Until well into this century, the clergy have acted as agents of a dominant Christian culture closely intertwined with the state, but that supremacy never went unchallenged by the layman or woman. This text presents a detailed examination of anticlericalism in its many forms - from revolutionary protest to intellectual debate - focusing mainly on the established church but covering the Roman Catholic and dissenting traditions as well. A comparative angle noting trends in Europe is featured throughout.
List of Contributors vii Acknowledgements ix Foreword xi Keith Robbins Introduction xiii Nigel Aston Matthew Cragoe Anticlericalism in the Church of England Before 1558: An `Eating Canker? 1(17) David Loades Anticlericalism and Clericalism, 1580-1640 18(24) Christopher Haigh `To Govern is to Make Subjects Believe: Anticlericalism, Politics and Power, c. 1680-1717 42(25) J.A.I. Champion Anti-Catholicism as Anglican Anticlericalism: Nonconformity and the Ideological Origins of Radical Disaffection 67(26) James E. Bradley The Changing Nature of English Anticlericalism, c. 1750-c. 1800 93(22) G.M. Ditchfield Anglican Responses to Anticlericalism in the `Long Eighteenth Century, c. 1689-1830 115(23) Nigel Aston Rotavating the Kailyard: Re-Imagining the Scottish `Meenister in Discourse and the Parish State Since 1707 138(21) Callum G. Brown Did Anticlericalism Exist in the English Countryside in the Early Nineteenth Century? 159(20) Frances Knight Anticlericalism and Politics in Mid-Victorian Wales 179(19) Matthew Cragoe Varieties of Anticlericalism in Later Victorian and Edwardian England 198(23) Hugh McLeod Index 221
