As regards the new King himself, his behaviour at this great crisis in his own fortunes and the destiny of two nations deserves, at any rate, the credit of honesty and straightforwardness. We shall not really add to that honour by seeking any more showy motives than those which lie on the face of his conduct. The mere masculine repugnance of the man of action to lower the spear before the distaff would in any case probably have induced him to reject the proposal of the Tory lords. But apart from this, his shrewd knowledge of men and clear insight into politics assured him that he had only to refuse the false position in order to compel the offer of the true one. He might have been all else that he was--the devoted son of Holland; the true, if unimpassioned, friend of England; the implacable enemy of the French king and his designs; the ardent champion of Protestantism and the liberties of Europe;--and yet only been the more tempted in every one of these by a place on the steps of a powerful throne, and an influence which even from that situation he might have wielded to the attainment of many great ends. He was saved from accepting it solely by his pride, his ambition, and his perspicacity. He resented the thought of holding power as his wife's lieutenant, and he saw that he had only to refuse that post in order to make himself a necessity as king. The first act of the new sovereign was to summon and swear a Privy Council, and to nominate a Ministry. In the then infancy of our modern Constitution it was not, as it now is, incumbent upon the sovereign to select the Ministers from one particular party. It was competent to him, and William deemed it expedient for him, to tender office to the representatives of both political connections. Danby, a Tory by principle, though he had sided with the Whigs in opposing the Regency scheme, and only broke away from them on the question of declaring the throne vacant, was made President of the Council. Halifax, a Trimmer indeed, but of closer affinities with Whiggery than with Toryism, and the chief upholder of the Whig doctrine on the question of the succession, became Lord Privy Seal. Nottingham, a Tory up to almost any point short of passive obedience, received the seals of one Secretaryship of State; upon Shrewsbury, a Whig, were bestowed those of the other. The Treasury and the Admiralty were committed to the Administration of Boards--the former under the presidency of Admiral Herbert, the latter under that of Charles Mordaunt, afterwards the famous and eccentric Earl of Peterborough. By an exercise of the royal authority, willingly acquiesced in at the time by the nation, but destined to entail more momentous national consequences than any of his subjects foresaw, King William retained in his own hands the exclusive direction of foreign affairs. The Great Seal was placed in commission.