1. Radicalism and the English revolution

Mario Caricchio

Glenn Burgess

Ariel Hessayon

Nicholas McDowell

Nigel Smith

2. Britain 1660-1714: competing historiographies

Giovanni Tarantino

Mark Knights

Yaakov Mascetti

3. The Church of England in the eighteenth century

Guglielmo Sanna

William Gibson

Robert G. Ingram

Robert D. Cornwall

4. Non-British readings of the English revolution

Stefano Villani

Gabi Mahlberg

Pietro Messina

5. Rediscovering radicalism in the British Isles and Ireland in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries

David Davis

Jared van Duinen

Chloë Houston

Manfred Brod

Levente Juhász

Cromohs Virtual Seminars

The Theologies of the Nonjurors: A Historiographical Essay

Robert D. Cornwall
PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary

R. D. Cornwall, "The Theologies of the Nonjurors: A Historiographical Essay", in M. Caricchio, G. Tarantino, eds., Cromohs Virtual Seminars. Recent historiographical trends of the British Studies (17th-18th Centuries), 2006-2007: 1-7
<http://www.fupress.net/public/journals/49/Seminar/cornwall_nonjuror.html>



 

1. Introduction

 A small schismatic band of English churchmen who opposed the eviction of James II from the throne England by allies of his daughter and son-in-law, the Nonjurors had an influence greater than their numbers would suggest. Consisting of some of the leading lights of the day, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Nonjurors offered an alternative political theology to the one presented by the supporters of the new regime. While the historiographical debate has centered on whether the root cause of the schism was a "church point" or "state point" the debate, at least in the beginning, represented a clash of political theologies and theological traditions.

The images that define the Nonjurors can be stark in their contrast. Either they were martyred saints of God or as nefarious political recalcitrants. According to Thomas Macaulay extreme Whigs looked upon them as "dull and perverse, but sincere bigot, whose absurd practice was in harmony with his absurd theory, and who might plead, in excuse for the infatuation which impelled him to the ruin of his country, that the same infatuation had impelled him to ruin himself.[1]" Nineteenth century Tractarians, on the other hand, looked back at them and saw their saintly and devout predecessors, who were committed to the protection of their church in the face of Erastian encroachment by the state. Small in number and isolated from power, they became the symbolic holy remnants who proved the point that the eighteenth century English church was not only liberal (latitudinarian) but spiritually barren.[2]

The Tractarian picture of the Hanoverian church, which was influenced in great measure by their readings of nonjuring partisans such as Charles Leslie and Henry Dodwell, has been largely overthrown by more recent scholarship, which has given greater due to the Latitudinarian movement within the church. In putting the Nonjurors in perspective, Norman Sykes, who did more than anyone to resurrect the image of the Latitudinarians and the eighteenth century church, insisted on the political roots of a movement committed to conserving the past, and "bearing only an accidental parentage to the principles of the future."[3] Whatever the nature of their influences on later events, they were a distinctly high church movement that placed episcopacy at the heart of the Anglican tradition. They were also determined advocates of a high church political theology that insisted on divine right monarchy.

2. The Birth of the Nonjuror Movement

The Nonjuror Movement emerged from the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689. A largely bloodless revolution, the revolution nonetheless altered both the British state and its church. The flight of King James II to France in 1689, which left his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange, in effective control of Great Britain, put Britain on an ideological precipice. The forces that led to the revolution had been building since the accession of James II to the English throne in 1685, if not earlier. Though James came to the throne with much good will and Tory support, this would not last, as he took a number of steps that undermined the support of his Anglican subjects. His Catholicism and courting of nonconformists were seen as obvious attacks on the preeminence of the Church of England. The response to his efforts was led by Tory Anglicans such as Henry Compton, Bishop of London, and James Sharp, later Archbishop of York.[4]

Had William been content with a regency, the nonjuring schism would never have occurred, but his demand for the crown caused a significant disturbance within the established Church of England. Many Church of England clergy held a strict doctrine of divine right monarchy, and while the majority found ways of accommodating the changes, the change in monarchs placed these clergy in a difficult situation. Most of those who would become Nonjurors had opposed James' pro-Catholic policies and were concerned about the future of the Church of England should he remain on the throne. They could not, however, recognize as legitimate the change of monarchs. For the most rigid divine right proponents, this struck at the very center of their political theology. Having been influenced by John Filmer's patriarchalism, they held the king to be their divinely appointed sovereign who demanded their complete allegiance. To break allegiance was to sin against the king and God.[5]

The Glorious Revolution that swept William and Mary into power also ushered in the ascendency of the low church or latitudinarian party. John Tillotson replaced the deprived William Sancroft at Canterbury, while Tillotson's friend and ally Gilbert Burnet became ensconced at Salisbury. Under their leadership the high church theology and polity of Sancroft, Thomas Ken, and William Sherlock was eclipsed as a significant force in church and in state. Sancroft and Ken of Bath and Wells suffered deprival, while Sherlock reluctantly accepted the change in monarchy, but only by adapting his divine right theology to the new state of affairs[6]. It is in the midst of this political turmoil, with all of its religious antecedents, that the nonjuring movement was born. William Sancroft, the archbishop of Canterbury, together with seven other bishops and four hundred clergy were evicted from their places in church and state, while the episcopal Church of Scotland, upon its refusal recognize William and Mary's claim to the throne, was disestablished and replaced with the Presbyterians. Being devotees of the Caroline divines, men such as Henry Hammond, John Pearson, and Jeremy Taylor, the Nonjurors were adherents of a rigidly orthodox episcopal ecclesiology and a conservative political theology that espoused divine right monarchy, indefeasible hereditary right of the monarchy, nonresistance to authority, and passive obedience.[7]

In spite of their allegiance to the monarchy, most Nonjurors did not accept an absolutist or arbitrary one. The flexibility of divine right thought is evident in the actions of Sancroft and six other bishops who were imprisoned after refusing a royal edict to read from their pulpits the Declaration of Indulgence of 1688. Though willing to stand up to the king and welcoming some form of outside intervention on the part of William of Orange, Sancroft and others who would form the nonjuring movement could not countenance a change of allegiance from one they considered the rightful monarch in 1689.[8]

Those persons who maintained their loyalty to James II after his flight and the coronation of William and Mary came to be known as Jacobites. Religiously the Jacobites included Roman Catholics, Dissenters, Libertines, and conservative Anglicans. It is the latter group that came to be known as the Nonjurors. It was a movement with several different faces, but all were linked by their common adherence to the former regime. There were two significant Jacobite revolts. The first in 1715 after the accession of the Hanoverian George I and later in 1745, when Charles Francis Stuart, the grandson of James II staged an invasion, aided in part by the French.[9]

Although the origins of the nonjuring movement can be found in the church's varying responses to the Glorious Revolution, the movement continued to exist well into the next century, taking on a life of its own. Some Nonjurors were active in the Jacobite movement, with Charles Leslie being the best example. Leslie's journal, The Rehearsals, articulated Tory and high church views with Jacobite variations. Other Nonjurors, such as John Kettlewell and Thomas Ken separated themselves from the established church but lived quiet lives. Henry Dodwell and Robert Nelson would return to the established church after the death of William Lloyd and Ken's ceding of his claim to Bath and Wells. On the other hand, George Hickes and Thomas Wagstaffe established an alternate episcopacy, with the consent and encouragement of Sancroft and William Lloyd, which would continue in various forms to the end of the eighteenth century. Nonjuror theology and ideology was concerned about history and tradition. It was strongly anti-Roman Catholic and yet sought to be catholic in a British sense. In 1714 and 1715, the advent of the Hanoverian dynasty led to a new wave of Nonjurors, those who refused to abjure the Stuart claims and embrace the Lutheran King George I.

3. The Nonjurors and the Interpretation of Eighteenth Century Anglicanism

The alleged piety - even saintliness - together with their marginalized status made the Nonjurors heroes of sorts to nineteenth-century critics of eighteenth-century Anglicanism, especially the Tractarians. Together with the Methodists, the Nonjurors were seen as lone remnants of a purer church in an Erastian age, where a Latitudinarian dominated Church of England was perceived as moralistic, lethargic, worldly, self-seeking, and pragmatic.[10]

This perception was challenged by Twentieth century scholarship, led by Norman Sykes, which refurbished the reputation of the Latitudinarians and the church as a whole. Although Sykes acknowledged the practical nature of eighteenth-century churchmanship, he noted, non-pejoratively, that the tone of religion was moderate, rational, and ethical. Sykes' emphasis on the Latitudinarians paralleled the focus on the Whig Party in political historiography, with its attending focus on social and economic progress. As the Latitudinarians rose in esteem, their nonjuring critics receded into the historical backwaters. Not only were they a small party, they became largely invisible.[11]

Near the time of the tercentennial of the Glorious Revolution, this neglect of the Nonjurors began to change. First, important dissertations by John Findon and G.M. Yould appeared in the late 1970s, which gave scholarly attention to the Nonjurors. Then Jonathan Clark wrote several pieces that argued for the continuing importance of resistance groups, such as the Jacobites and the Nonjurors, groups that sought to derail efforts to undermine the traditional forms of society in both church and state. Clark attributed the increased attention to Jacobitism to the demise of the "Whig Consensus" in historical scholarship during the 1980s. He also challenged the idea that Nonjuror writings were "ephemera, like the political pamphlets of the 1760s, buzzing noisily for a few hours before sinking into oblivion." For Clark, both their political and their theologi­cal works were substantial and "powerful and complex in their argument."[12]

Notice should be given as well to the work of Peter Nockles, whose important book The Oxford Movement in Context, helped place the Nonjurors in relationship to their nineteenth- century admirers. Nockles, however, suggests that the Tractarians largely misread the Nonjurors attitude toward the relationship of church and state. Charles Leslie's The Case of the Regale was rooted in Richard Hooker's position on church-state relationship, a position which held that when church and state come into conflict, the church by way of passive obedience, will put its own interests above those of the state. Thus Leslie's understanding of a continuing organic union that balances the needs and authority of church and state was passed on to the Tractarians by way of the Hutchinsonians. Froude and Newman, however, identified themselves not with these original Nonjurors, but later Nonjurors such as Thomas Deacon, in their attack on the Erastianism of the church.[13]

4. Nonjuror Theological and Political Identity

Although the Nonjurors have been rediscovered, their history remains in need of a modern interpreter. The only complete histories, those of Thomas Lathbury and John Henry Overton date from the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Lathbury is of little use to the modern historian, and Overton's account is anecdotal, biographical, and at times hagiographic and sentimental.[14] Henry Broxap's account of the later nonjuring movement, published in 1924, is a great improvement, but it does not cover the founding events of the movement. Broxap also wrote an important biographical study of Thomas Deacon, a significant player in the developments chronicled in The Later Non-Jurors.[15] Therefore, the most complete recent studies of the Nonjurors are the dissertations of John Findon and G.M. Yould, both dating from the 1970s and focusing on the earliest years of the schism. My monograph, Visible and Apostolic: The Constitution of the Church in High Church Anglican and Non-Juror Thought treats Nonjuror theology in some depth, but only as part of a broader study of high church ecclesiology. Paul Monod's Jacobitism and the English People 1688-1788 considers them, but he looks at them in relation to Jacobitism.[16]

Nonjuring theology might be best described as reactionary in nature. Jonathan Clark treats them as defenders of Britain's ancien regime, while C.D.A. Leighton offers the intriguing suggestion that the Nonjurors were a Counter-Enlightenment movement. The former description remains overtly political, but Leighton's idea of a Counter-Enlightenment movement offers a more balanced picture of the Nonjurors as a counter-cultural movement, whose ideology was both political and theological in nature. As a Counter-Enlightenment movement the Nonjurors sought to reclaim the past in order to counter the inroads of what they considered a radical new theology and its underlying philosophy.[17] Initially the partisans of the nonjuring movement focused on defending the ousted bishops for refusing to take the oaths, but in time those in the movement who did not return to the fold moved onto other substantive and theological issues. Many treatises focused on the nature of the church, the episcopacy, the sacraments and the liturgy, but attention was also given to the threat of deism to theological orthodoxy.[18]

It was in the course of defending the recently deprived bishops that nonjuring apologists, such as Henry Dodwell, George Hickes, and Charles Leslie, first articulated their political theology. Beginning from the starting point of divine right monarchy, they challenged the ascendant Erastian understandings of church-state relations. They allowed for church-state cooperation, but not the kind of state control that could lead to the deprival of sitting bishops of their ecclesiastical duties. They could abide the removal of bishops from their seats in parliament, but they could not accept their removal from their episcopal sees. Their political theology made them sympathetic to those Tory and high church partisans within the established church who waved the flag of a "Church in Danger," partisans such as Francis Atterbury and Henry Sacheverell. With few exceptions, however, as the years passed the Nonjurors largely grew disillusioned with the political process.[19]

From the time of English Reformation, the Church of England had been a state-established church, with the monarch serving as the supreme head of the church. The question the Glorious Revolution and the Nonjuror deprivals raised concerned the nature of this relationship. Nonjurors had, prior to their eviction from the state church, affirmed a close relationship, where the state served as the protector of the church, while the church gave ideological support to the state. What they did not affirm was a subservience of the church to the state. This can be seen in the response of the "Seven Bishops." The nature of this relationship can be understood in light of the "two societies doctrine," a doctrine that held that church and state were two equal and independent entities that worked in close cooperation. This relationship, which has been well developed by Mark Goldie in his seminal essay -, "The Non-jurors, Episcopacy, and the Origins of the Convocation Controversy" - was seriously threatened by the Glorious Revolution.[20] This nature of this independence was spiritual nature, for the two societies were divinely ordained but independent societies called upon by God to govern politically and spiritually.[21]

Nonjurors such as Henry Dodwell and Thomas Brett offered strongly worded rejections of royal supremacy, with Dodwell blaming the Erastianism of his day on the pragmatic decisions of the English Reformers. Dodwell charged the Reformers with linking their reform program to the political needs of the Tudor regime[22] Thomas Brett was not part of the initial nonjuring exodus, but he provided a strong defense of ecclesial independence as well. While Brett as a high church partisan detested the Dissenters and supported government efforts to suppress them, in the end he became a Dissenter himself. His world view may have differed from the Nonconformists of his day, who were of similar mind to John Locke and his Latitudinarian supporters, but the results were the same.[23]

5. The Nonjurors and History

While the nonjuring schism was given birth by a political event in Britain's history, a point made by John Findon and Norman Sykes, [24] the Nonjurors saw themselves in theological terms. At the time of the Glorious Revolution, the Enlightenment program had begun to emerge, especially in the works of Locke and Newton, Toland and Collins. This program was very much a philosophically based one - though following Locke it moved in an anti-creedal direction, which placed the focus on Christian religious thought on the New Testament text. The Nonjurors, however, looked to history as their guide and as their source. This was a hallmark of the Counter-Enlightenment project as C.D.A. Leighton has shown very convincingly in a series of articles. A reliance on tradition is clearly evidenced in the Nonjuror debate over the restoration of ancient liturgical practices during the Usages Controversy, but history and tradition were foundational to many other aspects of their apologetic. Preeminent among the Nonjuror historians were Henry Dodwell, himself Camden Praelector of History at Oxford and his protégé among the later Nonjurors, Thomas Hearne.[25]

Dodwell's prowess as a historian is well documented in parts of two books by Joseph Levine. Levine does not focus on Dodwell's theological views, but instead on his prominence as a historian. Though Dodwell was known for his eccentricities, he was among the most distinguished of scholars of the age.[26] Thomas Hearne was less interested in theology and grew in fame as an antiquarian and a diarist.[27]

Dodwell's more radical Nonjuror colleague, George Hickes, the first of the separate nonjuring episcopal line, was renowned for his studies of Anglo Saxon literature and culture. David Douglas exudes praise to Hickes, calling him "the most remarkable figure among the English Historical scholars of his time."[28] Jeremy Collier, a nonjuring bishop and with Thomas Brett and Thomas Deacon, his stepson, a protagonist in the Usages Controversy, contributed a two volume An Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain that was published in 1708 and 1714.[29] To their numbers one can add the work of Thomas Brett and Thomas Deacon, both of whom became known for the liturgical studies and their close attention to history.

The Nonjuror program was primitivist in orientation. They sought the restoration of the ancient church in British form. Not content with either the Protestant or Catholic versions of the Christian faith, as the schism wore on, they became more and more enamored with the idea that they could restore the ancient church.[30] In time this would lead them to pursue relations with the Eastern Orthodox churches, especially the Russian church.[31]   

6. Liturgical Studies and the Usages Controversy

The restorationist impulse led some later Nonjurors to delve into sacramental and liturgical matters. Their work on patristic sources led to a discovery of liturgical elements not present within the existing Anglican liturgy. These elements included the prayer of oblation, invocation of the Holy Spirit, a mixed chalice, and prayers for the dead. In 1718 Thomas Brett and a very young Thomas Deacon produced a revised liturgy for use among the Nonjurors that included these four usages. Brett, Deacon, and other like-minded Nonjurors came to believe that these liturgical practices were not only spiritually helpful, they were necessary to an efficacious Eucharist. The "usages controversy" had its origins in the work of John Johnson of Cranbrook and George Hickes, who called on the English church to embrace the doctrines of real presence and Eucharistic sacrifice. Hickes had been a prominent Nonjuror from the beginning of the schism, but Johnson, while sympathetic to the Nonjurors and had close contact with its leaders, never found the necessity of joining them in their exile.

Johnson believed that the existing liturgy, though not perfect, was adequate to the task of exhibiting both presence and sacrifice. Hickes preferred and recommended the earlier 1549 liturgy as being more "catholic," but Thomas Brett and Thomas Deacon began to experiment with new liturgies that would give a more explicit sense of these doctrines, along with restoring long lost elements they believed had ancient pedigree. While most Nonjurors believed that the four usages were desirable they did not believe them to be either necessary or practical. This sentiment was especially strong among those who held out hope of reunion with the larger church. Brett and Deacon, however, believed that not only was the existing liturgy deficient it did not properly convey saving grace. The two men then created the nonjuring liturgy of 1718, which would serve as the Eucharistic liturgy for the Usages party. The debate over the reintroduction of the usages led to a fatal division in the ranks of the Nonjurors, one that was only partially healed when Thomas Brett returned to the larger nonjuring body in 1732. Thomas Deacon, however, led the remaining body into the wilderness and in 1734 published a revised version of the liturgy to give greater emphasis to the usages.

The Usages Controversy and the resulting liturgies have long been of interest to liturgical scholars. W. Jardine Grisbrooke helpfully gathered the two nonjuring liturgies, that of 1718 and that of 1734 into his edition of Anglican Liturgies of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1958). Grisbrooke's book includes the text and commentary on the texts. Richard Buxton's Eucharistic and Institution Narrative: A Study in the Roman and Anglican Traditions of the Consecration of the Eucharist from the Eighth to the Twentieth Centuries (1976) provides additional commentary on this controversy and its theological foundations and liturgical expressions.[32] More recently Robert Cornwall published an essay on the theological foundations of the controversy and James David Smith has published The Eucharistic Doctrine of The Later Nonjurors: A Revisionist View of the 18th-Century Usages Controversy (2000).[33]

7. The Nonjurors and Theological Debate

It can be argued that in most respects Nonjurors were simply estranged high church Anglicans, but the depth of their commitment to their principles opened the way for a reexamination of their ecclesiastical heritage. By separating from the established church, they found opportunity to push theological emphases to conclusions that political expediency had prevented. This was especially true of the sacramental and liturgical developments that emerged among those who comprised the Usages party. Though politics and theology were intertwined, theology provided the foundation for their political activities. While separated from their mother church, Nonjurors including Dodwell and Leslie contributed to the debates over occasional conformity and convocation.[34]

Among the Nonjurors, Charles Leslie was the most active participant in the broader theological and political debates of the day. He was, said Samuel Johnson, "a reasoner, and a reasoner who was not to be reasoned against."[35] Leslie's interest was in the relationship between theological heterodoxy and political radicalism. He published a series of pamphlets that sought to connect Whig politics with Arian or Socinian Christologies. In doing so, he tarred the Latitudinarian and Whig Archbishop of Canterbury, John Tillotson with the moniker of being a Socinian. This theme would also appear in his Tory propaganda sheet the Rehearsals.[36]

Nonjuring theological works tended to focus on ecclesiology, liturgics, or as in Leslie's case on Trinitarian debates, but there were a few idiosyncratic works. William Law became well known for his mysticism, while Henry Dodwell and Archibald Campbell explored the soul and the afterlife. Philip Almond treats Dodwell's work on the mortality of the soul in some detail in his Heaven and Hell in Enlightenment England. It was this doctrine that brought Dodwell adverse attention, for in arguing for the mortality of the soul and his arguments favoring an intermediate state between death and judgment put him at odds with the majority of his fellow Anglicans, including many of his admirers. As Almond points out, Dodwell argued his point from the same Fathers he used to argue his other points of doctrine.[37] Dodwell was not the only Nonjuror who sought to defend a Middle State The Scottish Nonjuror Bishop of Aberdeen, Archibald Campbell, writing during the middle years of the Eighteenth century also argued for retaining this doctrine, believing that the eviction of purgatory from Protestant doctrine had been a mistake.[38]

The Nonjuror movement would die out by the end of the eighteenth century. With the demise of a credible Stuart claim to the British throne, the reason for its existence ceased. Yet the arguments presented on behalf of the church and in defense of traditional orthodoxy lived on in high church Anglicanism.


 

References

[1]Thomas Macaulay, The Works of Lord Macaulay: Complete, London, Longmans, Green, 1875, vol. 3, 156.

[2]Peter B. Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship 1760-1857, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, 4-5.

[3]Norman Sykes, Church and State in the XVIIIth Century, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1934 (reprinted Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1962, 285-86).

[4]Tim Harris, Politics Under the Later Stuarts: Party Conflict in a Divided Society 1660-1715, London, Longman Group, 1993, 123-25.

[5]J.P. Kenyon, Revolution Principles: The Politics of Party 1689-1720, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977, 62-64.

[6]William Gibson, The Church of England 1688-1832: Unity and Accord, London, Routledge, 2001, 28ff.

[7]Paul Kleber Monod, Jacobitism and the English People 1688-1788, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, 17-19.

[8]J.C.D. Clark, English Society 1688-1832, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985, 119-98; Clark, English Society 1660-1832, 2nd ed., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, 83 ff. Howard Erskine-Hill, "Literature and the Jacobite Cause: Was there a Rhetoric of Jacobitism?" in Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism, 1689-1759, Eveline Cruickshanks, Edinburgh, John Donald Publishers, Ltd., 1982, 59-60. Margaret Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution 1689-1720, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1976, 72-99. Kenyon, Revolution Principles, 5-34, 69-82. Gerald M. Straka, The Anglican Reaction to the Revolution of 1688, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1962, 80-83. Gerald M. Straka, "The Final Phase of Divine Right Theory in England, 1688-1702", English Historical Review, 77, October 1962, 638-58. 

[9]On the Jacobites see, Daniel Szechi, The Jacobites: Britain and Europe 1688-1788, Manchester, University of Manchester Press, 1994, and Monod, Jacobitism and the English People.

[10]Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols., London, Longmans, Green, and Co., 1878, vol. 1, 1-6. William H. Hutton, The English Church from the Accession of Charles I to the Death of Anne (1625-1714), 241. John H. Overton and Frederick Relton, The English Church From the Accession of George I to the End of the Eighteenth Century (1714-1800), New York, The Macmillan Company, 1906, 1. See Gibson, Church of England, 4-8.

[11]Sykes, Church and State, 1-5, 34-40, 283. Also see his other treatments of the English church: Norman Sykes, From Sheldon to Secker: Aspects of English Church History 1660-1768, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1959; Norman Sykes, Old Priest and New Presbyter, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1956; Norman Sykes, Edmund Gibson, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1926; and Norman Sykes, William Wake Archbishop of Canterbury, 2 vols., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1957. The Whig interpretation of history is discussed and critiqued in Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History, New York, W.W. Norton and Company, 1965.

[12]J.C.D. Clark, "On Moving the Middle Ground: The Significance of Jacobitism in Historical Studies," in The Jacobite Challenge, Eveline Cruickshanks and Jeremy Black, eds., Edinburgh, John Donald Publishers, Ltd., 1988, 177. Clark, English Society, 146-47. J.C.D. Clark, Revolution and Rebellion, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986, 16, 176. The renewed interest in Tory and Jacobite political thought can be seen in the recent works of Linda Colley, J.A.W. Gunn, Paul Monod, and Daniel Szechi, as well as Clark's works. Linda Colley, In Defiance of Oligarchy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982. Gunn, Beyond Liberty and Property. Monod, Jacobit­ism and the English People Daniel Szechi, Jacobitism and Tory Politics 1710-1714, Edinburgh, John Donald Publishers, Ltd., 1984. John Morrill in a recent essay entitled the "Sensible Revolution" in The Anglo-Dutch Moment, Jonathan I. Israel, ed., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, 95-96, has challenged Clark's revisionism and embraces the Whiggism of G.M. Trevelyan. He complains that the revisionists fail to use the "historical filter" to focus on the events and values that in the end prove to be the winners. Thus, Clark has written what he calls horizontal history, in which "every event, every idea is over-contextualized and over-particularized." 

[13]Nockles, Oxford Movement, 53-55.

[14]Thomas Lathbury, History of the Nonjurors, (1845), J.H. Overton, The Nonjurors, (1902).  Updated biographical articles on most players in the movement can be found in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004 and its predecessor The Dictionary of National Biography. 

[15]Henry Broxap, The Later Non-Jurors, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1924. Broxap, The Biography of Thomas Deacon, Manchester, University of Manchester Press, 1911.

[16]John Findon, "The Non-jurors and the Church of England 1689-1716," D.Phil. Diss., Oxford University, 1978.  Guy Martin Yould, "The Origins and Transformation of the Non-juror Schism, 1670-1715," Ph.D. Diss., University of Hull, 1979. Robert D. Cornwall, Visible and Apostolic: The Constitution of the Church in High Church Anglican and Non-Juror Thought, Newark, University of Delaware Press, 1993.  Monod, Jacobitism and the English People 1688-1788, (1989).

[17]J.C.D. Clark, English Society, 2nd Ed., 134ff. C.D.A. Leighton, "The Nonjurors and the Counter Enlightenment: Some Illustration", Journal of Religious History, October 1998, 270-72.

[18]The attempts to root ecclesiology and theology in the writings and practices of the early church are discussed in my article, "The Search for the Primitive Church: The Use of Early Church Fathers in the High Church Anglican Tradition, 1680-1745", Anglican and Episcopal History, 59, September 1990, 303-29 and my Visible and Apostolic, chapter 2. Cf. R.J. Smith, The Gothic Bequest: Medieval Institutions in British Thought 1688-1863, Cambridge University Press, 1987, 29-30. Smith notes that while the early Non-jurors such as Collier and Hickes retained interest in medieval precedent, later Non-jurors looked more to patristic sources. On the latitudinarian emphasis see Isabel Rivers, Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660-1780; Volume 1, Whichcote to Wesley, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, 25-26.

[19]Concerning the High Church-Tory alliance, see H.T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property, New York, Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1977, 13-56. J.A.W. Gunn, Beyond Liberty and Property, Kingston and Montreal, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1983, chapter 4. Geoffrey Holmes, The Trial of Doctor Sacheverell, London, Eyre Methuen, Ltd., 1973, 41-43.

[20]On the question of ecclesiastical independence see Mark Goldie, "The Non-jurors, Episcopacy, and the Origins of the Convocation Controversy," in Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism, 1689-1759, Eveline Cruickshanks, ed., Edinburgh, John Donald, 1982, 15-35 and my Visible and Apostolic, ch. 4. Cf. Kenyon, Revolution Principles, 83-101.

[21]Goldie, "Non-jurors, Episcopacy, and the Origins of the Convocation Controversy," 18-20; Cornwall, Visible and Apostolic, 73ff.

[22]Robert D. Cornwall, "Divine Right Monarchy: Henry Dodwell's Defense of the Nonjuror Bishops," Anglican and Episcopal History, 48, March 1999, 37-66.

[23]Thomas Brett's nonjuring defense of ecclesiastical independence is compared and contrasted with the views of Presbyterian theologian Micaiah Towgood in Robert D. Cornwall, "Advocacy of the Independence of the Church from the State in Eighteenth Century England:  A Comparison of a Nonjuror and a Nonconformist View", Enlightenment and Dissent, 12, 1993, 12-27.

[24]Findon, "The Non-jurors and the Church of England", 3. Cf. Sykes, Church and State in England in the XVIIIth Century, 285-86 and Yould, "The Origins and Transformation of the Non-juror Schism", 306.

[25]C.D.A. Leighton, "Anciennete among the Non-Jurors: a study of Henry Dodwell", History of European Ideas, 31, 2005, 1-16.

[26]Joseph M. Levine, The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan Age, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1991, 89-90; Joseph M. Levine, Dr. Woodward's Shield: History, Science, and Satire in Augustan England, reprint, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1991, 200-1.

[27]Levine, Dr. Woodward's Shield, 181ff.

[28]David Douglas, English Scholars, 1660 -1730, 2nd ed., London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1951, 77.

[29]Eric Salmon, "Collier, Jeremy," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004.

[30]Leighton, "The Nonjurors and their History", JRH, 253-54.

[31]Judith Pinnington's Anglicans and Orthodox: Unity and Subversion 1559-1725, Herefordshire, Gracewing, 2003, offers the most recent account of this pursuit of the East, but unfortunately it is a less than stellar effort that misunderstands the nonjuring movement.

[32]W. Jardine Grisbrooke, Anglican Liturgies of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Alcuin Club Collections No. XL, London, S.P.C.K., 1958. Richard F. Buxton, The Eucharist and Institution Narrative: A Study of the Roman and Anglican Traditions of the Consecration of the Eucharist from the Eighth to the Twentieth Centuries, Alcuin club Collections No. 58, London: S.P.C.K., 1976.

[33]Robert D. Cornwall, "The Later Non-Jurors and the Theological Basis of the Usages Controversy," Anglican Theological Review , 75, Spring 1993: 166-186. Jonathan David Smith, The Eucharistic Doctrine of The Later Nonjurors: A Revisionist View of the 18th-Century Usages Controversy, Cambridge, Grove Books, 2000. A foundational historical account of the controversy can be found in Broxap, The Later Nonjurors.

[34]The theological rationale behind the Convocation Controversy is discussed in G.V. Bennett, The Tory Crisis in Church and State 1688-1730, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1975, 48-56, Goldie, "Origins of the Convocation Controversy," 15-35, and Cornwall, Visible and Apostolic, 88-93. On the attempts to prevent the repeal of the Test and Corpora­tion Act and the Occasion­al Conformi­ty Act see Bennett's Tory Crisis in Church and State, 214-21 and George Every, High Church Party 1688-1718, London, SPCK, 1956, 33-36, 105-24, 163-67.

[35]On Samuel Johnson's interest in the Nonjurors and possible affiliation or sympathy with them see J.C.D. Clark, Samuel Johnson: Literature, religion and English cultural politics from the Restoration to Romanticism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, 125-40.

[36]Robert Cornwall, "Charles Leslie and the Political Implications of Theology," in Religious Identities in Britain, 1660-1832, edited by William Gibson and Robert G. Ingram, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2005, 27-42.

[37]Philip C. Almond, Heaven and Hell in Enlightenment England, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, 60-67.

[38]Almond, Heaven and Hell, 77-79.

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