Maartje Scheltens, Cambridge University Press

William was a master of spin. Although the word 'propaganda' in its modern sense did not yet exist, seventeenth-century governments and political activists were extremely good at getting their message across. Even without modern communication technologies, it was possible to reach a wide audience of both ordinary people and important decision-makers by using a combination of written, oral and pictorial media. The increased number of printers and booksellers in late seventeenth-century London made printed texts widely available, and literacy was growing in the cities.

William's Declaration of 1688 was part of a wider campaign of Williamite or Orangist propaganda distributed in many forms: besides prose pamphlets there were ballads, both printed and sung, sermons by pro-William clerics, speeches, ceremonial processions and events. There were even prints and medals for those who could not read. Coverage was so complete that the revolution of 1688-9 was almost bloodless; people were persuaded that agreeing to William's regime change would create a stable state.

King James and his Jacobite supporters were incensed when William, a foreign invader, managed to publish and distribute his Declaration throughout the kingdom without hindrance. James published a reply but it failed to undermine the impact of the original pamphlet.

William was no novice when it came to propaganda. As Stadholder he had relied on persuasion to convince the Dutch people and parliament to follow his wishes.

He had also been a successful propagandist in England years before his 1688 invasion. An anonymous pamphlet urging the English Parliament to make peace with the Dutch, commissioned by William, had turned public opinion in England against the Third Dutch War of 1672-4.

Most of William's propaganda efforts in England and the Dutch Republic were intended to convince people that the Stuarts were in league with Louis XIV, and that both the Stuarts and the French monarchy had to be defeated to ensure the freedom of Protestants.

Church sermons were a powerful channel for official propaganda and William could rely on an army of anti-Catholic clerics to get his message across. Gilbert Burnet, the author of William's Declaration, read it from the pulpit in Exeter Cathedral and in the churches of the towns and villages William passed through on his way to London.

When William and Mary came to the throne they banned propaganda publications by the Jacobites; a printer of Jacobite pamphlets was executed, and a careful watch was kept on imported goods from France, where James had fled. Any anti-Williamite texts found by the authorities were publicly burnt.