This obstacle to the settlement of the crown being removed, the Prince and Princess of Orange were declared King and Queen, in accordance with the votes severally of both Houses of Parliament, upon a motion of Lord Danby. The populace, who remembered how the crown had tottered on James’s head at the coronation, and who recalled the pleasantry of Henry Sidney, keeper of the robes, who kept it from falling off, remarking, as he replaced it, “This is not the first time that our family has supported the crown,”[147] were now startled by the circumstance, that the day of the proclamation of William and Mary was also that of the accession of the unfortunate James; and the assembled crowds pointed at the statue of the unhappy monarch, with its face turned to the river, and its back to the palace, in bitter and sarcastic allusion.[148] This event, which took place on the 6th of February, 1689, was, in six days afterwards, succeeded by the arrival of Queen Mary in London. Her singular, and, to a sensitive mind, truly painful situation, raised many conjectures with respect to her probable conduct. But whether, as it is asserted by some, she was warned by William to control her emotions, for his sake, upon her first appearance as a sovereign, the deposer and successor of her father; or whether her extraordinary levity proceeded from the heartlessness of a common-place character, it is difficult to decide. Political feuds may, indeed, sufficiently, though not satisfactorily, account for hardness of heart, and an oblivion of the dearest ties; and Mary’s pliant mind, and warped, but not unaffectionate temper, had been long worked upon, during a series of intrigues, of which her father was the object, and her husband the first agitator.