The events that started in December 1688 became rapidly ingrained in the public mythology of the English state. The ‘Protestant’ wind that blew William of Orange towards the throne of the three kingdoms, the humiliating exit of James II and the subsequent reassertion of parliamentary right were serenaded as the hallmarks of deliverance from the twin pillars of ‘Popery and Arbitrary Government’. Raised as a landmark moment for the constitution, the Glorious Revolution was perceived to have set the dogma of Rome against the will of freeborn Englishmen to bring the final triumph of Protestant over papist, tarnishing the co-religionists of James II with obscurantism and defeat. In recent years, the stress on religious conflict within the Revolution has yielded before an alternative historical emphasis. Some of the strongest works have explored the ‘conservative’ and ‘reluctant’ qualities of the event, considered the countervailing role of temporal patriotism against eschatological piety, or reasserted the primacy of high politics over clashes of ideas. Scholars of the continental scene have stressed the new king's record as a defender of Catholics in his native territories, to suggest that William's enthronement dampened, more than it inflamed, the confessional passions of the realm. Yet contemporary witnesses were somewhat less sanguine. The Prince of Orange's banners proclaimed ‘the Protestant religion’ as a spur to action, his preachers hailed a godly triumph, and his coronation formally endorsed the conviction that Catholic governance was ‘inconsistent with the Safety and Welfare of this Protestant Kingdom’.