To block such a move the States of Zeeland (who did not want him in their midst) first offered to buy the two marquisates, and when he refused, compulsorily bought them, depositing the purchase price in an escrow account. On a different front the young stadtholder improved his position through a marriage alliance with the British royal house of Hanover. George II of Great Britain was not very secure in his hold on his throne and hoped to strengthen it by offering his daughter Anne in marriage to what he mistook for an influential politician of the Republic, with which, after all old ties existed, reaching back to the Glorious Revolution. At first Van Slingelandt reacted negatively to the proposal with such vehemence that the project was held in abeyance for a few years, but eventually he ran out of excuses and William and Anne were married at St. James's Palace in London in March, 1734. The States-General were barely polite, merely congratulating the king on selecting a son-in-law from "a free republic such as ours." The poor princess, used to a proper royal court, was buried for the next thirteen years in the provincial mediocrity of the stadtholder's court in Leeuwarden. Nevertheless, the royal marriage was an indication that the Republic was at least still perceived in European capitals as a power that was worth wooing for the other powers. Despite its neutralist preferences the Republic had been dragged into the Alliance of Hanover of 1725. Though this alliance was formally intended to counter the alliance between Austria and Spain, the Republic hoped it would be a vehicle to manage the king of Prussia, who was trying to get his hands on the Duchy of Jülich that abutted Dutch territory, and threatened to engulf Dutch Generality Lands in Prussian territory. These are just examples of the intricate minuets European diplomats danced in this first third of the 18th century and in which Van Slingelandt tried his best to be the dance master. The Republic almost got involved in the War of the Polish Succession, to such an extent that it was forced to increase its army just at the time it had hoped to be able to reduce it appreciably. Van Slingelandt played an important part as an intermediary in bringing about peace in that conflict between the Bourbon and Habsburg powers in 1735. The political history of the Republic after the Peace of Utrecht, but before the upheavals of the 1740s, is characterized by a certain blandness (not only in the Republic, to be sure; the contemporary long-lasting Ministry of Robert Walpole in Great Britain equally elicits little passion).