Lecture 2: No Presbyterians, High Church and Sacheverell, Low Church and the Devil
Dr Henry Sacheverell described byone recent scholar as ‘a high-flying, hard-drinking and otherwiseintellectually undistinguished clergyman’, was Britain’s first mediacelebrity. Whilst students of political history and the public sphere havefocused attention on the constitutional issues debated during his greatshowpiece trial in 1710, with its remarkable associated proliferation of materialephemera, current scholarship has been less assured when attempting to engagewith the theological context within which ‘The Doctor’s’ reputation wasestablished long before 5 November 1709, when he entered the pulpit in StPaul’s Cathedral to deliver his most famous sermon: The Perils of FalseBrethren, Both in Church and State. With this background in mind,the talk will go on to discuss the various categories of High Churchmanship asseen by contemporary observers during the rest of the ‘long’ eighteenthcentury, before briefly considering what that inheritance meant for the Tractarians.
Date: 5 November 2024, 16:30 (Tuesday, 4th week, Michaelmas 2024)
Venue: Pusey House
Speaker: Richard Sharp
Part of: A Conflict of Allegiance? Lectures marking the Tercentenary of the death of Henry Sacheverell (1674-1724)
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Belinda Clark