The Jacobite movement had a profound impact on the British Isles for seventy years following the Revolution of 1688. It sought to overthrow the new order by armed uprisings on multiple occasions and fostered widespread disaffection and alienation for three generations. In time it failed, but on more than one occasion it had the potential drastically to change the course of English, Irish and Scots history. It was the way not taken, and yet it forced the controllers of the British state to take directions and decisions they might otherwise have avoided. Ironically, the radical threat it came to pose has been airbrushed out of our understanding of the eighteenth century.