Really interesting book covering a period I knew next to nothing about. ( )

In the late 1690s, the recently widowed and much bereaved King William III consoled himself by spending a lot of time in Newmarket, at the races where one the favorite horses that he ran was named "Stiff Dick."

Sometimes a single historical detail can illuminate an era.

I guess historians will never know for certain if King William III ever "got it on" with his young handsome favorite Keppel/the Earl of Albemarle. Rumors were extensive at the time - and no less an "expert" than the King's cousin "Liselotte" - the Duchess of Orleans at the French court, married to the flamingly gay "Monsiuer" - believed them. Just as in the case with William's great-grandfather King James VI & I with Villiers/the Duke of Buckingham, we don't have the testimony of the bedsheets. Personally, I think William III is a much more sympathetic figure than James. And I hope that whatever the King needed from his protege, he received in abundance. There clearly seems to have been a deep love there. ( )

1309. William and Mary, by Henri and Barbara Van Der Zee ( 23 Dec 1974) This is an excellent biography and by its detail I learned a great deal more of the period (1688-1702) than I ever knew before. The account is dutifully chronological and really well done. One wishes the biographers had done more analysis, but still the book is good. William III was born Nov. 14, 1650. Mary was born 20 April 1662, the daughter of James II. William and Mary married 4 Nov 1677. They dethroned James II in 1688. Mary died Dec 28, 1694 ("An hour later, at quarter to one on the morning of Friday, 28 December, Mary died ' after 2 or 3 small strugglings of Nature without such agonies as are usual.' And to the waiting Londoners, shivering in a snowbound city where all the coffee houses and theatres had been shut up, the news was carried by the tolling bells. The reign of William and Mary was over.") On Feb 20, 1702, William's horse stumbled on a mole-hill, and the King broke his collar bone. He died March 8. The account of what the doctors did for him is astounding. I am sure that the more one kept away from doctors in those days the better one's chance to live was. ( )