Mary II of England - Legacy

Legacy

After Mary II's death, William III continued to rule as King. Princess Anne's last surviving child, William, Duke of Gloucester, died in July 1700, and, as it was clear that William III would have no more children, Parliament passed the Act of Settlement 1701, which provided that after Anne the Crown would go to their nearest Protestant relative, Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and her Protestant heirs. When William III died in 1702, he was succeeded by Anne, and she in turn was succeeded by the son of the deceased Electress Sophia, George I.

Mary endowed the College of William and Mary (in the present day Williamsburg, Virginia) in 1693, supported Thomas Bray, who founded the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and was instrumental in the foundation of the Royal Hospital for Seamen, Greenwich, after the Anglo-Dutch victory at the Battle of La Hogue. She is credited with influencing garden design at Het Loo and Hampton Court Palaces, and with popularising blue and white porcelain and the keeping of goldfish as pets.

Mary was depicted by Jacobites as an unfaithful daughter who destroyed her father for her own and her husband's gain. In the early years of their reign, she was often seen as completely under the spell of her husband, but after she had temporarily acted as regent during his absences abroad, she was portrayed as capable and confident. Nahum Tate's A Present for the Ladies (1692) compared her to Queen Elizabeth I. Her modesty and diffidence were praised in works such as A Dialogue Concerning Women (1691) by William Walsh, which compared her to Cincinnatus, the Roman general who took on a great task when called to do so, but then willingly abandoned power.

A week before her death, Mary went through her papers, weeding out some which were burnt, but her journal survives, as do her letters to William and to Frances Apsley. The Jacobites lambasted her, but the assessment of her character that came down to posterity was largely the vision of Mary as a dutiful, submissive wife, who assumed power reluctantly, exercised it with considerable ability when necessary, and willingly deferred it to her husband.