g2 The Eighteenth Century (1714 - /5/j)

(G) THE CHURCH

In this period, the idea was dead that a national Church should
comprehend all the king's subjects, but full civil rights remained
reserved to anglicans, though the disabilities often operated
more in theory than in practice. These facts are reflected in the
concerns of modern research. Carpenter's urbanely pompous
and discursively chatty survey admittedly stands outside both
modern interests and modern research.564 Best, on the other
hand, starting from a study of the organization which adminis-
tered Queen Anne's modest Bounty, achieves a genuine social
history of the Church.565 The first volume has appeared of a
co-operative history of methodism,666 The methodists left the
Church; the later evangelicals tried (successfully) to regenerate
it from within and were also politically very active, especially
in the struggle against the slave trade.567 Their methods owed
a good deal to those of the earlier nonconformists who through-
out the century recognized the need to organize themselves
politically if they were to achieve anything in a world which
treated them as second-class citizens. Manning has described
the organization of elected committees exercising influence
upon parliament from outside; Hunt has dissected the energetic
methods particularly employed by the quakers.568 Three in-
teresting studies deal with the religious thought of this often
deistic century. Stromberg explores the orthodox reaction

*«* S. C. Carpenter, Eighteenth Century Church and People. L: Murray:
1959. Pp. x, 290. Rev: EHR 75, 527*

W5 Geoffrey F, A. Best, Temporal Pillars: Queen Anne's Bounty, the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and the Church of England. CUP: 1964.
Pp. xiv, 582.

** * Rupert Davies and E. Gordon Rupp, eds., A History of the Metho-
dist Church of Great Britain^ vol. i. L: Epworth: 1965. Pp. xl, 332.

*•* G. C. B. Davies, The Early Cornish Evangelicals, 1735-1760. L:
SPCK: 1951. Pp. ix, 229. -Ernest M. Howse, Saints and Politics;
the Clap/iam Sect and the growth of freedom. Toronto UP: 1952. Pp. xv,
215. Rev: AHR 58, 605^

m B. L. Manning, The Protestant Dissenting Deputies, CUP: 1952.
Pp. ix, 498. Rev; EHR 69, i nff. - Norman C. Hunt, Two Early
Political Associations: the quakers and the dissenting deputies in the age of
Sir Robert Welpok. O: Clarendon: 1961. Pp. xvi, 231. Rev: EHR
77, 779*"-