Peter Tatchell has claimed that William III had male lovers (Belfast Telegraph, July 29).

It is unlikely that Mr Tatchell's assertions would enjoy much support among academic historians.

Any dispassionate study of the evidence will come to the conclusion that there is no good reason to believe that King William was a practising homosexual.

Most of the earliest allegations regarding William's homosexuality come from his Jacobite opponents; no such claims about his private life seem to have been made in his native Netherlands before he became king in England in 1689.

Both the men whose names have been most often linked with William's, Hans Willem Bentinck, the first Earl of Portland, and Arnold Joost van Keppel, the first Earl of Albemarle, gave him good professional reasons to show them his favour: Portland was William's contemporary and an experienced diplomat and soldier who helped to plan the Dutch invasion of England in 1688; Albemarle was made a peer at the unusually early age of 27, but he proved to be a skillful administrator and military commander.

Furthermore, Portland was a devout Calvinist who was married and the father of seven children while Albemarle was not only a husband, but kept a series of mistresses.

It seems improbable that either man was William's lover. William had at least one mistress, Elizabeth Villiers, whose husband he made Earl of Orkney. William gave up Villiers only after the death of his wife in 1694. Tatchell's claims seem pretty groundless.

Colin Armstrong

Belfast