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This book explores the life, thought and political commitments of the free-thinker John Toland (1670–1722). Studying both his private archive and published works, it illustrates how he moved in both subversive and elite political circles in England and abroad. The book explores the connections between Toland's republican political thought and his irreligious belief about Christian doctrine, the ecclesiastical establishment and divine revelation, arguing that far from being a marginal and insignificant figure, he counted queens, princes and government ministers as his friends and political associates. In particular, Toland's intimate relationship with the Electress Sophia of Hanover saw him act as a court philosopher, but also as a powerful publicist for the Hanoverian succession. The book argues that he shaped the republican tradition after the Glorious Revolution into a practical and politically viable programme, focused not on destroying the monarchy but on reforming public religion and the Church of England. It also examines how Toland used his social intimacy with a wide circle of men and women (ranging from Prince Eugene of Savoy to Robert Harley) to distribute his ideas in private. The book explores the connections between his erudition and print culture, arguing that his intellectual project was aimed at compromising the authority of Christian ‘knowledge’ as much as the political power of the Church. Overall, it illustrates how Toland's ideas and influence impacted upon English political life between the 1690s and the 1720s.
of received orthodoxy. 101 Evidence of a search for an alternative Christianity in late medieval England becomes increasingly widespread from 1380, in association with the development of the doctrines of John Wyclif and the energetic opposition which they faced from the ecclesiastical establishment, especially after his attack on accepted interpretations of the doctrine of transubstantiation, and
an unforgiving aversion to all things Catholic or Jacobite. He was always suspicious of the ecclesiastical establishment, and especially of High Church politics; in 1691, he gleefully commented on the arrest of Viscount Preston, one of the first Earl’s old Catholic enemies, for his involvement in a plot to reinstate King James: ‘wee have hetherto ye divertion to see Mother Church so Jaded & yt whilst The Plott is not turn’d to a Whigg Plott but remains what itt is, a true Church Plott: wee may whilst that lasts sitt merry Spectatours’.12 This clear position
evolve under the ‘guise of dissent’, it proved also capable of enveloping itself within Restoration episcopacy. This is exemplified by Reynolds, a moderate prelate who held ample Presbyterian credentials developed in the 1640s and 1650s. As the bishop of Norwich, he used his position within the ecclesiastical establishment to reform the national church. A bishop’s moderate puritanism On 31 October 1661, William Cooke of Broome, Norfolk, wrote to William Sancroft, the future archbishop of Canterbury and non-juror, with
ecclesiastical establishment (also touched on in the first chapter) is easily obscured beneath the dazzling irreverence and blasphemy, evident in so much of the popular literature of the period. Legislation of 1818 (Liverpool’s ‘Million Act’) was beginning to bear fruit in a government-supported programme of church building and the division of the most populous parishes. It is important not to exaggerate the practical impact of this act, but psychologically it served to bolster the confidence of a hitherto sagging Established Church. The selfassurance of the Glasgow divine
, the Bowes’ well-known sympathy toward certain separatists may have influenced his choice to recognise Frances’s side of the family, but not Isabel’s, in the dedication. In addition to highlighting connections with the godly Saintpoll family, the dedication underscored his connections with the ecclesiastical establishment via a mention of his education in university
or comment’ on the article: rather, he was opposing a correspondent too eager to insist upon a personal interpretation, and he was supporting positions of recognised church authorities. Yet, as we will see, he did all this while making a popularly accessible publication that supported a view different from the one held by many members of the ecclesiastical establishment. While
parts of Gaelic Scotland – provided that preachers were sent to convert them. Yet by the outbreak of the rising in 1641–42, the Roman Catholic Church was so strong that its prelates and clergy soon replaced the Church of Ireland personnel as the de facto ecclesiastical establishment in those large areas of mid- and west Ulster under Irish military control. This transformation demands exploration, for Catholic life has been a neglected corner in the field of recent plantation scholarship. 2 It is well known that the lack of any serious Protestant engagement with
monarchs for their own ends. Like many of his kinsmen, Fitzsimon saw that the influence and power of the traditional ruling class in the Pale and the position of its municipal and ecclesiastical establishment had been eroded by the Tudor state. In his eyes, the proper function of the monarch was to support, not to Fitzsimon and the Irish Jesuits 119 undermine the spiritual jurisdiction of the church. Fitzsimon establishes an impeccable pedigree of faithful, attentive and continuous fealty on the part of each English king from William through to Henry VII. But
, The Asiatic Annual Register (London, 1811 ), pp. 118–34. 17 Claudius Buchanan, ‘Ecclesiastical establishment for British India’ in Two Discourses Preached before the University of Cambridge, on Commencement Sunday, July 1, 1810. And a