‘A greater revolution’

Letters to and from prominent Dissenting leaders and their political allies such as Cotton Mather and Benjamin Colman in New England, Archibald Stobo in South Carolina, and Robert Hunter in New York make it abundantly clear that the High-Church Tory ascendency during the final years of Queen Anne’s reign was a fraught period for religious Dissenters living throughout Britain’s Atlantic empire. While Tories were implementing policies designed to inhibit the influence of Dissent, a transatlantic Tory political culture was becoming far more antagonistic to the Hanoverian Succession and was increasingly associated with Jacobitism. Consequently, anti-Jacobitism became a pillar of the transatlantic Dissenting and Whig political and print culture.

The Huguenots and the Hanoverian Succession

The 1697 Peace of Rijswijk dashed Huguenot hopes of a return to their homeland. The refugees of the diaspora found permanent places of refuge in England, the Netherlands, and Hanover, becoming a Protestant International. In Hanover the elites military refugees exerted considerable influence over the Elector, Georg Ludwig (future King George I), and Huguenot religious and military personnel played a neglected part in the narrative of succession. Among the Huguenot names that dominate the narrative are those of Henri Massue de Ruvigny (better known as the Earl of Galway) and Jean de Robéthon; the first was a universally respected soldier, the latter a controversial diplomat and politician.

The Politics of Dissenting Demography in Ireland, 1690–1735

The era of the Hanoverian Succession was a period of rapid demographic change in Ireland. The arrival of 90,000 Scots pushed the extent of Presbyterian influence in Ulster well beyond its heartland in the northeast. This stoked concerns within the Church of Ireland of a possible Presbyterian coup like the one that befallen the Scottish Church in 1690. The fear of expansionist Dissent faded in the years after the death of Queen Anne when Irish Presbyterians began sailing en masse to the American Colonies. Irish Presbyterians were quick to capitalize on Ascendency concerns regarding perceived Protestant decline in their efforts to repeal the Test Act of 1704. This essay examines the changing debate over Dissenter demography in the works of William Tisdall and Jonathan Swift. It argues that Protestant anxieties regarding fluctuations in Dissenting numbers influenced the larger political debates in early eighteenth-century Ireland.

The Politics of Coexistence

After 1714, lingering conflict over the British throne gave a lease of life to old religious animosities. This chapter will examine the relationship between English Dissenters and the communities of Catholics and Jacobites who stood seemingly at the opposing ideological pole. It will suggest that behind the invective declared in print and sermon was a more complex reality. In England, common distrust of the Established Church meant that Catholics and Nonconformists shared public strategies, political rhetoric, and occasional personal affinities. In parishes and counties, patterns of sociability softened the pressure of confessional division. Yet the chapter will argue that dynastic uncertainty rendered these relationships fragile. For Nonconformists, a Catholic claim upon the throne served reminder of an undiminished Catholic claim over the entire kingdom, sowing fears that friendship across the religious divide remained only skin-deep in Hanoverian Britain.

Changes in Dissenting Perceptions of the Hanoverian Succession, 1714 to c.1765

The theme of this chapter is the enhancement of the legal, social, and political fortunes of English Dissent between the accession of George I in 1714 and the death of the Duke of Cumberland, the last of George II’s sons, in 1765. Dissenters had cause to fear that the House of Hanover might be overthrown by a Jacobite rebellion, and even after that possibility was effectually removed in 1746, they had not reinforced the security of their religious toleration by the achievement of civil equality. While grateful for the benefits conferred upon them by the Protestant succession, by the 1760s some Dissenters expressed dissatisfaction with the existing order and contemplated measures by which it could be reformed to accommodate their aspirations.

Introduction

This introductory chapter explores the historiography of the Hanoverian Succession and the centrality of Protestant Dissent in the party politics of the British Atlantic World in the early eighteenth century during the reigns of Queen Anne and George I. It argues that, taken together, the essays in the book represent a significant addition to scholarship on the topics of the Hanoverian Succession, party politics, and popular religion in the early eighteenth century. The combination of the volume’s tight focus on Protestant Dissent and nonconformity, and the sweeping geographic range covered by its contributors ensures that it will stand out as an authoritative addition to the scholarship of the early eighteenth century.

The Hanoverian Succession and the Fragmentation of Scottish Protestantism

This chapter examines the politics of Scottish Presbyterianism in the years surrounding George I’s accession. After assessing the fortunes of the Scottish Episcopalians, the chapter analyses the tensions among Presbyterians within, and on the fringes of, the established Church of Scotland. It first reconstructs the critique of the establishment articulated by the Hebronites and United Societies, Presbyterian groups that advocated partial or complete withdrawal from the Church. The chapter then shows how the controversy over the oath of abjuration, imposed on clergy in 1712, prompted the separation from the Church of two ministers in the Dumfries area. The ministers made a coherent case for separation and propagated a Presbyterian critique of the Hanoverian succession. Moreover, they set a precedent for future secessions from the Church of Scotland. The catastrophe of the Jacobite rising in 1715 weakened the Episcopalian cause, and thereafter Presbyterian Dissent became the main motor driving the further fragmentation of Scottish Protestantism.

The Dissemination and Reception of Isaac Watts’s Hymns and Psalms in the British North American Colonies to 1748

The hymns and psalms of the Congregational minister Isaac Watts circulated in the North American colonies prior to the revivals of the 1730s and’40s. Watts's transatlantic links are clearly evident in his regular correspondence with ministers and academics including Cotton Mather and Benjamin Colman. He gave forty-nine of his own books to Yale and many of these survive. Watts exchanged many letters with Benjamin Colman, pastor in Boston and an overseer of Harvard. Watts has often been regarded as having been first published in America in 1729 when Benjamin Franklin reprinted his Psalms of David. This paper examines two earlier publications of Watts's work, both printed in 1720 in Boston, and Cotton Mather’s reception of Watts’ early work. In so doing, it seeks to understand better Watts's influence in the American colonies before the arrival of George Whitefield and the Great Awakening of mid-century.

The Tories and the Dissenters in the Reign of George I

The gulf in values and beliefs between Tories and Dissenters on the death of Queen Anne in 1714 stood wider than it had done at any point since the Revolution of 1688–9. This essay looks for any signs and symbols of accommodation between the Tories and the Dissenters in the reign of George I (and, per contra, for evidence of enduring hostilities) and poses the underlying question: how far did these two sides remain un-reconciled throughout the reign? It suggests grounds for arguing that the gap between them narrowed as the Hanoverian Succession bedded in: more moderate Tories and Dissenters moved into the religio-political mainstream as the Whigs consolidated their hold on power, their numbers declined, and issues such as toleration that had mattered so much in the 1700s and 1710s became less pressing and receded in public importance.

‘Oh that glorious first of August!’

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the considerable sermon literature that the change of regime in 1714 generated among Dissenters. Sermons about important political events were not uncommon in this period and the importance of public fasts has been brought into focus through recent work by Natalie Mears, Stephen Taylor, and Philip Williamson. The interest in the Dissenting contribution in this area is twofold. First, the calendar of commemoration under Queen Anne and George I was used by both Whigs and Tories for political advantage. The ways in which Dissenters could comment on, and to an extent appropriate, days that had traditionally been associated with Tory ideas is revealing. Second, the ways in which Dissenters saw the Hanoverian succession was indicative of wider world views regarding historical progression. Following on from the Glorious Revolution, the Hanoverians were viewed as having a particular role to play in the providential history of the nation.