Landing of William III at Torbay, 5 November 1688 RMG BHC0326

Landing of William III at Torbay, 5 November 1688
This oil painting by an unknown English artist shows William III’s landing in Torbay on 5 November 1688 leading 14,000 troops for the invasion of England. On the left of the composition the large Anglo-Dutch fleet seems to be closing in onto the beach and rocky coastline on the right. Boats with men are already coming ashore near Brixham and numerous horses are swimming ashore onto the shelving beach, having been put over the sides of the ships to land this way. The style and colouring of the scene betray a strong influence of early 17th-century Dutch landscape painting.
The son of Charles I's daughter Mary, Prince William (1650-1702) married Mary, daughter of his cousin James, Duke of York, in 1677. James had by then already converted to Catholicism, which produced a series of political crises after he succeeded to the throne as James II on the death of his elder brother, Charles II, in 1685. These eventually led to a cabal of powerful English Protestant figures inviting William to usurp the British throne, based on the right of succession of his wife, Mary.
In 1688 he agreed and on 5 November landed unopposed at Brixham, Torbay. He was welcomed in south-west England – which had suffered the retribution of James's 'Bloody Assize' following the defeat of the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion at Sedgemoor, Somerset, in 1685 – and was only briefly resisted by a few of James's Irish Catholic troops at Reading, west of London.

Landing of William III at Torbay, 5 November 1688