The Glorious Revolution of 1688, which pushed James II from the throne of England, was not glorious for everyone; in fact, for many, it was a great disaster. Those who had already taken an oath of allegiance to James II and “to his heirs and lawful successors” now pondered how they could take a second oath to William and Mary. Those who initially refused to swear the oaths were called Nonjurors. In 1691, Archbishop Sancroft, eight bishops, and four hundred clergy of the Church of England, as well as a substantial number of scholars at Oxford and Cambridge, were deprived, removed from their offices and their license to practice removed. The loss of this talent to the realm was incalcuable. Ten different paradigms shaped the English Nonjurors’ worldview: Passive Obedience was paramount, the Apostolic Succession essential, a Cyprianist mentality colored everything, they held a conscientious regard for oaths, the Usages Controversy brought Tradition to the fore, printing presses replaced lost pulpits, patronage was a means of protection and proliferation, they lived with a hybridized conception of time, creative women spiritual writers complemented male bishops, and a global ecumenical approach to the Orthodox East was visionary. These ten operated synergistically to create an effective tool for the Nonjurors’ survival and success in their mission. The Nonjurors’ influence, out of all proportion to their size, was due in large measure to this mentality. Their unique circumstances prompted creative thinking, and they were superb in that endeavor. These perspectives constituted the infrastructure of the Nonjurors’ world, and they help us to see the early eighteenth century not only as a time of rapid change, but also as an era of persistent older religious mentalities adapted to new circumstances.

A new series of the Scottish antiquary established 1886.

Sir George Beaumont is a key figure in the history of British art. As well as being a respected amateur landscape painter, he was a prominent patron, a collector, and co-founder of the National Gallery. William Wordsworth described Beaumont’s friendship as one of the chief blessings of his life, and this edition reveals that the two men became collaborators as well as companions. In addition to documenting unique perspectives on social, political, and cultural events of the early nineteenth century (providing new contexts for reading Wordsworth’s mature poetry), the letters collected here chart the progress of an increasingly intimate inter-familial relationship. The picture that emerges is of a coterie that – in influence, creativity, and affection – rivals Wordsworth’s more famous exchange with Coleridge at Nether Stowey in the 1790s. The edition includes an extended study of how Wordsworth and Beaumont helped shape one another’s work, tracing processes of mutual artistic development that involved not only a meeting of aristocratic refinement and rural simplicity, of a socialite and a lover of retirement, of a painter and a poet, but also an aesthetic rapprochement between neoclassical and romantic values, between the impulse to idealize and the desire to particularize.