Negotiating Toleration Dissent and the Hanoverian Succession, 1714-1760

1714 was a revolutionary year for Dissenters across the British Empire. The Hanoverian Succession upended a political and religious order antagonistic to Protestant non-conformity and replaced it with a regime that was, ostensibly, sympathetic to the Whig interest. The death of Queen Anne and the dawn of Hanoverian Rule presented Dissenters with fresh opportunities and new challenges as they worked to negotiate and legitimize afresh their place in the polity. Negotiating Toleration: Dissent and the Hanoverian Succession, 1714-1760 examines how Dissenters and their allies in a range of geographic contexts confronted and adapted to the Hanoverian order. Collectively, the contributors reveal that though generally overlooked compared to the Glorious Revolution of 1688-9 or the Act of Union in 1707, 1714 was a pivotal moment with far reaching consequences for dissenters at home and abroad. By decentralizing the narrative beyond England and exploring dissenting reactions in Scotland, Ireland, and North America, the collection demonstrates the extent to which the Succession influenced the politics and touched the lives of ordinary people across the British Atlantic world. As well as offering a thorough breakdown of confessional tensions within Britain during the short and medium terms, this authoritative volume also marks the first attempt to look at the complex interaction between religious communities in consequence of the Hanoverian Succession.

Nigel Aston, Reader in Early Modern History, University of Leicester,Benjamin Bankurst, Assistant Professor of History, Shepherd University

Nigel Aston is Reader in Early Modern History at the University of Leicester. His publications include Christianity and Revolutionary Europe, c. 1750-1830 (2003), The French Revolution, 1789-1804: Authority, Liberty and the Search for Stability (2004), and Religion and Revolution in France, 1780-1804 (2000).


Benjamin Bankhurst is Assistant Professor of History at Shepherd University. He is the author of Ulster Presbyterians and the Scots Irish Diaspora, 1750-1764 (2013).

List of contributors
Introduction, Nigel Aston and Benjamin Bankhurst
Part I. Dissent and the 'Deliverance' of 1714
1. 'But what if the Queen should die?': Defoe, the Dissenters, and the Succession, W. R. Owens
2. A Model Minority? The Dissenting Press and Political Broadcasting in the Georgian Revolution, James J. Caudle
3. Changes in dissenting perceptions of the Hanoverian succession, 1714-c. 1765, G. M. Ditchfield
Part II. Dissent and the Legacy of the Succession in England
4. 'Oh that glorious first of August!': the politics of monarchy and the politics of dissent in early Hanoverian Britain, Andrew C. Thompson
5. The politics of coexistence: Dissenters, Catholics, and Jacobites, 1714-1745, Gabriel Glickman
6. The Tories and the dissenters in the reign of George I, Nigel Aston
Part III. Dissent, Social Change, and the Succession in Scotland and Ireland
7. The Hanoverian succession and the fragmentation of Scottish Protestantism, Alasdair Raffe
8. The politics of dissenter demography in Ireland, 1690-1735, Benjamin Bankhurst
Part IV. Dissent and the Succession beyond Britain and Ireland
9. The Huguenots and the Hanoverian Succession, Matthew Glozier
10. A greater revolution': anti-Jacobitism and the Hanoverian succession in the British Atlantic World, 1702-1716, David Parrish
11. The Dissemination and Reception of Isaac Watts's Hymns and Psalms in the British North American Colonies to 1748, Jane Giscombe