The Leisler Papers, 1689-1691

The Leisler Papers, 1689-1691
Author: Peter R. Christoph
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 664
Release: 2002-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780815628200

Jacob Leisler has been more an icon in historical writing than a person. That the icon has served very different groups over the centuries only shows that is has had little to do with the real person. In his own century he was both the fanatical and villainous despot and the martyred hero. In later times he was a forerunner of American democracy, and a symbol of colonial rebelliousness. He has also been pilloried in the Catholic press, not without justification, although Catholics were not among those treated most harshly during his administration. To Marxist theoreticians he was a voice for the proletariat; to National Socialist propagandists he was a German martyr. In short, much that has been written about Leisler has had to do with the interests of various groups and causes, many of them unrelated, or only distantly related, to anything happening in Leisler's time. It is only today that articles and books are beginning to appear in which his career is examined dispassionately. Many of the untruths are so ingrained that one must almost begin by saying what is not true before going on to discuss what is true about Leisler. Suffice it to say that, despite a long tradition of popular writing that he was base-born, resentful of being outside the mainstream of colonial life and commerce, and failing in his enterprises, he none of these. For much of our enlightenment we are indebted to the research by David William Voorhees, who has assembled copies of several thousand documents from private institutions and government archives from throughout Europe and North America.

Calvinism, Communion and the Baptists

Calvinism, Communion and the Baptists
Author: Peter Naylor
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2007-09-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1597527408

This book is concerned with English Calvinistic Baptist churches from the later 1600s until the early 1800s, arguing that there was then no connection between restricted communion and hyper- or high Calvinism. A minimal definition of restricted communion would be the reception at the Baptist communion of those alone who had been immersed in water upon a profession of faith. A sketch of English Calvinistic Baptists in the years preceding and following the 1689 Act of Toleration stresses that they were a denomination other than that of the General Baptists, and that most Baptists, irrespective of party lines, were de facto Strict Baptists. Historical arguments for and against restricted communion will demonstrate that during that period there was no definitive link between the Particular Baptists' communion discipline and their interpretations of Calvinism. Attention is given to John Gill's and Andrew Fuller's interpretations of the relation between the atonement and evangelism.

The Glorious Revolution and the Continuity of Law

The Glorious Revolution and the Continuity of Law
Author: Richard S. Kay
Publisher: CUA Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2014-11-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813226872

The Glorious Revolution and the Continuity of Law explores the relationship between law and revolution. Revolt - armed or not - is often viewed as the overthrow of legitimate rulers. Historical experience, however, shows that revolutions are frequently accompanied by the invocation rather than the repudiation of law. No example is clearer than that of the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89. At that time the unpopular but lawful Catholic king, James II, lost his throne and was replaced by his Protestant son-in-law and daughter, William of Orange and Mary, with James's attempt to recapture the throne thwarted at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland. The revolutionaries had to negotiate two contradictory but intensely held convictions. The first was that the essential role of law in defining and regulating the activity of the state must be maintained. The second was that constitutional arrangements to limit the unilateral authority of the monarch and preserve an indispensable role for the houses of parliament in public decision-making had to be established. In the circumstances of 1688-89, the revolutionaries could not be faithful to the second without betraying the first. Their attempts to reconcile these conflicting objectives involved the frequent employment of legal rhetoric to justify their actions. In so doing, they necessarily used the word "law" in different ways. It could denote the specific rules of positive law; it could simply express devotion to the large political and social values that underlay the legal system; or it could do something in between. In 1688-89 it meant all those things to different participants at different times. This study adds a new dimension to the literature of the Glorious Revolution by describing, analyzing and elaborating this central paradox: the revolutionaries tried to break the rules of the constitution and, at the same time, be true to them.

Facing the Revocation

Facing the Revocation
Author: Carolyn Chappell Lougee
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 489
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190241314

Facing the Revocation tells the story of one French Protestant (Huguenot) family, the Champagnés, as they faced the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which criminalized their religion in 1685. In this sweeping family saga, Carolyn Chappell Lougee narrates how the Champagné family's persecution and Protestant devotion unsettled their economic advantages and social standing. The family provides a window onto the choices that individuals and their kin had to make in these trying circumstances, the agency of women within families, and the consequences of their choices. Lougee traces the lives of the family members who escaped; the kin and community members who decided to stay, both complying with and resisting the king's will; and those who resettled in Britain and Prussia, where they adapted culturally and became influential members of society. It challenges the way Huguenot history has been told for 300 years and thereby offers new insights into the reign of Louis XIV.