, all the rights of the Princess of Wales, not only was Anne justly indignant at seeing her son deprived {413}of his privileges, but the whole country viewed the action with extreme disfavor, and the House of Commons contested it with great warmth. William III. was compelled to revoke the grant; but the hard feeling it had aroused in the mind of Princess Anne remained, and his majesty took no pains to conciliate her. On the contrary, as soon as he was convinced that the removal of his wife had not affected his position, he began to regret the alliance he had formed with his sister-in-law, and treated her with marked disrespect. He even forbade the members of the clergy to bow before her previous to beginning their sermons, according to the custom in the Church of England at that time. To be sure, the Dean of Canterbury and the rector of St. James's Church did not pay the slightest attention to the prohibition, and the princess always returned their salute with marked civility. King William had become dreadfully irritable since the death of his wife. We know that he was naturally surly and ill-natured; but his fondness for Holland gin excited him to such a degree that he would cane his inferior servants if they chanced to neglect even the most trifling duty. The way they tried to dodge his majesty when he was in an unusually fractious mood was amusing, and the members of the royal household called those who were obliged to submit to the blows "King William's Knights of the Cane." A French servant, who had charge of his majesty's guns, and who attended him in his shooting excursions in the Hampden Court park, forgot one day to provide himself with shot, although it was his duty to load the fowling-piece. He did not dare to acknowledge his neglect, but kept charging the gun with powder only, and every time the king fired would exclaim, "I did never,--no, never, see his majesty miss before." Thus are petty tyrants invariably deceived. [[A.D. 1696.]] {414} [Illustration: 0420]