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Livestream: https://youtube.com/live/BM4poWMC1ms?feature=share Dr Henry Sacheverell (1674-1724), described by one recent scholar as 'a high-flying, hard-drinking and otherwise intellectually undistinguished clergyman', was Britain's first media celebrity. Whilst students of political history and the public sphere have focused attention on the constitutional issues debated during his great showpiece trial in 1710, with its remarkable associated proliferation of material ephemera, current scholarship has been less assured when attempting to engage with the theological context within which 'The Doctor's' reputation was established long before 5 November 1709, when he entered the pulpit in St Paul's Cathedral to deliver his most famous sermon: The Perils of False Brethren, Both in Church and State. With this background in mind, the talk will go on to discuss the various categories of High Churchmanship as seen by contemporary observers during the rest of the 'long' eighteenth century, before briefly considering what that inheritance meant for the Tractarians.
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