ABSTRACT
As Tony Claydon has shown in the single most important study of court culture under William and Mary, a number of clergymen in the circle around Mary took the lead in calling on the new monarchs to promote a policy of sweeping moral reform. Having become Earl of Jersey in the interim, he went on to serve William as Secretary of State and Lord Chamberlain. Hendrik van Nassau-Ouwerkerk was one of William's second cousins, being a grandson by illegitimate descent of Prince Maurits, If there was a Golden Age of the court that William hoped to restore, it may well have been that which so many Englishmen in this period believed to have existed before the Civil War. William's approach thus had some similarities with that which James VI and I had adopted on becoming King of England 86 years earlier, although the Dutchmen never dominated William's Bedchamber in the way that the Scots had done under James.
