Traditional approaches to early Nonconformity have divided its history at the Toleration Act of 1689. The intellectual history of the movement has largely focused on the ideas of Richard Baxter and John Locke. These conventions prevent a full understanding of the disunity and decline of the movement in the early eighteenth century. Continuities across the period and the gradual emergence of themes which would feed into Evangelicalism have been obscured. The rich theological dynamics of Dissent cannot be appreciated without detailed reference to the thought of other contemporary leaders. Among the most important was John Howe (1630-1705). Howe's career stretched from Cromwell to Queen Anne. His irenic ecclesiology shaped the response to toleration and influenced key leaders in the decades following his death. Crucial shifts in Nonconformist thinking may be traced in his writings and those of his successors, such as Calamy, Watts, and Doddridge. As a result, the significance of the division at Salters' Hall in 1719 becomes clearer. This study reexamines a neglected strand of Nonconformist thought and proposes a new understanding of later Stuart Dissent. The distinct characteristics of the movement are freshly defined and Dissent is situated in historical continuity between Puritanism and early Evangelicalism. The monograph thus provides a scholarly reinterpretation of an important group in a crucial period of English history. The themes that emerge inform the wider study of English ecclesiology and political theory under the Tudors and Stuarts.

"Heirs of Flesh and Paper" tells the story of early modern dynastic politics through subjects’ practical responses to royal illness, failing princely reproduction, and heirs’ premature deaths. It treats connected dynastic crises between 1699 and 1716 as illustrative for early modern European political regimes in which the rulers’ corporeality defined politics. This political order grappled with the endemic uncertainties induced by dynastic bodies. By following the day-to-day practices of knowledge making in response to the unpredictability of royal health, the book shows how the ruling family’s mortal coils regularly threatened to destabilize the institutionalized legal fiction of kingship. Dynastic politics was not only as a transitory stage of state formation, part of elite cooperation, or a cultural construct. It needs to be approached through everyday practices that put ailing dynastic bodies front and center. In a period of intensifying political planning, it constituted one of the most important sites for changing the political itself.

V.1-20 are, like missing vols. 21-26, also freely available online at the the China-America Digital Academic Library (CADAL), & can be accessed with the following individual urls: http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv1 Note: Click to view v.1 via CADAL. -- http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv2 Note: Click to view v.2 via CADAL http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv3 Note: Click to view v.3 via CADAL http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv4 Note: Click to view v.4 via CADAL. -- http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv5 Note: Click to view v.5 via CADAL. -- http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv6 Note: Click to view v.6 via CADAL. -- http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv7 Note: Click to view v.7 via CADAL. -- http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv8 Note: Click to view v.8 via CADAL. -- http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv9 Note: Click to view v.9 via CADAL. -- http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv10 Note: Click to view v.10 via CADAL. -- http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv11 Note: Click to view v.11 via CADAL. -- http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv12 Note: Click to view v.12 via CADAL. -- http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv13 Note: Click to view v.13 via CADAL. -- http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv14 Note: Click to view v.14 via CADAL. -- http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv15 Note: Click to view v.15 via CADAL. -- http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv16 Note: Click to view v.16 via CADAL. -- http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv17 Note: Click to view v.17 via CADAL. -- http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv18 Note: Click to view v.18 via CADAL. -- http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv19 Note: Click to view v.19 via CADAL. -- http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B3144507Xv20 Note: Click to view v.20 via CADAL.

In 1688, the birth of a Prince of Wales ignited a family quarrel and a revolution. James II's drive towards Catholicism had alienated the nation and his two staunchly Protestant daughters by his first marriage, Mary and Anne. They are the 'ungrateful daughters' who usurped their father's crown and stole their brother's birthright. Seven prominent men sent an invitation to William of Orange---James' nephew and son-in-law---to intervene in English affairs. But it was the women, Queen Mary Beatrice and her two stepdaughters, Mary and Anne, who played a key role in this drama. Jealous and resentful of her hated stepmother, Anne had written a series of malicious letters to her sister Mary in Holland, implying that the Queen's pregnancy was a hoax, a Catholic plot to deny Mary her rightful inheritance. Betrayed by those he trusted, distraught at Anne's defection, James fled the kingdom. Even as the crown descended on her head, Mary knew she had incurred a father's curse. The sisters quarreled and were still not speaking to each other when Mary died tragically young. Anne did nothing to deserve her father's forgiveness, declaring her brother an outlaw with a price on his head. Acclaimed historian Maureen Waller recreated the late Stuart era in a compelling narrative that highlights the influence of three women in one of the most momentous events in English history. Prompted by religious bigotry and the emotion that beset any family relationships, this palace coup changed the face of the monarchy, and signaled the end of a dynasty.