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[German Version] (1686, King's Cliffe, Northamptonshire – Apr 9, 1761, King's Cliffe), Nonjuror and English theologian. He was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow in 1711. In 1714, upon the accession of George I, Law refused the Oath of Allegiance, was deprived of his fellowship, and joined the Jacobites (Jacobitism). He later served as private tutor to the Gibbons family in Putney. In 1740, he retired to his birthplace, where he became domestic chaplain to a small ho…

[German Version] (Jan 20, 1617, Fressingfield, Suffolk, England – Nov 24, 1693, Fressingfield, Suffolk, England), archbishop of Canterbury and Nonjuror. Fellow of Emmanuel College in Cambridge from 1642 to 1651, he fled to the Continent after being rejected from his Cambridge fellowship by the Puritans. After the Restoration in 1660, he gained rapid preferment in the Church, being elevated to archbishop in 1668. While in office, he labored in various ways to strengthen the spiritual and political …

[German Version] (Aug 20, 1829, North Stoneham, Hampshire – Sep 9, 1890, Weston-super-Mare, Gloucestershire) was an Anglican cleric. Educated at Oxford, he was ordained in 1852. After a succession of church appointments, he became, in 1870, a canon of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, where his able preaching attracted sizable congregations. A leader of the catholic revival (Oxford Movement), Liddon opposed the advance of both its ritualist and liberal-Catholic wings; the publication of Lux Mundi (1889) proved particularly distressing as well as the growing use of criti…

[German Version] (Nov 30, 1729, Groton, CT – Feb 25, 1796, New London, CT). After ordination in the Church of England (1753), Seabury served as a missionary in several American parishes. During the American Revolution (North America: I, 2), he remained a Loyalist. Nominated the first bishop in the Protestant Episcopal Church, he was consecrated in Aberdeen in 1784 by bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church. He then became rector of St. James’ parish church, New London, bishop of Connecticut, and (1790) bishop of Rhode Island. Grayson Carter Bibliography E.E. Beardsley, Life and Corre…

[German Version] As the result of moral, economic, political and religious factors, Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in England and Wales in the 1530s. Assisted by T. Cromwell, the process continued intermittently. In 1536, Parliament passed an act – the co-called “Dissolution of the Monasteries Act” – that led to the closure of around 250 of the smaller houses of the orders (roughly a third of the …

[German Version] (Jul, 1743, Peterborough, UK – May 25, 1805, Lincoln, UK), Anglican theologian, who was educated by his father and then studied at Cambridge before being elected Fellow of Christ’s College there in 1766. In his first book The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), which later became a favorite educational resource, Paley outlined a system of utilitarian ethics (Utilitarianism; see also England, Theology in) in which he anticipated many of the themes of his contemporary, J. Bentham). Paley proved great originality in his Horae Paulinae (1790) in which…

[German Version] (Aug 29, 1805, Normanston, Suffolk, England – Apr 1, 1872, Cambridge, England), Anglican theologian. Raised as a Unitarian (Unitarians/Universalists), Maurice first studied law at Cambridge and, after leaving without taking a degree, he studied theology at Oxford. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1834. After serving in a parish and as chaplain at Guy's Hospital, London, he was elected professor of English literature and history at King's College, London. Six years later…

[German Version] (Nov 4, 1740, Farnham, Surrey – Aug 12, 1778, London), Anglican priest and hymn-writer. Though occupying a number of pulpits in the Church of England, Toplady remained mostly in London where he preached and, as a staunch Calvinist, engaged in spirited controversy with the Arminian J. Wesley, among others. He is chiefly remembered as the author of the hymn “Rock of Ages” (c. 1775). Grayson Carter Bibliography Works, ed. W. Row, 1794 On Toplady: T. Wright, The Life of Augustus M. Toplady, 1911 G. Lawton, Within the Rock of Ages, 1983 A. Pollard, Oxford DNB LV, 2004, 37–39.

[German Version] (1630, Bocton, Kent, England, baptized Oct 31, 1630 – May 27, 1693, probably Cambridge, England), English theologian and Hebraist. He ¶ served as fellow (1655) and master (1667) of Corpus Christi College, in Cambridge, before being appointed dean of Ely (1677). His most influential work, De Legibus Hebraeorum (1685), traced the religious antiquities of the ancient Hebrews and laid the foundation for the subsequent emergence of the study of comparative religion. He was the first scholar to observe the similarities between Hebre…

[German Version] On Mar 25, 1605, a small band of Catholics hired a cellar under the Houses of Parliament ¶ in London, storing gunpowder there. Although Guy Fawkes (1570–1606) was not their leader, he became the most famous member of the group. Their aim was to blow up the Houses of Parliament on Nov 5, 1605 – the day Parliament opened – and, at the same time, murder the attending king James I and the members of Parliament, in the hope that this would encourage Catholics to seize control of the government. William …

[German Version] (Nov 10, 1735, Durham, England – Jul 6, 1813, Fulham, a borough of London), evangelical and abolitionist (Slavery). In 1765 he became involved in opposing the slave trade, advancing numerous legal ¶ cases on behalf of slaves held in England. His efforts culminated in the famous “Fall Somerset” case of 1772 which outlawed the forcible removal of slaves from the country. Sharp also developed an interest in African culture and assisted in the relocation of a number of freed slaves to Sierra Leone. Grayson Carter Bibliography Memoirs of Granville Sharp, ed. T. Burgess, 1820 E.…

[German Version] (Sep 14, 1735, Gloucester – Apr 5, 1811, Gloucester), founder of the Sunday School movement. Raikes inherited a successful newspaper, the Gloucester Journal, and used the proceeds to promote a variety of philanthropic causes, especially prison reform. In 1780 he and a local curate established a Sunday School in Gloucester, and Raikes publicized its opening in the Journal. The idea attracted wide attention, and Sunday Schools were quickly set up throughout Britain, Ireland, and America. J. Wesley remarked that the schools were “one of th…

[German Version] In 1826 the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell, the progressive politicians Henry Brougham and Joseph Hume, as well as philosopher James Mill founded University College, London, to provide a university education for men who were excluded, on religious grounds, from studying at Oxford and Cambridge universities. Dismissed by its critics as “the godless college in Gower Street,” it was joined two years later by an Anglican rival, King's College. In 1836, the government established the Un…

[German Version] (Feb 22, 1781, Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire – Jan 8, 1833, London), Wesleyan Methodist theologian (Methodists: I). Watson was a member of a small group of clergy and laity that contributed to the formation of Wesleyan Methodist identity, following the death of J. Wesley and its separation from the Church of England. Appointed to a succession of influential positions in the Church, he also published widely, clarifying and extending Wesley’s theology. Grayson Carter Bibliography Works include: Theological Institutes, 6 vols., 1823–1829 On Watson: T. Jackson, M…

[German Version] (Dec 18, 1859, Preston, Lancashire – Nov 13, 1907, London), English Roman Catholic poet. In 1885, having failed to become a priest or doctor, and having succumbed to opium addiction, he relocated from his native Lancashire to London. Here, while living in filth, despair and penury, he came to know Wilfred Meynell, critic and editor of the Catholic magazine Merry England. Meynell befriended Thompson and was the first to recognize his poetic genius, which arose from a combination of his destitution and Christian faith. Before his premature d…

[German Version] (Oct 15, 1881, Exeter – Oct 26, 1944, Westgate-on-Sea). After leaving Oxford, Temple rose quickly through a succession of senior appointments in the Church of England, including bishop of ¶ Manchester (1921) and archbishop of York (1929), before being elevated to Canterbury (1942). His contributions to the various debates over social, international, and economic issues were especially respected. Active in the early ecumenical movement, he helped to advance both the Faith and Order and the Life and Work Movemen…

[German Version] (Oct 7, 1573, Reading, England – Jan 10, 1645, London), archbishop of Canterbury. Educated at St. John's College, Oxford, he opposed, early in life, the prevailing Calvinistic theology. Of considerable talent and learning, he was appointed to a rapid succession of ecclesiastical appointments, including dean of Gloucester (1616), bishop of St. David's (1621), Bath and Wells (1626), and London (1628), and finally archbishop of Canterbury (1633). His various attempts to impose liturg…

[German Version] Latitudinarianism, from Lat. latitudo (“breadth”), a moderate teaching, confessionally tolerant and open to the insights of modern science, introduced in the 17th century by Anglican clergy at Cambridge. It was opposed by both the Puritan (I) teachers at the universities and conservative high-church royalists (High Church movement). The advocates of Latitudinarianism were first identified in a letter written by Simon Patrick, a leading member of the party (later bishop of Chichester, then Ely), published under the title A Brief Account of the New Sect of “…

[German Version] Defined broadly, Jacobitism is a tradition or movement in Great Britain, whose adherents after 1688 supported the hereditary claims of the Roman Catholic Stuart dynasty over the parliamentary title of the Protestant William of Orange (and his Hanoverian successors). Apart from its military and diplomatic dimensions, exemplified in the invasion attempt of 1715 and 1745, Jacobitism also had important intellectual, social, literary, philosophical, nationalistic, and theological dimensions. Not all Jacobites were Roman Cath-¶ olic: many High Church (High C…

[German Version] (Stuart, of England; Jun 19, 1566, Edinburgh – Mar 27, 1625, London). In 1603, on the death of Elizabeth I, James VI of Scotland was crowned King James I of England. Opposed to Presbyterianism and the Church of Scotland 's political influence he attempted to impose episcopacy in Scotland. In England, James's ecclesiastical policies met with mixed success. At the Hampton Court Conference (1604) he exhibited considerable theological knowledge and authorized a new translation of the …