ABSTRACT
Two great armies-those of King James II, and of his invading son-in-law, William, Prince of Orange - faced each other on Salisbury plain. For some years after the Glorious Revolution itself, accounts of the change in Britain and Ireland's fortunes were primarily providential, European and centred on William III. More recent historians have been sceptical of such claims. Their explanations have moved away from providence, from the European context and from William, towards structural shifts within British politics and society. By examining William's main objectives, and by studying his political skills, this book argues that it was the actions of a monarch whose motivation lay beyond his own realms which did most to return the Stuart realms to stability. British and Irish politics had reached an internal deadlock by the late Stuart era which required an external, if not providentially miraculous, intervention to break.
