The Reverend Henry Sacheverell was not a nice man. To his Whig and Dissenting enemies he was “a pulpit buffoon”—and worse. Even to his friends—such as Ralph Bridges, a high church chaplain to the Bishop of London—he was intemperate and over political, “a Red Hot Party Man,” to quote the Dissenter Daniel Burgess (5, 274). But whatever his personal qualities no one can deny that his sensational 1710 impeachment was important. As Brian Cowan, the editor of this volume, rightly says, the trial represents “the culmination of debates that had been going on since the 1680s” (233). Divisions between Whig and Tory, high and low church, and arguments over the nature and meaning of the Revolution of 1688 were all vividly displayed as Lord Godolphin's ministry attempted to administer what it hoped would be a salutary punishment upon an obstreperous opponent. Sacheverell's case has been studied in depth by other historians, notably Geoffrey Holmes and William Speck, and in this volume Cowan brings together a variety of primary sources dealing with the affair.

The most widely cited source for the impeachment was authorized by Parliament and published by the Whig printer Jacob Tonson. Intended to demonstrate that Sacheverell's prosecution was both fair and justified, Tonson's account offers a largely accurate, if not complete, picture of the proceedings in Westminster Hall. But the Tryal of Dr. Henry Sacheverell was hardly the only contemporary publication focused upon the doctor. The kingdom was transfixed by the affair and public interest was extraordinary. The sermon that sparked the impeachment, Perils of False Brethren, itself sold tens of thousands of copies—perhaps as many as 100,000 in a year. Pamphlets, broadsides, engravings, division lists, and ballads poured from British (and even Continental) presses in a tidal wave of print. Quite apart from its political significance, the Sacheverell trial was nothing less than a bonanza for Grub Street.

Cowan, who has already published an excellent article on the subject (“The Spin Doctor: Dr. Sacheverell's Trial Speech and Political Performance in the Divided Society,” Parliamentary History, 31, no.1 [2012]: 28–46), offers in this volume a glimpse of the rich variety of material produced by the doctor's travails. He draws together an impressive array of sources dealing with the impeachment. These include rare printed materials not previously noted in F. F. Madan's Critical Bibliography of Dr. Henry Sacheverell (edited by W. A. Speck, 1978). The book also includes manuscript sources, such as the Tory-inflected Osborn Account of the trial housed at Yale's Beinecke Library. Cowan has also added visual sources as well, both Whig and Tory broadsides and even contemporary illustrations of Westminster Hall's layout for the trial. These are all reproduced in high-quality images in the text. Some of these sources, for example Sacheverell's Speech Relating to the Tumults (chapter 7) and a broadside entitled The Life Character and Pious Deportment of Henry Sacheverell (chapter 12) are exceptionally rare, and Cowan has done scholars a great service by making them widely available here.

Indeed, Cowan has done an impressive amount of work in gathering this material together. He has examined material scattered literally halfway around the world, from the Huntington Library in California to the British Library, and many places in between, such as the Lilly Library in Indianapolis and the Leicestershire Record Office. He begins with an excellent, thorough introduction that places Sacheverell's impeachment in its historical context. The case, Cowan argues, turned on political arguments that had roiled British politics since the debate over exclusion—not putting an end to them by any means, but providing a clear picture of the divisions and passions those debates spawned. Was the Revolution founded upon the right to resist a tyrannical king, as Whigs argued, or was it accomplished without resistance, as Tories, wedded to the principle of passive obedience, maintained? Robert Walpole's notes, included here (chapter 15), offer an excellent summary of the Whig position, while the earl of Nottingham's speech at the trial (chapter 16) lays out the Tory position. The editorial work is meticulous and thorough; in addition to providing political historians access to these sources, the work also contributes to the history of print and publishing, and the long-running question of the development of the public sphere in Britain. While not a narrative of the Sacheverell impeachment, the volume allows scholars to compare different accounts of it and to consult a wide variety of hitherto unavailable or hard to access sources.

Cowan's work provides readers with a firsthand glimpse of a society whose bitter political and religious divisions had the power to elevate a “pulpit buffoon” to the status of national hero for one party and an existential threat to government to another. Understanding the partisan rancor of the age is essential for understanding the history of late Stuart Britain, and Brian Cowan's fine editorial work here is a significant contribution to the subject.