Anticlericalism in Britain. - Review - book review

Contemporary Review, April, 2001

Anticlericalism in Britain c. 1500-1914. Nigel Aston and Matthew Cragoe, editors. Sutton Publishing. [pound]45.00. 225 pages. ISBN 0-7509-2205-2. This is a very valuable collection of essays into a subject that is often ignored in British historical writing. In part this is because anticlericalism has almost vanished with the marginalisation of the Church of England in the late twentieth century: a weak church on the margins of society does not attract as many attacks and a relatively poor church has fewer signs of wealth to attract criticism.

These ten essays, first delivered as papers at an Anglo-American historians' conference held in the Institute of Historical Research in 1996, tackle the subject in various forms: anticlericalism before Elizabeth I, anticlericalism between 1580 and 1640 (as the canker of Puritanism grew), 'anticlericalism, politics and power' in the reigns of Charles II, James II, William and Mary, Queen Anne and George I, anti-Catholicism as Anglican anticlericalism and how this affect ed the origins of radical dissent, two essays on anticlericalism in the eighteenth century, anticlericalism in Scotland after 1707, anticlericalism in early nineteenth century rural England, in mid-Victorian Wales and in the late nineteenth century and up to 1914. These essays are, in the editors' words, 'an attempt to rectify' the lack of attention to anticlericalism in British historiography and they succeed admirably. (J.M.).