The Catholic King James II had fled his throne, and a favored Protestant Dutchman named William of Orange had roused the people in what became known as the “Glorious Revolution.” It was a moment of extraordinary growth and opportunity for England under the governance of a foreign king. William, perhaps more than anyone, transformed the fractious English monarchy into a dominant imperial power. England was now to be regarded as a significant European power, on par with France, in alliance with the Netherlands, a hegemonic influence over the aging Spanish Empire. David Starkey calls William one of England’s greatest monarchs.
William of Orange was a tenacious yet somewhat sickly figure. As a child he was asthmatic and partly crippled with a tubercular lung. “But within this emaciated and defective frame there burned a remorseless fire, fanned by the storms of Europe, and intensified by the…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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