The more you read of those expeditions - as of William's two years later - the more difficult you will find it to estimate what measure of support the invaders had. What may be called the legend - the sort of rodomontade you get in the clear, if obvious, rhetoric of Macaulay - may be left aside with contempt. It is not historical, and it is not intended to be historical; it is pamphleteering for a prepared audience; a flattery of ignorant complacency: written not to examine or to inform, but to sell. The picture of a whole England, ardently opposed to James, desiring nothing more than his dethronement, is as false as would be to-day a picture of an England ardently desiring prohibition. But there were elements present which made it worth while to risk the throw; and (as we know), with the aid of a group of very wealthy men, and of plenty of hypocrisy and foreign subvention, the second invasion, the Dutch invasion, succeeded.
I think the real reason we find it difficult to-day to estimate the forces of that society, is that we have a false way of thinking in terms of exact measurement; a habit we have borrowed from the more advanced physical science of our time, but not one applicable to political factors. We think in terms of majorities, and ask ourselves how many men were on one side and how many men on the other.
Now things did not stand like that at all in 1686, or in 1688, and they hardly ever so stand in any national crisis. The bulk of men will accept an event, unless it be quite outrageously opposed to their daily habits. Furhter, the bulk of men are moved by tradition and custom and nearly always incline, very vaguely, to a continuance of what they have known. And at the same time, paradoxically, all men have an appetite for something now and are more or less adventurous for a change. In the main issue of the Revolution of 1688, we can be pretty clear on two large majorities, not dividing men into groups, but dividing the mind of each man within himself.
There was a very large majority in general sympathetic with the Protestant culture which had gradually triumphed, since the pivot-date of the Gunpowder Plot. What proportion of this was ardent, and in what degree, no one can establish; but you may safely say that throughout England as a whole, there was, by the last quarter of the seventeenth century, not more than about one-seventh definitely Catholic in confession and open adherence, and hardly as manay again indifferent, or slightly sympathetic with that one-seventh. But, on the other hand, the number of people who believed that James II. was attempting the impossible task of upsetting what had become the national religion, cannot have been large. It is true that popular illusion is capable of anything - witness "the Russians in England" during the War. But I see no sign of that absurd accusation against James having taken place in the masses. The number who objected to his policy of toleration and to his proposal that Catholic should have the same rights as their fellow-subjects was large; but it certainly was not, and could not have been, an enthusiastic majority. On the other hand, the number who objected to the idea of their national king belonging to what was to them an alien religion, was certainly very large indeed: nearly three-quarters of England.
But then you get another cross category: the number who desired to see the Stuart dynasty extinguished was insignificant. Charles II. had been immensely popular and deservedly so, and James, the reigning king, represented legitimacy. Had not the two princesses remained to carry on the idea of the royal house - the symbol of it at least - I think one can safely say that the nation would have tolerated a change; as for those who desired the reign of William, who were attached to his character and who respected, let alone loved him as a leader, there were none. Monmouth, if he had the money, if the moment of his attack had come after the birth of the Prince of Wales, if he had intrigued at length and with skill to get the full support of the small wealthy group which was conspiring against the King, would have had a better chance of success than William.

Belloc, Hilaire, The Cruise of the "Nona", Constable & Co., Ltd., 1955, pp. 189-90 (first pub. 1925)