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Daniel Neal and the ‘Puritan Revolution’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Laird Okie
Laird Okie
Affiliation:
Mr. Okie is adjunct professor of European history in Ottawa University, Ottawa, Kansas.
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Extract

Daniel Neal's The History of the Puritans was a standard eighteenth-century source for modern historians and, as will be shown, prefigured nineteenth-century Whig conceptions of Puritanism. Published in four volumes between 1732 and 1738, Neal's work went through at least twenty-one editions or reprints; the last one was done in 1863. New editions were printed in London, Bath, Dublin, New York, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and the History was twice expanded by continuators in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. The History of the Puritans was not a narrowly religious or sectarian study: Neal strove to elucidate the Puritan contribution to the state. A Congregationalist minister, Neal produced the closest thing we have to an official Dissenting history of England, one which glorified the role of Puritanism in fostering English liberty. To study Neal's History is to gain insight into the historical and political ideology of early eighteenth-century Dissent.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , December 1986 , pp. 456 - 467
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1986

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References

1. Neal, Daniel, The History of the Puritans, or Protestant non-conformists from the reformation under King Henry VIII to the Act of toleration under King William and Queen Mary: with an account of their principles; their attempts for a further reformation in the church; and the lives and characters of their most considerable divines, 4 vols. (London, 1732–1738); 2d ed., 2 vols. (London, 1754).Google Scholar References made in this article are to the second edition.

2. Biographical information on Neal is drawn from Toulmin, Joshua, “Life of the Author,” in Daniel Neal, The History of the Puritans, 3 vols. (London, 1822), 1: xvi–xxvii,Google Scholar and from Mullinger, James Bass in the Dictionary of National Biography, 14: 134–136.Google Scholar

3. See the article on Evans in Vian, Alsager, Dictionary of National Biography, 6: 929–930;Google ScholarCalamy, Edmund, A letter to Mr. Archdeacon Echard upon occasion of his History of England (London, 1718), p. 13.Google Scholar

4. Toulmin, , “Life of the Author,” p. xliii.Google Scholar

5. Quoted in the article on Neal in the Dictionary of National Biography.

6. See Watts, Michael R., The Dissenters: From the Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford, 1978), pp. 485–486.Google Scholar

7. See Neal, History, 1: ix-xv; 2: xvi-xx.

8. [Neal, Daniel], A letter from a dissenter to the author of the Craftsman (London, 1733), pp. 20–28.Google Scholar “As long as there is a Protestant Dissenter in England,” wrote Neal in his History, “there will be a friend of liberty and our present happy constitution.” See Neal, , History, 1: ix.Google Scholar

9. For Neal's comments on Clarendon and Walker, see History, 1: xiii, 733–734, 782; 2: vi-vii, 102, 659.

10. Neal, History, 1: 477, 161, 6–12; 2: 429.

11. Ibid., 1: 9, 52–53, 79.

12. Ibid., 1: 88–89, 256, 361–366, 402, for Neal's judgments on Elizabeth.

13. For Neal's discussion of Elizabethan Puritanism, see especially ibid., 1: 97, 102, 161–175, 210, 230, 233–255.

14. de Rapin-Thoyras, Paul, The history of England as well ecclesiastical as civil, done into English from the French with large and useful notes…, by N. Tindal, 2 vols., 2d ed. (London, 1732).Google Scholar

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16. Neal, , History, 1: 518, 471, 539–540, 608, 805.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., 1: 750, 661, 693, 750–753, 765–766, 782, 753.

18. See Watts, , The Dissenters, pp. 346–371.Google Scholar

19. Neal, , History, 1: 399; 2: 564.Google Scholar

20. Ibid., 2: 201, 543–544, 549, 378, 422, 469, 494–495, 564.

21. Ibid., 2: 718.

22. Ibid., 2: 805.

23. Ibid., 1: 79–80; 2: vii-viii, 378, 382, 651, 656, 791–794.

24. Tobias Smollet was one who bemoaned the “dry, tedious, fatiguing collections of public acts and statutes rather than a well-connected detail of historical events.” See Critical Review (May 1757), 2:449–458. Among the works that discuss eighteenth-century historical writing are Forbes, Duncan, Hume's Philosophical Politics (Cambridge, 1975);Google ScholarRichardson, R. C., The Debate on the English Revolution (London, 1977);Google ScholarPeardon, Thomas Preston, The Transition in English Historical Writing (New York, 1933);Google ScholarOkie, Packard L., “Augustan Historical Writing: The Rise of Enlightenment Historiography in England” (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1982).Google Scholar

25. Maddox, Isaac, A Vindication of the government, doctrine, and worship of the Church of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1733), p. 7.Google Scholar

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27. See Grey, Zachary, An impartial examination of the second volume of Mr.Daniel Neal's History of the Puritans (London, 1736);Google ScholarAn impartial examination of the third volume of Mr. Daniel Neal's History of the Puritans (London, 1737);Google ScholarAn impartial examination of the fourth volume of Mr. Daniel Neal's History of the Puritans (London, 1739)Google Scholar. Among Grey's assaults on Dissent is The ministry of the Dissenters proved to be null and void (London, 1725).Google Scholar

28. See Neal, , History, 2: ix–x.Google Scholar

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32. See Hume, David, The History of England, 6 vols. (London, 1754–1762), new ed. (Philadelphia, 1871), 5: 145, 331, 382,Google Scholar for Hume's comments on Puritanism.

33. For Macaulay, see Bridget, and Hill, Christopher, “Catherine Macaulay and the Seventeenth Century,” Welsh Historical Review (1967): 381–402.Google Scholar

34. For Brodie and Godwin, see Richardson, , Debate on the English Revolution, pp. 52–55.Google Scholar

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36. Hallam, Henry, The Constitutional History of England, 2 vols. (New York, 1827; new ed., New York, 1880) 1: 231, 387, 598–599.Google Scholar

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39. Gardiner, Samuel R., History of England from the accession of James I to the outbreak of the civil war, 1603–1642, 10 vols. (London, 1884–1889), 1: 24, 31.Google Scholar

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42. Robbins, Caroline, The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthman (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), pp. 222, 226, 235, 238, 262.Google Scholar