This essay re-examines the “bishop controversy”, a dispute between Anglicans and Dissenters in the decade preceding the American Revolution. The controversy, it argues, was part of the imperial crisis caused by the Seven Years' War and the government's toleration of French Catholics in Quebec. This perspective highlights the Church of England's limited role in the empire and the unacknowledged radicalism of loyalist Anglicans.
The New England Company, 1649–1776, by William Kellaway, which was reviewed in the June number of Church History, was indicated erroneously as having been published ‘for the Institute of Early American History and Culture’ (by Barnes and Noble). The Institute has no connection with the book.
The Bishop Controversy, the Imperial Crisis, and Religious Radicalism in New England, 1763-74: By arrangement with the Colonial Society of Massachusetts the Editors of the New England Quarterly are pleased to publish the winning essay of the 2016 Walter Muir Whitehill Prize in Early American History