William III of England - Death

Death

In 1702, William died of pneumonia, a complication from a broken collarbone following a fall from his horse, Sorrel. Because his horse had stumbled into a mole's burrow, many Jacobites toasted "the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat." Years later, Sir Winston Churchill, in his A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, stated that the fall "opened the door to a troop of lurking foes". William was buried in Westminster Abbey alongside his wife. His sister-in-law Anne became queen regnant of England, Scotland and Ireland.

William's death brought an end to the Dutch House of Orange, members of which had served as stadtholder of Holland and the majority of the other provinces of the Dutch Republic since the time of William the Silent (William I). The five provinces of which William III was stadtholder—Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel—all suspended the office after his death. Thus, he was the last agnatic descendant of William I to be named stadtholder for the majority of the provinces. Under William III's will, John William Friso stood to inherit the Principality of Orange as well as several lordships in the Netherlands. He was an agnatic relative of the Princes of Orange, as well as a descendant of William the Silent through a female line. However, King Frederick I of Prussia also claimed the Principality as the senior cognatic heir, stadtholder Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange having been his maternal grandfather and William III his first cousin. Under the Treaty of Utrecht, which was agreed to in 1713, Frederick William I of Prussia (who kept the title as part of his titulary) ceded the Principality of Orange to the King of France, Louis XIV; Friso's son, William IV, shared the title of "Prince of Orange", which had accumulated high prestige in the Netherlands as well as in the entire Protestant world, with Frederick William after the Treaty of Partition (1732).