Making orthodoxy in late Restoration England: the trials of Edmund Hickeringill, 1662-1710
By Justin A. I. Champion and Lee McNulty
Negotiating power in early modern society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland, edited by Michael J. Braddick and John Walter (Cambridge University Press, 2001)
Introduction: In the preface to the posthumous collection of his miscellaneous works of 1709, the Godly cleric Edmund Hickeringill (1631-1708), was described as being ‘averse to ceremonies and superstition; without a tincture of atheiem; he was daring in the field, and prudent in the cabinet. He was a scholar without affection, a divine without pride, and a lawyer that never took fee.’ Cambridge educated, in May 1652 he was ordained into the Baptist Church at Hexham, Northumberland. While chaplain to Robert Lilburne’s regiment, a ‘grievous apostasy’ befell and he became a Quaker. Although described by one contemporary as a ‘desperate atheist’, from October 1662 until his death in 1708 Hickeringill was a conforming rector of the established Church of England.
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