So far as its events are concerned, the story of the expedition may be told in a few sentences. William had at first intended to land in the North, where his adherents--the Whig Earl of Devonshire, and the Tory Lord Danby--were ready to receive him. He sailed on October 19, but was driven back, and unable to start again until November 1. The wind was favourable, and rapidly rose. The vast fleet went past the mouth of the Thames, and Lord Dartmouth, owing to the faulty dispositions into which he had been persuaded, could not come out in time to oppose it. William passed down the Channel unmolested, and landed, ‘as every schoolboy knows,’ at Brixham on November 5. Dartmouth was following down the Channel, but the wind again changed, and he put into Portsmouth. Had the fleets met, the result cannot be doubted. The Dutch fleet was commanded by the refugee English Admiral Herbert, and his ships were full of English seamen. The crews of James’s fleet were thoroughly discontented, and half the ships would undoubtedly have been carried over by their captains. To discuss the events of 1688 as if they constituted a military campaign is a mistake. William’s design rested upon the known fact that England as a whole was not merely passive, but actively friendly. William, having landed, occupied Exeter with his army of 14,000, of whom over 3,000 were British infantry. For a week there was hesitation, for he had not been expected, and the memory of the Bloody Assize hung over the West. But soon the Western gentry, both Whigs and Tories, began pouring into Exeter, while all over England revolt blazed up. The royal officers deserted in a manner that can only be described as utterly shameless. William entered London on December 16 without any fighting on the route, except a skirmish at Wincanton, in which one of his Scottish battalions roughly handled Colonel Patrick Sarsfield’s Irish regiment. James fled to France, and England was lost and won almost without a blow. Not only this, but Jacobitism was never again, except in one or two remote localities, a real militant force. From the military point of view, one may almost say that everything was prearranged, and the main lesson to be learnt from the English Revolution is that, when public opinion is not dormant and the defensive services are amenable to its influence, it is impossible for the mere official administration to maintain itself. CHAPTER XVI THE ‘FIFTEEN’ AND THE ‘FORTY-FIVE’ The efforts of the dispossessed Stuart dynasty to re-establish itself in the British Isles produced the last land invasions of England by way of Scotland. That of 1715 was insignificant. It cannot be said that either had the faintest chance of success unaided. Still, they were invasions in the true sense of the word and, as such, merit some notice.