val had lately obtained an influence
which created much jealousy. Among the Dutch gentlemen who had sailed
with the Prince of Orange from Helvoetsluys to Torbay was one named
Arnold Van Keppel. Keppel had a sweet and obliging temper, winning
manners, and a quick, though not a profound, understanding. Courage,
loyalty and secresy were common between him and Portland. In other
points they differed widely. Portland was naturally the very opposite
of a flatterer, and, having been the intimate friend of the Prince of
Orange at a time when the interval between the House of Orange and the
House of Bentinck was not so wide as it afterwards became, had acquired
a habit of plain speaking which he could not unlearn when the comrade
of his youth had become the sovereign of three kingdoms. He was a most
trusty, but not a very respectful, subject. There was nothing which he
was not ready to do or suffer for William. But in his intercourse with
William he was blunt and sometimes surly. Keppel, on the other hand, had
a great desire to please, and looked up with unfeigned admiration to
a master whom he had been accustomed, ever since he could remember,
to consider as the first of living men. Arts, therefore, which were
neglected by the elder courtier were assiduously practised by the
younger. So early as the spring of 1691 shrewd observers were struck
by the manner in which Keppel watched every turn of the King's eye, and
anticipated the King's unuttered wishes. Gradually the new servant rose
into favour. He was at length made Earl of Albemarle and Master of the
Robes. But his elevation, though it furnished the Jacobites with a fresh
topic for calumny and ribaldry, was not so offensive to the nation as
the elevation of Portland had been. Portland's manners were thought
dry and haughty; but envy was disarmed by the blandness of Albemarle's
temper and by the affability of his deportment.

Portland, though strictly honest, was covetous; Albemarle was generous.
Portland had been naturalised here only in name and form; but Albemarle
affected to have forgotten his own country, and to have become an
Englishman in feelings and manners. The palace was soon disturbed by
quarrels in which Portland seems to have been always the aggressor, and
in which he found little support either among the English or among
his own countrymen. William, indeed, was not the man to discard an old
friend for a new one. He steadily gave, on all occasions, the preference