William, Prince of Orange was born on 4 November 1650 at the Binnenhof, The Hague, in the Netherlands. On 21 January 1651 he was baptised at the Grote Kerk. When he was nine he was sent to Leiden to further his education.

Society’s attitude toward death changes, it seems, with every generation. Our Victorian forebears were obsessed by it, but today death is almost an embarrassment in a secular world which regards itself as sophisticated and advanced, and people often seek to deal with it by making light of it in one way or another.