ABSTRACT
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 is one of the strangest events in British history. On November 5th 1688 William of Orange landed at Torbay with an army of 15,000, the best organized and most successful invasion force since the Norman Conquest. He had come partly in response to invitations from leading members of the English nobility. On the death of Charles in 1685 his younger brother James inherited a monarchy which, superficially, seemed more stable than it had been for generations. Yet within three years he had so undermined the confidence of his subjects that some of the most powerful of them were openly inviting William of Orange to invade. If events in England had moved with bewildering rapidity during the winter of 1688–9 situation in Scotland was even stranger. Scotland was still an independent nation, though since 1603, when the crowns of England and Scotland had been united, Scotland had become ever more closely linked to her southern neighbour.
