ctually resided there some weeks.
[65] But he at length fixed his choice on Kensington House, the suburban
residence of the Earl of Nottingham. The purchase was made for eighteen
thousand guineas, and was followed by more building, more planting,
more expense, and more discontent. [66] At present Kensington House is
considered as a part of London. It was then a rural mansion, and could
not, in those days of highwaymen and scourers, of roads deep in mire and
nights without lamps, be the rallying point of fashionable society.

It was well known that the King, who treated the English nobility and
gentry so ungraciously, could, in a small circle of his own countrymen,
be easy, friendly, even jovial, could pour out his feelings garrulously,
could fill his glass, perhaps too often; and this was, in the view of
our forefathers, an aggravation of his offences. Yet our forefathers
should have had the sense and the justice to acknowledge that the
patriotism which they considered as a virtue in themselves, could not be
a fault in him. It was unjust to blame him for not at once transferring
to our island the love which he bore to the country of his birth. If, in
essentials, he did his duty towards England, he might well be suffered
to feel at heart an affectionate preference for Holland. Nor is it
a reproach to him that he did not, in this season of his greatness,
discard companions who had played with him in his childhood, who had
stood by him firmly through all the vicissitudes of his youth and
manhood, who had, in defiance of the most loathsome and deadly forms of
infection, kept watch by his sick-bed, who had, in the thickest of the
battle, thrust themselves between him and the French swords, and whose
attachment was, not to the Stadtholder or to the King, but to plain
William of Nassau. It may be added that his old friends could not but
rise in his estimation by comparison with his new courtiers. To the
end of his life all his Dutch comrades, without exception, continued
to deserve his confidence. They could be out of humour with him, it is
true; and, when out of humour, they could be sullen and rude; but
never did they, even when most angry and unreasonable, fail to keep
his secrets and to watch over his interests with gentlemanlike and
soldierlike fidelity. Among his English councillors such fidelity was
rare. [67] It is painful, but it is no more than just, to acknowledge
that he had but too good reason for thinking meanly o