The untimely death of Justin Champion (1960–2020), one of early modern British history’s ‘most influential and charismatic academics’, is rightly mourned in the preface to this fitting tribute to his significant and likely enduring legacy (p. xii). Bookended by Alex Barber’s excellent introduction and the superb conclusion by Champion’s PhD supervisor Mark Goldie, the twelve essays and brief afterword in this edited collection have been written by Champion’s former colleagues, interlocutors and students. All undoubtedly owe a considerable intellectual debt to a great man who might be described as ‘erudite, witty and wicked’: a phrase that, as Goldie observes, is equally applicable if not to Champion’s alter ego then certainly the historical figure with whom he most closely identified, the learned Irish freethinker and polemicist John Toland (pp. 1, 36, 240). To varying degrees each contributor has thoughtfully engaged with an aspect of Champion’s work, although some – at least outwardly – more obviously so than others. Moreover, Champion welcomed constructive criticism, which was better than being ignored, and in a spirit of respectful disagreement a handful of essays – notably that by Ingram – seek to offer alternative interpretations, especially concerning the definition and parameters of the early Enlightenment; the place of Anglicanism within that Enlightenment; and Champion’s seeming partiality towards his subjects’ goals and the sophisticated strategies they adopted to achieve their ends. Perhaps Champion was somewhat in sympathy with these figures. Coupled with a reluctance to engage with theology this resulted, according to Ingram’s reading of Champion’s critics, in ‘a kind of secular confessional history told from the perspective of the Church’s enemies’ (pp. 222, 242–3, 250).

Intellectually, as Goldie makes clear, Champion could be considered a Francophile, his research relocating Paul Hazard’s European crisis of conscience within the context of an English and Irish crisis of Christianity. To an extent this was an application of Michel Foucault’s insights, but more so those of Michel de Certeau. In other words, to quote Goldie, Champion was concerned with ‘the social or cultural history of ideas’ (p. 243), particularly how readers responded to hitherto authoritative texts and the processes through which an assortment of largely interconnected anticlerical radicals were able to shake the pillars of orthodox belief that propped up the re-established post-Restoration Church of England. In a later mode, it should be added, Champion moved somewhat naturally towards the history of the book, drawing upon the work of among others Roger Chartier and Robert Darnton. Furthermore, as Barber notes, having begun his career by primarily engaging with John Pocock and then Margaret Jacob, Champion ended it by returning to Christopher Hill, whose books had enthused Champion as a sixth former and undergraduate (pp. 5, 35–6).

Most of Champion’s output is covered here, with the exceptions of his publications on epidemic disease, particularly the Great Plague of 1665, as well as his passionate and long-standing commitment to public history (Champion was awarded the Medlicott Medal of the Historical Association in 2018). The latter, however, is briefly addressed by John Marshall with regard to Champion’s eager anticipation of ‘future attempts to challenge the colonialist, militarist, and royalist dominance of English and London’s public statuary’ (pp. 134–6). The chapters themselves follow a roughly chronological order. Thus the opening five essays deal with Republican thinkers: Rachel Hammersley on James Harrington’s democratic legacy; David Womersley on Henry Neville’s booklist; Gaby Mahlberg on Neville as a heterodox thinker; Katie East on John Toland’s esoteric and exoteric beliefs; and John Marshall on Sir Robert Clayton and Toland in relation to London, liberty, slavery and statuary. All, as might be expected, are excellent. Hammersley argues that democracy was central to Harrington’s programme even if his understanding of it ‘may have been idiosyncratic’ (p. 57). Unusually, Womersley begins with a counter-factual narrative so as to explain the political and constitutional pathway that Neville envisaged for his Plato redivivus (1681). From one perspective this was ‘an essay in re-purposing the republican political theory of the mid- and late-1650s to the circumstances and opportunities created by the Exclusion Crisis’ (p. 63). Even so, Womersley persuasively suggests that Neville’s revisions to the second edition of this book are crucial for discerning his intention. Staying with Neville, Mahlberg focuses on three important aspects of his heterodox beliefs: biblical literalism, anticlericalism and ‘toleration of other faiths and confessions, notably Catholicism’ (p. 79). Mahlberg concludes by suggesting that Neville’s ‘republican principles’ and ‘heterodox religious beliefs were closely entwined’ thereby preparing the ground for later Freethinkers (p. 96). East argues that Champion was correct in highlighting Toland’s esoteric-exoteric approach; that this interpretation was more significant than Champion allowed; and that it facilitates a clearer understanding of ‘how Toland argued for his envisaged civil religion’ (p. 100). In short, Toland recognised ‘the need to communicate at different levels for different audiences’ (p. 117). Marshall’s focus largely switches from Toland to one of his key Whig patrons, Sir Robert Clayton. Here Marshall brings out the irony of Toland’s advocacy for London as a Protestant, anti-Catholic bulwark which through a citizen militia and other mechanisms defended its inhabitants from the encroachments of late Stuart absolutism while wealthy merchants and financiers operating within that same City – like Clayton – simultaneously enriched themselves through the horrific enslavement, enforced transportation and exploitation of black Africans.

Turning to the five essays in the second half of this volume, Rob Iliffe discusses Leibniz and the Baconian ‘idols of the Newtonian tribe’; Delphine Doucet examines the afterlife of a clandestine manuscript, namely the Colloquium Heptaplomeres attributed to Jean Bodin; Michael Hunter explores the trial in 1739 of Tinkler Ducket, a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, as a case study of atheism and libertinism in eighteenth-century England; William Bulman looks at John Evelyn’s ‘History of religion’; and Robert Ingram focuses on Christ, politics and publics in Hanoverian England. There is also an afterword by Margaret Jacob on a notorious semi-clandestine French treatise printed in the early eighteenth century concerning the three impostors, Jesus, Moses and Mohammed. Again, all are excellent. Iliffe provides a ‘sociological examination’ of the so-called priority dispute between Newton, Leibniz and their allies. He demonstrates that ‘key aspects of the priority dispute were conditioned by the different ways in which Newton and Leibniz believed that knowledge should be produced, justified and disseminated’ (p. 157). Doucet considers ‘the way in which readers interacted with scribal texts’ (p. 162) and suggests that ‘the Colloquium was as much a symbol of heterodoxy in its afterlife as a provider of heterodoxy’ (p. 180). Hunter uses the expulsion of Tinkler Ducket from Cambridge University – ‘a strangely protracted affair’ – to make the point that by strategically emphasising the supposed linkage between atheism and immorality defenders of orthodoxy were able to avoid ‘serious discussion’ of potentially destabilising heterodox ideas (pp. 183, 196). Bulman explores what he calls ‘the outer limits of unenlightened Anglican practice and argument’ by focusing on John Evelyn’s lengthy, unfinished and initially unpublished treatise on religion (p. 201). He concludes by suggesting that the ‘overwhelming emphasis’ of Evelyn’s ‘History’ was ‘the need to reject the rhetorical concessions’ being made by Evelyn’s contemporaries to ‘politic, deist, and atheist arguments’ (p. 217). Finally, Ingram challenges Champion’s understanding of ‘church, state and liberty in early modern England’ through a detailed examination of the 1721 addressing campaign (p. 237).

Although the ordering of a couple of chapters might have been switched so as to make their sequence more cohesive and although there are a regrettable number of typographical errors that could have been amended through careful proof-reading, the editors and contributors are none the less to be collectively congratulated for producing an excellent, thought-provoking and indeed challenging volume befitting of Champion’s memory.