One death had already disabled the Lower House, another death suddenly and completely extinguished its paralyzed and convulsed existence. William of Orange fell from his horse as he was riding in the neighbourhood of Hampton Court, and broke his collar-bone. Removed to Kensington, he was seized with shivering fits, and it soon appeared death was approaching. The Earl of Portland states, “that when he was once encouraging him, from the good state his affairs were in both home and abroad, to take more heart, the King answered him, that he knew death was that which he had looked at on all occasions without any terror; sometimes he would have been glad to have been delivered out of all his troubles, but he confessed now he saw another scene, and could wish to live a little longer. He died with a clear and full presence of mind, and in a wonderful tranquillity. Those who knew it was his rule all his life long to hide the impressions that religion made on him, as much as possible, did not wonder at his silence in his last minutes; but they lamented it much, they knew what a handle it would give to censure and obloquy.”[361] Early on Sunday, January the 8th, he received “the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, with great devotion, from the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury”[362]--about 8 o’clock he was a corpse. Round his neck a black ribbon was discovered with a gold ring, and a lock of Queen Mary’s hair. [Sidenote: 1702.] [Sidenote: WILLIAM III.] The moral conduct of the King had not been in accordance with his religious professions. Burnet, who honestly gives his impressions of William’s character, says in a few words, “He had no vice but of one sort, in which he was very cautious and secret”--a statement which, whilst it presents a contrast to James and Charles, who were barefaced in their sensualities, admits the fact of William’s being addicted to vicious indulgence, of which concealment neither expiated nor diminished the guilt. It is not a little surprising that so many good men, both Churchmen and Dissenters, who could not have been indifferent to the interests of morality, should have lauded, as they did, the Hero of the Revolution, both living and dead, as if he had been the very ideal of virtue and piety. Yet Burnet, who was disposed to take the most favourable view of his character, cannot be charged with exaggeration when he informs us, that “he believed the truth of the Christian religion very firmly, and he expressed a horror at atheism and blasphemy, and though there was much of both in his Court, yet it was always denied to him, and kept out of his sight. He was most exemplary, decent, and devout in the public exercises of the worship of God--only on week days he came too seldom to them. He was an attentive hearer of sermons,[363] and was constant in his private prayers and in reading the Scriptures; and when he spoke of religious matters, which he did not often, it was with a becoming gravity. He was much