Willard, Frances Elizabeth

Frances Elizabeth (1839-1898), an American educator and temperance worker. She was born on a farm near Churchville, New York, September 28, 1839, and died at New York, February 18, 1898. She grew up in Wisconsin. She was graduated at Northwestern Female College at Evanston, Illinois, in 1859. In 1869 she became professor of esthetics in Northwestern University. In 1874 she resigned to become secretary of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, of which, in 1879, she became president. She traveled extensively and lectured on the evils of intemperance. Later she became convinced that women should have and should exercise the right to vote in order to counterbalance the power of the saloon vote. She took a leading part in the organization of the World's Christian Temperance Union and in 1888 became its president. Miss Willard was a speaker of ability, a woman of untiring energy. She was capable of addressing the largest audiences. In 1892 she visited England and formed a fast friendship with Lady Henry Somerset. It is said that for ten years she spoke on an average 400 times a year. In addition to platform addresses and official duties, she carried on editorial work and wrote several books. From 1892-8 she was editor-in-chief of the Union Signal, the official organ of the temperance movement. Among her books may be mentioned Nineteen Beautiful Years, Woman and Temperance, A Great Mother, and Glimpses of Fifty Years, which is autobiographical. A marble statue of Miss Willard has been presented to the nation by the state of Illinois. It was unveiled in Statuary Hall in the capitol February 17, 1905. Miss Willard is represented as standing by a reading desk, a lecturer's manuscript in her hand. On the pedestal of the statue is inscribed her plea for suffrage for women:

Ah! it is women who have given the costliest hostages to fortune. Out into the battle of life they have sent their best beloved, with fearful odds against them. Oh, by the dangers they have dared; by the hours of patient watching over beds where helpless children lay; by the incense of 10,000 prayers wafted from their gentle lips to heaven, I charge you give them power to protect along life's treacherous highway those whom they have so loved.

William I (1028-1087), surnamed the Conqueror, king of England and duke of Normandy. He was born at Falaise, Normandy. His mother was a tanner's daughter; his father, Duke Robert of Normandy. Before setting out on a journey to Palestine Robert made William his heir. Robert died on the return journey. Surrounding nobles attempted to encroach on the young lad's domains, but he proved to be not only a fighting man but a master of statecraft as well. He repelled the encroachments of his neighbors and brought even the French king to terms. During these operations William surrounded himself by an army of reckless adventurers, accounted the most powerful military force of the day. On the death of Edward the Confessor of England Duke William laid claim to the crown and crossed the English Channel with his band. As a matter of fact, William was related through his father to the reigning family of England, but relationship was merely a pretext. He had the military force at his back, England was a goodly land but a few hours distant, and he was determined to possess it. For an account of the conquest and the manner in which William ruled England the reader is referred to articles on HAROLD, HASTINGS, BAYEAUX TAPESTRY, DOOMSDAY BOOK, NEW FOREST, etc.

William appears to have expected the Saxons to receive him as their sovereign without serious protest. Repeated uprisings, especially in the north, made him savage. He ravaged the country between York and Durham literally with fire and sword, putting, it is claimed, 100,000 people to death. He rewarded his followers liberally with the confiscated lands of the Saxon nobility. Scott's Ivanhoe gives a clear picture of relations long existing between the Normans and the Saxons, relations, however, which had vanished before the time pictured in that novel. William was killed by the starting of his horse near Rouen while engaged in putting down a revolt.

William the Conqueror was the most remarkable sovereign of his day. He was bold, crafty, merciless, and enterprising. He saw ahead and had the faculty of using bold spirits to further his own ends. His remains lie in a stately vault in the Minster of Caen, Normandy. To the day of his death William regarded Normandy as his principal possession. This he gave to his oldest son, Robert. England, which he regarded as an outlying possession, he left to his second son, known in history as William II or William Rufus, the same who met his death while hunting in the New Forest. An arrow was found in his body, shot, it is believed, by a French follower named Wat Tyrrell.

In the young duke's character the old world mingled strangely with the new, the pirate jostled roughly with the statesman. William was the most terrible, as he was the last outcome of the northern race. The very spirit of the "sea-wolves" who had so long "lived on the pillage of the earth" seemed embodied in his gigantic form, his enormous strength, his savage countenance, his desperate bravery, the fury of his wrath, the ruthlessness of his revenge. "No knight under heaven," his enemies confessed, "was William's peer." . . . . No man could bend his bow. His mace crashed its way through a ring of English warriors to the foot of the standard. He rose to his greatest heights in moments when other men despaired. His voice rang out like a trumpet to rally his soldiers as they fled before the English charge at Senlac. In his winter march on Chester he strode afoot at the head of his fainting troops, and helped with his own hands to clear a road through the snowdrifts. With the northman's daring broke out the northman's pitilessness. When the townsmen of Alencon hung raw hides along their walls in scorn of the baseness of his birth, with cries of "Work for the Tanner!" William tore out his prisoners' eyes, cut off their hands and feet, and flung them into the town. At the close of his greatest victory he refused Harold's body a grave. Hundreds of Hampshire men were driven from their homes to make him a huntingground, and his harrying of Northumbria left the north of England a desolate waste . . . . . There is the same savage temper in the loneliness of his life. He recked little of men's love or hate. His grim look, his pride, his silence, his wild outbursts of passion, spread terror through his court. . . . . It was only when he passed from the palace to the loneliness of the woods that the king's temper unbent. He loved the wild deer as though he had been their father. Whosoever should slay hart or hind man should blind him.--John Green.

William III (1650-1702), king of Great Britain and Ireland and stadtholder of Holland. He was born at the Hague and died at Kensington, England. His father was William II, Prince of Orange; his mother was Mary, the daughter of Charles I, He married Mary, the daughter of James II of England. At the age of twenty-two, he was captain-general of the forces of Holland engaged in repelling an invasion by the French. He opened the dikes and flooded the country around Amsterdam, forcing the enemy to retire. He saved Holland from France and came out of the war with a mortal hatred for Louis XIV. Mary, his wife, was the Protestant daughter of James II, of England who was a Catholic. A young son was born to James. The Episcopalians and Presbyterians feared that the Catholics might gain control of England. William feared that James might carry Great Britain into an alliance with Louis XIV. An agreement was soon reached between William and the English Protestants. He raised an army of 14,000 men and embarked as if for an attack on France. On the contrary, he sailed for England. His landing at Torbay, November 5, 1688, was followed by the desertion of James' troops, the flight of James to France, the entry of William into London, and the coronation of William and Mary as joint sovereigns. William never gained the affections of his subjects. He managed Parliament by bribing a sufficient number of members. He formed a league of Protestant Europe against Louis XIV. The Queen Anne's War in America was an outlying eddy caused by the general European storm.

Mary died in 1694. William died in consequence of a fall from his horse in 1702. They rest side by side in Westminster Abbey. William and Mary College, the oldest educational institution in Virginia, was named in their honor. They were succeeded by Anne, the last of the Stuarts, the same in whose reign English literature flourished and the talented but unprincipled Marlborough fought the battles of Blenheim and Malplaquet. The government of England by party began during this reign.

The following sentences are taken from the History of England by Lord Macaulay, who considered William III one of the great men of history:

His name at once calls up before us a slender and feeble frame, a lofty and ample forehead, a nose curved like the beak of an eagle, an eye rivaling that of an eagle in brightness and keenness, a thoughtful and somewhat sullen brow, a firm and somewhat peevish mouth, a cheek pale, thin, and deeply furrowed by sickness and by care. That pensive, severe, and solemn aspect could scarcely have belonged to a happy or a good humoured man. But it indicates in a manner not to be mistaken capacity equal to the most arduous enterprises, and fortitude not to be shaken by reverses or dangers.

Nature had largely endowed William with the qualities of a great ruler, and education had developed those qualities in no common degree. Even his countrymen thought him blunt. To foreigners he often seemed churlish. In his intercourse with the world in general he appeared ignorant or negligent of those arts which double the value of a favor and take away the sting of a refusal.

The faculties which are necessary for the conduct of important business ripened in him at a time of life when they have scarcely begun to blossom in ordinary men. Since Octavius the world had seen no such instance of precocious statesmanship. Skillful diplomatists were surprised to hear the weighty observations which at seventeen the prince made on public affairs, and still more surprised to see a lad, in situations in which he might have been expected to betray strong passion, preserve a composure as imperturbable as their own. At eighteen he sat among the fathers of the commonwealth, grave, discreet, and judicious as the oldest among them.

But courage like that of William is rare indeed. He was proved by every test: by war, by wounds, by painful and depressing maladies, by raging seas, by the imminent and constant risk of assassination, a risk which has shaken very strong nerves, a risk which severely tried even the adamantine fortitude of Cromwell. Yet none could ever discover what that thing was which the Prince of Orange feared. His advisers could with difficulty induce him to take any precaution against the pistols and daggers of conspirators. Old sailors were amazed at the composure which he preserved amidst roaring breakers on a perilous coast. In battle his bravery made him conspicuous even among tens of thousands of brave warriors, drew forth the generous applause of hostile armies, and was scarcely ever questioned even by the injustice of hostile factions.

The audacity of his spirit was the more remarkable because his physical organization was unusually delicate. From a child he had been weak and sickly. In the prime of manhood his complaints had been aggravated by a severe attack of smallpox. He was asthmatic and consumptive. His slender frame was shaken by a constant hoarse cough. He could not sleep unless his head was propped by several pillows, and could scarcely draw his breath in any but the purest air. Cruel headaches frequently tortured him. Exertion soon fatigued him. The physicians constantly kept up the hopes of his enemies by fixing some date beyond which, if there were anything certain in medical science, it was impossible that his broken constitution could hold out.

To a very small circle of intimate friends, on whose fidelity and secrecy he could absolutely depend, he was a different man from the reserved and stoical William whom the multitude supposed to be destitute of human feelings. He was kind, cordial, open, even convivial and jocose, would sit at table many hours, and would bear his full share in festive conversation.

See Boyne; James Ii; Louis Xiv; William And Mary College; Glencoe; Parliament

William IV (1765-1837), king of Great Britain and Ireland. He was the third son of George III. He was the younger brother of George IV, whom he succeeded June 26, 1830. He was not a credit to the nation. He died without legitimate children and was succeeded by his niece, Victoria. See Victoria; Hanover