Excerpt from Compendious History of New England, Vol. 3 of 4: From the Discovery by Europeans to the First General Congress of the Anglo-American Colonies King William the Third was indeed no enthu siast for the creed in which he concurred with the colonists. He was ardent only for the humilia tion of France. During the seventeen years since he had been summoned, at the age of twenty-two, to direct the defence of his country against a devastating invasion of the French king, a suc cession of intrigues and wars against that mon arch had been his perpetual occupation. Louis the Fourteenth, in his declining life, was, after his incongruous manner, a furious devotee to the Romish religion which he had always professed; and the defence of the reformed faith in England, Holland, and the North of Europe was involved in resistance to his power. But the Protestantism of William of Orange was not SO fastidious as to withhold him from alliances with the King of Spain, with the Emperor of Germany and other Catholic princes of the empire, and even with the Pope. It might be true that, though the doctrine of predestination was dear to him, as it made an uncalculating courage easy, his religious belief, on the whole, had no strong hold of his mind. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.