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Jeremy Collier the Younger: Life and Works, 1650-1726

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Jeremy Collier the Younger: Life and Works, 1650-1726 “BETTER TO BE ALONE THAN IN ILL COMPANY” JEREMY COLLIER THE YOUNGER: LIFE AND WORKS, 1650-1726 by Tania Boster B.A. Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 2001 M.A. University of Pittsburgh, 2004 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2008 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Tania Boster It was defended on November 25, 2008 and approved by Seymour Drescher, University Professor, Department of History Peter K. Machamer, Professor, Department of History and Philosophy of Science Marcus Rediker, Professor and Chair, Department of History Dissertation Advisor: Jonathan Scott, Carroll Amundson Professor of British History, Department of History ii Copyright © by Tania Boster 2008 iii “BETTER TO BE ALONE THAN IN ILL COMPANY” JEREMY COLLIER THE YOUNGER: LIFE AND WORKS, 1650-1726 Tania Boster, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2008 This dissertation is an intellectual biography of Jeremy Collier the younger, a controversial clergyman who was committed to an ecumenical form of religion. As a consequence of his opposition to the Glorious Revolution of 1688/9 he was imprisoned twice, for sedition and high treason, and was outlawed from 1696 until the end of his life. He wrote in a remarkable variety of genres, including political pamphlets, theological treatises, sermons, history, and critical and moral essays. A consistent theme in Collier’s writings is his concern with the office of a minister, and his commitment to the practical duties of pastoral care, regardless of changes in Church and State policy. Collier’s belief that ministers are responsible to God and to individuals, not governments, is a constant theme across all of his writings. His thought resonates with religious and philosophical ideas of the mid-seventeenth century, a period during which Collier’s father, himself a divine, schoolmaster and linguist, invested his energies in social improvement through humanist education. This is the first study to treat Jeremy Collier’s life and thought comprehensively. In the process of recovering biographical data and contextualizing Collier’s publications and manuscripts, the dissertation covers a century of history. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................. 1 2.0 PATERNAL INFLUENCE: JEREMY COLLIER THE ELDER, C. 1630-1660....... 6 3.0 EARLY LIFE: JEREMY COLLIER THE YOUNGER, 1660-1688 ......................... 26 4.0 THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION AND “PRETENDED AUTHORITY”, 1689-1696 ......................................................................................................................... 55 5.0 THE “STAGE CONTROVERSY”: MORAL REFORM, OR REFORMATION OF MANNERS? 1698-1708.................................................................................................. 82 6.0 RELIGION, 1708-1726................................................................................................. 109 7.0 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 127 BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................................... 130 v PREFACE I am indebted to many people for their support during the process of researching and writing this dissertation. The members of my committee, Professors Seymour Drescher, Peter Machamer and Marcus Rediker have generated enthusiasm, offered guidance, and inspired me to cast my net wide and to consider a variety of questions and sources. I thank Sy Drescher for challenging me to be innovative in my conceptualization of historical themes and problems, while insisting that I maintain focus on the immediate task of investigating Jeremy Collier’s intellectual biography; Peter Machamer for overseeing my formal introduction to the mechanical philosophy that worried Collier so, and for his guidance in coming to grips with foundational texts; and Marcus Rediker encouraged me to pursue the network analyses of Collier the elder and Collier the younger, has been a mentor, and has provided an ongoing and influential intellectual community through seminars, workshops, lectures and informal gatherings of activists and fellow students of history. I am particularly grateful to my advisor, Professor Jonathan Scott, for his generous and critical feedback, and for fostering my development and encouraging my independence as a young scholar. Despite having had the privilege to work with such a remarkable committee of historians, this remains a work in progress with many flaws for which I take full responsibility. I have been fortunate to receive the Department of History’s support in my successful application for the Carolyn Chambers Memorial Fellowship and the Lillian B. Lawler vi Predoctoral Fellowship. These awards, and a grant from the University Center for International Studies, made it possible for me to conduct research in the United Kingdom, and to write the dissertation. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to individual faculty members of the History Department. I thank Janelle Greenberg, under whose supervision I discovered Jeremy Collier the younger, Rob Ruck, Bernie Hagerty and Evelyn Rawski for their guidance, friendship, and professional example. I also appreciate the kindness and dedication to graduate students that has been shown by the History Department staff, particularly Molly Estes and Grace Tomcho. A number of scholars and friends in the U.K. made my time there intellectually fruitful and full of cherished memories. Professors Reid Barbour, J.C. Davis, Mark Goldie, Felicity Henderson, Alexis Sanderson and Edward Vallance offered valuable advice and insight into my project, while Lucy Capes and Sharon Seager made London feel like a second home. Thanks is due to all of the librarians and archivists who aided me in my research at the British Library, London; Bodleian Library, Oxford; Cambridgeshire County Record Office, Cambridge; Cambridge University Archives, and Cambridge University Library, Cambridge; Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone; Chetham’s Library, Manchester; Gray’s Inn, London; Lambeth Palace, London; Suffolk County Record Office, Bury Saint Edmunds; The National Archives: Public Records Office, Kew; and West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds. I have learned a great deal more about my own work through conversations and spirited debates with fellow graduate students about their research. In particular, I am thankful to have had the feedback and friendship of Niklas Frykman, Bayete Henderson, Patrick Hughes, Craig Marin, Richard Purcell, Alyssa Ribeiro, Ellie Walsh and Kenyon Zimmer. A core group of people have supported and inspired me in ways that will not be perceptible to most readers, but they have been integral to my work. Lisa Bartolli, Matthew vii Duffy, Ronnie Kaye, Ellen, Robin and Alan Phillips, Paul Street and Anita Zubére brought my attention back on many occasions to what is truly important in life. This is a modest offering indeed in comparison to what they have given me, and words cannot express the depths of my gratitude to each of them. Finally, I dedicate this dissertation with love to my mother and father, who continue to teach me lessons of loyalty and compassion. viii 1.0 INTRODUCTION This is the preliminary attempt to study Jeremy Collier’s life as a whole. He published in a remarkable variety of genres, including political pamphlets, theological treatises, sermons, works of history, and critical and moral essays. Yet historians have only focused on three aspects of his literary output, in isolation from one another, and without accompanying biographical research: his Glorious Revolution pamphlets, the “Stage Controversy,” and his involvement with the nonjurors’ church. The main points of Collier’s life to date have derived from a biographical entry in the Biographia Britannica, published in the mid-eighteenth century, in which it is claimed that the background information about his early life was written by Collier himself. The provenance of this source has not been determined, but its use as a foundational reference for my dissertation is justified by archival findings. I suggest that the entry was written by the nonjuror Samuel Jebb, and that the portion attributed to Collier can be accepted as autobiographical in its circumstantial detail.1 In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Collier received attention from Anglican ecclesiastical historians as a prominent nonjuror.2 Two new editions of his Ecclesiastical 1 The evidence for this claim is found in Samuel Jebb to Thomas Brett, 21 May 1726, Bodleian MS Eng Th c. 29, f. 139-140; Biographia Britannica: or, The lives of the most eminent persons who have flourished in Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I (London: 1747). 2 Thomas Lathbury, A History of the Nonjurors: Their Controversies and Writings (London: 1845); John Henry Overton, The Nonjurors: Their Lives, Principles, and Writings (London: Smith, Elder, & co., 1902); Henry Broxap, The Later Non-jurors (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924); John William Charles Wand, The High Church Schism: Four Lectures on the Nonjurors (London: Faith Press, 1951). 1 History of Great Britain were published within about a decade of one another, both of which included introductions to Collier’s life.3 Again, biographical details were limited to information from
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