It may help the reader to keep in memory the sequence of these English sovereigns if I tell him somewhat of their relationship. James II.--previously and longer known as that Duke of York, in honor of whom our metropolitan city (in those days conquered from the Dutch) was called New York--we know as only brother to Charles II., who died without legitimate children. This James was as bigoted and obstinate as Charles was profligate and suave. We think of him as having lost his throne in that revolution of 1688, by reason of his popish tendencies; but it is doubtful if Protestantism would have saved him, or made a better man of him. He had married--and it was a marriage he tried hard to abjure and escape from--a daughter of that Earl of Clarendon whose _History of the Rebellion_ I named to you. There were two daughters by this marriage, Mary and Anne; both of them, through the influence of their Clarendon grandfather, brought up as Protestants. The elder of these, Mary, was a fine woman, tall, dignified, graceful, cultivated--as times went--whose greatest foible was a love for cards, at which she played for heavy stakes, and--often. Her sister Anne shared the same foible, and gave it cherishment all her life; but was not reckoned the equal of her elder sister; had none of her grace; was short, dumpy, overfond of good dinners, and with such limited culture as made her notelets (even when she came to be Queen) full of blunders that would put a school-mistress of our day into spasms. We shall meet her, and more pleasantly, again. But Mary--heir next after James to the throne--had married William of Orange, who was a fighting Dutch general; keen, cool, selfish, brave, calculating, with an excellent head for business; cruel at times, unscrupulous, too, but a good Protestant. He was great-grandson to that famous William the Silent, whose story everyone has read, or should read, in the pages of Motley. But how came he, a Dutchman, and speaking English brokenly, to share the British throne with Mary? There were two very excellent reasons: First, he was own cousin to Mary, his mother having been a daughter of Charles I.; and next, he had kingly notions of husbandship, and refused to go to England on any throne-seeking errand, which might involve hard fighting, without sharing to the full the sovereignty of his wife Mary.