If so, did the Jacobites ever come close to achieving the goal, or was it a fantasy that it was even possible?
Absolutely! In early August 1745, the "Young Pretender," Charles Edward Stuart, landed in Scotland with hopes of raising an army of Highland Scots, marching on London, and kicking the distracted Hanoverian king, George II, off of his throne. The Jacobite pretender picked his moment well; the British army was tied up on the Continent, fighting in the War of Austrian Succession. Stuart had the support of a small number of French troops, and a smaller number of Highland lairds that rallied to his banner. What followed was a months-long comedy of errors that almost brought England to its knees.
Stuart's invasion should have fizzled out quickly. Instead, due to the the bungled response of Scotland's military governor, Jacobite forces were able to take a nearly-undefended city of Edinburgh in early September. This made Stuart's small Catholic army seem viable, and other Highlands Catholics flocked to him. Stuart built more momentum later in the month, when his soldiers, many of them wielding claymores as their primary weapon, charged and broke a poorly-disciplined Hanoverian army at the Battle of Prestonpans. For the rest of the fall, Charles marched slowly towards London, capturing a few other cities and winning more battles as he went. Panic set in among the lords that support the Hanoverians, and the Jacobite host faced only limited resistance. Still, few English Jacobites turned out, and the King's son, the Duke of Cumberland, returned from the Continent in December. Realizing that they lacked the manpower to take and hold London, Stuart turned his army around and retreated to Scotland, despite never losing a battle.
The Duke of Cumberland pursued Stuart, but his firing lines of musketeers proved unable to break or stand up to the melee charges of the Jacobite Highlanders. Despite repeated losses, Cumberland kept the pressure of Stuart, driving him back to the Highlands, recruiting Scottish troops of his own, and drilling his army until they could fire three rounds each minute and comfortably handle their bayonets in line. At the Battle of Culloden, April 16, 1746, Cumberland finally destroyed Stuart's depleted army. Stuart did everything possible to aid in the destruction in his force, as he inadvertently stoked a rivalry between two of his supporting lords and elected to charge uphill across the front of Cumberland's cannons. Even though some Jacobite troops were able to charge through the crossfire, they were outfought at close quarters by Cumberland's regulars due to an innovative bayonet drill where each soldier would thrust at the target to his right, driving their blades beneath the upraised arms of the sword-swinging Scots.
"Bonnie Prince Charlie" Stuart escaped Culloden, but found himself without an army. He slinked back to France, and his family never again posed a serious threat to Britain.
Source: David Chandler and Ian Beckett, eds., The Oxford History of the British Army (revised ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
I'd say the answer is a qualified yes. The Glorious Revolution, outside of the British perspective, had more to do with European implications than British ones. Louis XIV of France had been at war with the Dutch, led by William of Orange, for some time leading up to 1688. The Glorious Revolution, then, from Louis's perspective, presented the threat of William III bringing the British forces into the dutch column against him. The Glorious Revolution's constitutionalism also presented a theoretical threat to Louis's particular brand of royal absolutism.
As a result, what some historians refer to as the "Second Hundred Years' War" broke out between the French and English. This consisted of the 9 Years' War (1688-1697), the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714), The War of Austrian Succession (1740-1748), The 7 Years' War (1754-1763), The American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), and the Wars of the French Revolution/Napoleon (1792-1815); all of which pitted the French against the British in some capacity.
In the first of these wars, The 9 Years' War, Louis XIV supported James II's attempt at recapturing the throne by raising an Irish-Catholic peasant army to defeat the Williamite forces. This attempt was put to an end by William's victory at the Battle of the Boyne (1690). By the end of the war, The Treaty of Ryswick (1697) dictated that Louis would acknowledge William's legitimacy as king of England. When James II died in 1701, his dying wish to his buddy Louis XIV was that he support his son, James Francis Edward Stuart's claim to the British throne. Louis repudiated the Treaty of Ryswick to honor the request, which is a partial cause of the outbreak of the War of Spanish Succession.
In this war a Grand Alliance was raised against Louis (more over the threat of a French/Spanish union than that of a Jacobite restoration), and the Jacobite cause was set aside. Once again, though, in the War of Austrian Succession France would find itself supporting an attempted Jacobite restoration under Charles Edward Stuart, aka Bonnie Prince Charlie, in 1745. This is a fascinating story, but ultimately unsuccessful as well.
In short, the Jacobites made several attempts at recapturing the British throne, but more so as proxies in the French attempt to first capture the low-countries, then crush British constitutionalism.
Sources:
The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe by Tim Blanning (2008)
Foundations of Western Civilization II: A History of the Modern Western World, lectures 13-15 by Robert Bucholz of Loyola University, The Teaching Company
Pretty thorough blog about the upRising of 1719
should pick his brain :)