Invitation to William
The Immortal Seven send their invitation to William of Orange
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗Seven men used ciphers to sign a letter asking a foreign ruler to bring troops into England.
30 June 1688
On 30 June 1688 seven English notables signed a secret letter to William of Orange, asking him to come to England with a military force capable of protecting both himself and those who would rally to him.
They were Edward Russell, Henry Sidney, Richard Lumley, Henry Compton, Charles Talbot, William Cavendish, and Thomas Osborne — four peers, a bishop, and two untitled political-military figures, not simply seven nobles. Russell appears in the letter only as the code number 35.
What it claimed
The letter alleged that James II's government had invaded the people's religion, liberties, and property, and promised that many subjects would support William if his landing force could protect an initial rising.
It asserted that '19 parts of 20' of the people wanted change — a propaganda claim, not a measured statistic.
What it did not do
The letter was addressed to William alone. It did not offer the crown to William and Mary, and it did not expressly demand James's deposition; its immediate proposal was armed intervention capable of forcing political change.
Nor did it create William's plan from nothing — contacts and preparations already existed. The message stayed secret and changed neither monarch nor government that day.
James Francis Edward Stuart's birth on 10 June had raised the prospect of a continuing Catholic succession, and the Seven Bishops were acquitted the same 30 June, showing how wide opposition to James's religious policy ran.
Sources
Researched 24 Aug 2026 5 sources not yet audited
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →
What the sources leave uncertain
- The letter is dated 30 June 1688 in the Julian calendar then used in England, equivalent to 10 July Gregorian. The ISO date preserves the document's English date and the slug's convention.
- The familiar name “Immortal Seven” is retrospective.
- The invitation's assertions about overwhelming popular support and the newborn prince's legitimacy were partisan claims, not independently established facts.