BOOK: Jeffrey R. WIGELSWORTH, All Souls College, Oxford in the Early Eighteenth Century. Piety, Political Imposition, and Legacy of the Glorious Revolution [Scientific Learned Cultures and Their Institutions, 24] (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff/Brill, 2018), 190 p. ISBN 789004375352, € 103

(image source: Brill)

Book abstract:

In the first detailed history of All Souls College under the Wardenship of Bernard Gardiner, Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth offers a character driven story that addresses scheming, duplicity, and self-righteousness projected against some of the most important political and religious episodes of the early eighteenth century and the people who animated them. Throughout this book, Wigelsworth illuminates the ways in which All Souls and its warden were caught between competing visions of what England, and consequently Oxford, would look like in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. 

Table of contents:

 Introduction (1-27)
Gardiner and the House of Commons Bill (28-48)
Gardiner, Matthew Tindal, and The Rights of the Christian Church Asserted (49-70)
Gardiner and the Trouble with Medicine (71-85)
Gardiner and the Case of William Blencowe (86-112)
John Stead’s Marriage and Gardiner’s Final Loss of Authority (113-143)
Gardiner and the Attempted Reform of Universities (144-176)
Conclusion (177-190)
Bibliography (191-201)

On the author:

Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth, PhD (2006) University of Saskatchewan, is Head of History at Red Deer College, Canada. His books include Deism in Enlightenment England (2009) and Selling Science in the Age of Newton (2010). He was also the co-editor of Atheism and Deism Revalued (2015).