There is a certain feverishness in the atmosphere of the reign which shows how many kept an anxious eye on St.Germain even while they attended the morning levee at Whitehall.
What secured the permanence of the settlement was less the policy of William than the blunder of the French monarch.

Patience, foresight and generosity had not availed to win for William more than a grudging recognition of his kingship.

He had received only a half-hearted support for his foreign policy.

The army, despite his protests, had been reduced; and the enforced return of his own Dutch Guards to Holland was deliberately conceived to cause him pain.

But at the very moment when his strength seemed weakest James II died; and Louis XIV, despite written obligation, sought to comfort the last moments of his tragic exile by the falsely chivalrous recognition of the Old Pretender as the rightful English king.