What if the Glorious Revolution had failed?
A 'Protestant wind' carried William of Orange to Torbay in 1688. What if his invasion had failed and James II had kept his throne?
What actually happened
James II, a Catholic, became King of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1685. His use of royal power to promote Catholics and dissenters, his growing army and the trial of seven bishops in 1688 alarmed much of the political nation. When his queen gave birth to a son in June 1688, a Catholic succession seemed assured, and seven leading figures invited William of Orange, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic and husband of James's Protestant daughter Mary, to intervene.
William's first attempt to sail in October was driven back by a storm. On 1 November his fleet of more than 400 ships sailed again. An easterly wind, soon called the Protestant wind, carried it down the Channel while holding the English fleet in the Thames estuary, and on 5 November he landed at Torbay in Devon.
James advanced to Salisbury but did not fight. As senior officers, including John Churchill, and even his daughter Anne deserted him, he fell back to London and fled; he is said to have thrown the Great Seal into the Thames. He reached France at the end of December. In February 1689 Parliament offered the crown to William and Mary jointly, together with the Declaration of Right, enacted later that year as the Bill of Rights.
The turning point
The invasion was a huge gamble. It sailed late in the year, against a larger English navy, and depended on the wind. Had the October storm been repeated, or had the wind turned while the Dutch fleet was in the Channel, William might have lost much of his army at sea. Steve Pincus and Jonathan Israel emphasise how much it was a Dutch military operation, not just an English uprising.
Once ashore, the decisive factor was James's own collapse of nerve and his army's defections. A king who stood and fought on Salisbury Plain with an army larger than William's might have kept his throne, at least for a while.
The world that might have been
In Crown & Plough the alternative reads: the October storm scattered the Dutch fleet a second time; the troops who landed were stopped by the king's army on Salisbury Plain and William went back to The Hague; the Catholic king's son was baptised as Prince of Wales. The game then removes the scripted Revolution, the Treaty of Ryswick, the Acts of Union and the Jacobite risings.
Beyond the game, a Stuart Britain under James II and then his son would probably have stayed closer to France and further from the Dutch. William's great coalition against Louis XIV would have lacked English money and ships, a change with consequences across Europe. Whether Parliament's power would have grown as it did after 1689 is uncertain; James might also have faced a later rebellion in England or Scotland.
The Catholic question would not have disappeared. The large Protestant majority in England and Scotland would have kept pressing against a Catholic dynasty, and the conflict could have taken a more violent form later.
Ripples through time
Without the Anglo-Dutch alliance against Louis XIV, the War of the Spanish Succession tilts toward France: in the game a Bourbon union of the two crowns becomes much more likely.
Carried into the Age of Revolution (1789), the Stuarts still sit on the thrones of Britain and Ireland, under a king named James, and Britain is on better terms with France. Compare the Armada article for a Britain that went Catholic a century earlier.
- Shapes What if France and Spain had been united under one Bourbon crown?
- Carries into the next era Age of Revolution
Play this turning point
Start in the Age of the Sun King, or take the scenario The Wind at Torbay, which begins as William's fleet sails. In the Currents of History story The Glorious Revolution and the Jacobites you choose William's side or James's side; James's side pushes for the alternative.
The two sides are treated as evenly matched in power, so your deeds and rank carry real weight.
Play this turning point → Start the scenario “The Wind at Torbay” →
Questions and answers
Why is it called the Glorious Revolution?
Its supporters called it glorious because James II was replaced with little bloodshed in England. In Scotland and especially Ireland the following war was bloody.
What was the Protestant wind?
The easterly wind that carried William's fleet down the English Channel in November 1688 while keeping the English navy pinned in the Thames estuary.
Was the Glorious Revolution a Dutch invasion?
In a military sense, yes: William landed with a large professional army and fleet. Historians debate how much the outcome was due to that army and how much to the English elite's abandonment of James.
Sources and further reading
Gilbert Burnet, History of His Own Time; the Declaration of Right. Modern accounts: Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution; Tim Harris, Revolution; Jonathan Israel (ed.), The Anglo-Dutch Moment.
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