miserable.  She had no faults; none; you knew her well; but you could not know, none but myself could know, her goodness.”  The funeral was remembered as the saddest and most august that Westminister had ever seen.  While the queen’s remains lay in state at Whitehall, the neighbouring streets were filled every day, from sunrise to sunset, by crowds that made all traffic impossible.  The two Houses with their maces followed the hearse, the Lords robed in scarlet and ermine, the Commons in long black mantles.  No preceding sovereign had ever been attended to the grave by a Parliament:  for till then the Parliament had always expired with the sovereign.  The gentle queen sleeps among her illustrious kindred in the southern aisle of the Chapel of Henry the Seventh.

The affection of her husband was soon attested by a monument the most superb that was ever erected to any sovereign.  No scheme had been so much her own, and none so dear to her heart, as that of converting the palace at Greenwich into a retreat for seamen.  As soon as he had lost her, her husband began to reproach himself for neglecting her wishes.  No time was lost.  A plan was furnished by Wren; and soon an edifice, surpassing that asylum which the magnificent Louis had provided for his soldiers, rose on the margin of the Thames.  The inscription on the frieze ascribes praise to Mary alone.  Few who now gaze on the noble double edifice, crowned by twin domes, are aware that it is a memorial of the virtues of the good Queen Mary, of the love and sorrow of William, and of the greater victory of La Hogue.

On the Continent the death of Mary excited various emotions.  The Huguenots, in every part of Europe to which they had wandered, bewailed the Elect Lady, who had retrenched her own royal state in order to furnish bread and shelter to the persecuted people of God.  But the hopes of James and his companions in exile were now higher than they had been since the day of La Hogue.  Indeed, the general opinion of politicians, both here and on the Continent, was that William would find it impossible to sustain himself much longer on the throne.  He would not, it was said, have sustained himself so long but for the help of his wife, whose affability had conciliated many that were disgusted by his Dutch accent and habits.  But all the statesmen of Europe were deceived:  and, strange to say, his reign was decidedly more prosperous after the decease of Mary than during her life.

During the month which followed her death the king was incapable of exertion.  His first letter was that of a brokenhearted man.  Even his martial ardour had been tamed by misery.  “I tell you in confidence,” he wrote to Heincius, “that I feel myself to be no longer fit for military command.  Yet I will try to do my duty:  and I hope that God will strengthen me.”  So despondingly did he look forward to the most brilliant and successful of his many campaigns.