In the preface to the posthumous collection of his miscellaneous works of 1709, the Godly cleric Edmund Hickeringill (1631–1708) was described as being ‘averse to ceremonies and superstition; without a tincture of atheism; he was daring in the field, and prudent in the cabinet. He was a scholar without affectation, a divine without pride, and a lawyer that never took fee.’ Cambridge educated, in May 1652 he was ordained into the Baptist Church at Hexham, North-umberland. While chaplain to Robert Lilburne's regiment, a ‘grievous apostasy’ befell him and he became a Quaker. Although described by one contemporary as a ‘desperate atheist’, from October 1662 until his death in 1708 Hickeringill was a conforming rector of the established Church of England. That his reputation amongst contemporaries was controversial is indicated by two post-humous events. Henry Compton, his diocesan bishop, was reportedly responsible for erasing and defacing his funeral monument in the parish church, removing the phrase ‘Reverendus admodum Dominus.’ Two years later, further aspersions were cast against his orthodoxy when his collected works were cited, in the state trial of Henry Sacheverell, as evidence of the scandalous profanity of the times. To some, Hickeringill was a ‘false brother’; to others he was a devout defender of piety and true religion. Despite his public conformity, the course of his clerical career saw him in almost constant dispute and conflict with ecclesiastical authority. Historiographically, Hickeringill has been described as an example of the transition from the radical puritan critique of ‘popery’ to the deistical attack upon ‘priestcraft’. Hickeringill, it seems, challenged the authority of the established religious and political order at every opportunity.