William of Orange
Art and history collided on this day, November 3, 1805. Some unidentified person under the cover of night defaced the bronze statue of King William III (“William of Orange” or “William the Silent”) in Dublin. William's birthday! His horse was painted white, and King Billy was wildly painted with a yellow cloak decorated with flowers. The vandal could have been Catholic or Protestant: Catholics generally hated William because he had secured the British Isles for Protestantism, and Protestant students hated the little, sickly man on a horse statue because the horse's rear end was aimed at Trinity College.
William married his cousin Mary Stuart which put William & Mary living in Holland in England’s line of succession. When it became apparent that King James II, a militant Catholic, was on the wrong side of every foreign, domestic and religious policy, seven English noblemen wrote William begging him to invade England to rid them of the tyranny. Without any significant opposition he did so and in 1689 William and Mary were given the crown of England, Scotland and Ireland jointly until his death in 1702. Their first act was to sign the “Bill of Rights” signifying the end of the the divine right of kings and replacing the erastian oligarchy with a constitutional monarchy with a representative democratic parliament. William of Orange was the only Presbyterian to ever sit on England’s throne and he once-and-for-all established Great Britain for Protestantism.
The statue was cleaned up from the Banksy-like mess, but In 1928 it was bombed and the base of the statue was destroyed. It had became a symbol of animosity between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, and in 1945 it was melted down after a hoof of the hind leg was presented to the Irish activist Anna Kelly.
A book of prayers written by William of Orange included this daily devotional:
“Grant me such a sense of my sins, and of the sufficiency of my beloved Savior for them, as may affect my heart with a deep sorrow for my sins, and an eternal hatred and displeasure against them, and may effectively engage me to love and live to Him who died for me, Jesus Christ, my blessed Savior and Redeemer. Amen.”