This book takes a series of themes from the early English Enlightenment period and tracks them through one family in one place: the Cowpers of Hereford. Political and religious conflict; authority, truth and God; the emerging new world of science; marriage and adultery; libel in the age of an increasingly free press: all of these themes are explored through a series of lively and entertaining episodes involving various Cowpers. The book is in part aimed at a general student readership, and a glossary explains terms, whilst a list of characters keeps the reader on track. But it is more than that: it is a thoroughly readable book, which ingeniously links the findings of recent political, intellectual and ecclesiastical histories of this period through a compelling narrative. The trial of Spencer Cowper in 1699 for the murder of Quaker Sarah Stout highlights the relationship between Quakers and Anglicans, the role of science in assessing legal evidence and prevailing ideas about love and passion. Sarah Cowper's papers reveal both her deep Anglican faith and her questions about the role of women, at just the moment when Mary Astell was expressing similar ideas in print. The retelling of the trial of Dr Sacheverell, through the lens of the involvement of Spencer and William Cowper, prompts the reader to think anew about political party, religion, the press and morality. The book closes with the story of Jane Wenham, the last woman to be tried for witchcraft in England, in 1712; the Cowpers helped to secure her pardon and gave her protection. Lest we fall too easily into assumptions about the Enlightenment and who embraced its central ideas, Knights reminds us that the local educated elite (clergy and magistrates) were some of those who pressed the case of witchcraft against Wenham. The Cowpers left an unusually rich archive, but the episodes related here, in which they were central players, were not so unusual: they were, rather, emblematic of broader debates and controversies. The book therefore illustrates how that movement we know as ‘the Enlightenment’ was forged and shaped in local struggles and personal stories.