Tracing the impact of England's ‘long’ Reformation on provincial town life has generated a minor industry in recent years. William Gibson has added to this output with an engaging account of religion and politics in Taunton, a hub of the West Country cloth trade and home to a lively culture of Protestant nonconformity under the Stuarts and Hanoverians, the book's principal subject. Admittedly, Taunton's dissenting tradition came late in the day. Gibson implies that it coincided with the arrival of George Newton as vicar of St Mary Magdalen in 1631, where there existed a constituency for Newton's Puritanism as well as for his later efforts to organise a Presbyterian classis in Civil War Somerset. Some followers were even inspired to undertake a mission to Palestine in 1650. Of course, given Newton's subsequent influence, it would have been nice to learn more of the circumstances surrounding his planting in Taunton and, noting his aversion to ‘hawks and hounds’ for leisure, whether his ministry was universally welcomed. Indeed, it was during Newton's incumbency in the 1630s that parishioners lavished £200 upon a new organ for St Mary's. Such embellishment sits awkwardly with notions of a ‘Puritan’ parish, while delays in a thorough-going Reformation make it difficult to accept Gibson's inference that Taunton was Stuart England's most revolutionary town. Even so, Taunton's part in national affairs coloured its reputation as a hotbed of rebellious Protestantism. Thus the town held out for Parliament against two Royalist sieges in the Civil War, while in 1685 it extended hospitality and volunteers to the duke of Monmouth, who was duly greeted by twenty-seven ‘Taunton Maids’. A further recruitment drive against Catholic threats was prompted by William of Orange's invasion. Following the Glorious Revolution, Taunton emerged as a Whig bastion, efforts by a Tory clique to unseat the Dissenters' candidate for the 1754 election leading to a full-scale riot very ‘prejudicial to trade’. Yet the rise of Dissent was not only an occasion for militancy and faction. Instead Gibson's main focus is on the calming eirenicism favoured by Taunton's Dissenting Academy – rooted in George Newton's Presbyterian Meeting – where ‘rational’ tolerant theology was the preferred curriculum under its tutor Henry Grove. Eirenicism was fortuitously shared by local Anglican ministers. Grove's legacy also ensured that Taunton Dissent accommodated Arians in the 1730s and Wesleyan Methodists in the 1770s, rational Christianity finally transforming Taunton into a ‘polite’ and enlightened society by 1800. Thus Taunton Dissent abandoned its former rebellious streak on religious grounds. Here Gibson is right to remind us of history's condescension ‘to assume that militancy and extremism could be provoked by religious impulses, but reason and moderation were secular rather than religious in origin’. Church historians will surely concur. Nevertheless, with the passing of constitutional crisis, the establishment of toleration and the extension of party politics nationally after 1689, one is left wondering why Dissent in Taunton needed its old rebellious streak. Yet this comment should not detract from William Gibson's thought-provoking study of enlightened moderation triumphing within a local context.