The State Trial Of Doctor Henry Sacheverell

This work offers a critical edition of original texts and documents necessary for understanding the trial’s significance. By consolidating all accounts of the trial, scholars are able to consult and compare these accounts in a readily accessible volume. Presents critical editions of several manuscripts relating to this celebrated ‘state trial’ Demonstrates that the often cited and printed account of the trial by Jacob Tonson was incomplete and often regarded by contemporaries as a partisan production Extensively illustrated with rare prints and drawings - most existing in only one copy and never before reproduced Documents the intense interest of contemporary readers in the meaning of the trial and presents transcripts and illustrations of their annotations Allow scholars to consult and compare the varying accounts of the trial in a readily accessible volume

"Henry Sacheverell (1674? 5 June 1724) was an English High Church clergyman and politician ... His famous sermons on the church in danger from the neglect of the Whig ministry to keep guard over its interests were preached, the one at Derby on 15 August 1709, the other at St Paul's Cathedral on 5 November 1709, entitled The Perils of False Brethren, in Church, and State ... The trial lasted from 27 February to 21 March 1710 and the verdict was that Sacheverell should be suspended for three years and that the two sermons should be burnt at the Royal Exchange. This was the decree of the state, and it had the effect of making him a martyr in the eyes of the populace and (along with heavy taxes on Londoners) bringing about the first Sacheverell riots that year in London and the rest of the country, which included attacks on Presbyterian and other Dissenter places of worship, with some being burned down. The rioting in turn led to the downfall of the ministry later that year and the passing of the Riot Act in 1714"--Wikipedia.

A country bitterly divided between two political parties. Populist mobs rising in support of a reactionary rabble-rouser. Foreign interference in the political process. Strained relations between Britain and Europe. These are not recent headlines—they are from the year 1710, when Queen Anne ruled Britain. In her engagingly written Backlash, Rachel Carnell tells the fascinating and entertaining account of the reign of Queen Anne and the true story behind the fall of the Whig government imaginatively depicted in the 2018 film The Favourite. As Carnell shows, the truth was significantly different—and in many ways more interesting—than what the film depicted. The backlash began in 1709 when the Whigs arrested a popular female Tory political satirist and then impeached a provocative High Church clergyman for preaching a sermon repudiating the ideals of parliamentary monarchy and religious tolerance. The impeachment trial backfired, and mobs surged in the streets supporting the Tory preacher and threatening religious minorities. With charges dropped against the satirist, by 1710 she had written a best-selling sequel. Queen Anne was careful and diligent in her monarchical duties. She tried to run a government balanced between the parties, but finally torn between the Whigs (including her longtime friends the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough) and the proto-Brexiteer Tories, she dissolved Parliament and called for elections. This brought in a majority for the Tories, who swiftly began passing reactionary legislation. While the Whigs would return to power after Anne’s death in 1714 and reverse the Tory policies, this little-known era offers an important historical perspective on the populist backlashes in the United States and United Kingdom today.

The book discusses the 'state trial' as a legal process, a public spectacle, and a point of political conflict - a key part of how constitutional monarchy became constitutional.State trials provided some of the leading media events of later Stuart England. The more important of these trials attracted substantial public attention, serving as pivot points in the relationship between the state and its subjects. Later Stuart England has been known among legal historians for a series of key cases in which juries asserted their independence from judges. In political history, the government's sometimes shaky control over political trials in this period has long been taken as a sign of the waning power of the Crown. This book revisits the process by which the 'state trial' emerged as a legal proceeding, a public spectacle, a point of political conflict, and ultimately, a new literary genre. It investigates the trials as events, as texts, and as moments in the creation of historical memory. By the early nineteenth century, the publication and republication of accounts of the state trials had become a standard part of the way in which modern Britons imagined how their constitutional monarchy had superseded the absolutist pretensions of the Stuart monarchs. This book explores how the later Stuart state trials helped to create that world.tury, the publication and republication of accounts of the state trials had become a standard part of the way in which modern Britons imagined how their constitutional monarchy had superseded the absolutist pretensions of the Stuart monarchs. This book explores how the later Stuart state trials helped to create that world.tury, the publication and republication of accounts of the state trials had become a standard part of the way in which modern Britons imagined how their constitutional monarchy had superseded the absolutist pretensions of the Stuart monarchs. This book explores how the later Stuart state trials helped to create that world.tury, the publication and republication of accounts of the state trials had become a standard part of the way in which modern Britons imagined how their constitutional monarchy had superseded the absolutist pretensions of the Stuart monarchs. This book explores how the later Stuart state trials helped to create that world.