n to seven.
It was voted that William's Dutch guards should return to Holland. It
was in vain that William begged for their retention as a personal
favour, that he threatened to leave England with them, and that the ill
effect of this strife on his negotiations threw him into a fever. Even
before the elections he had warned the Dutch Pensionary that in any
fresh struggle England could be relied on only for naval aid. He was
forced to give way; and, as he expected, this open display of the
peace-temper of England told fatally on the resistance he had attempted
to the pretensions of France. He strove indeed to appease the Parliament
by calling for the resignation of Russell and Montague, the two
ministers most hated by the Tories. But all seemed in vain. The Houses
no sooner met in 1699 than the Tory majority attacked the Crown, passed
a Bill for resuming estates granted to the Dutch favourites, and
condemned the Ministers as responsible for these grants. Again
Sunderland had to intervene, and to press William to carry out the
policy which had produced the Whig Ministry by its entire dismissal.
Somers and his friends withdrew, and a new administration composed of
moderate Tories, with Lords Rochester and Godolphin as its leading
members, took their place.

[Sidenote: Accession of the Duke of Anjou.]

The moment indeed was one in which the king needed at any price the
co-operation of the Parliament. Spain had been stirred to bitter
resentment as news of the Partition Treaty crept abroad. The Spaniards
cared little whether a French or an Austrian prince sat on the throne of
Charles the Second, but their pride revolted against the dismemberment
of the monarchy by the loss of its Italian dependencies. The nobles too
dreaded the loss of their vast estates in Italy and of the lucrative
posts they held as governors of these dependencies. Even the dying king
shared the anger of his subjects. He hesitated only whether to leave his
dominions to the House of Austria or the House of Bourbon; but in
either case he was resolved to leave the whole. A will wrested from him
by the factions which wrangled over his deathbed bequeathed at last the
whole monarchy of Spain to a grandson of Lewis, the Duke of Anjou, the
second son of the Dauphin. It was doubtful indeed whether Lewis would
suffer his grandson to receive the crown. He was still a member of that
Triple Alliance on which for the last three years the peace of Europe
had depended.