1. On the Catholic polemic against Protestantism see my Idol Temples and Crafty Priests: The Origins of Enlightenment Anticlericalism (New York: Macmillan, 1999).Google Scholar

2. The result of effectively ignoring “minor” English historians in the eighteenth century is a general one and not restricted to historians of the church. Laird Okie has noted, “The tendency of scholars to focus on a few big names has produced an incomplete and somewhat distorted picture of eighteenth-century historiography” (Augustan Historical Writing: Histories of England in the English Enlightenment [Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1991], 1).Google Scholar

3. On the status of the Bible in the early modern period see, for instance, Henning Graf Reventlow, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World (London: SCM, 1984).Google Scholar

4. On the general nature of historical writing in the British Reformation see Levy, F. J., Tudor Historical Thought (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1967), 79–123.Google Scholar

5. On John Foxe and church history see Facey, J., “John Foxe and the Defence of the English Church,” in Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth Century England, ed. Lake, P. and Dowling, M. (London: Croom Helm, 1987), esp. 169–70.Google Scholar On the construction of Protestant historical legitimacy in general terms, see, for example, Knott, John R., Discourses of Martyrdom in English Literature, 1563–1694 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), esp. 109–110;Google Scholar also Cameron, Euan, Reformation of the Heretics (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), 230–52,Google Scholar and idem, “Medieval Heretics as Protestant Martyrs,” in Martyrs and Martyrologies: Papers Read at the 1992 Summer Meeting and the 1993 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. Wood, Diana, Studies in Church History 30 (Oxford: Blackwell for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1993).Google Scholar

6. On the apocalyptic nature of English Protestant thought see Dawson, Jane A., “The Apocalyptic Thinking of the Marian Exiles,” in Prophecy and Eschatology, ed. Wilks, Michael, Studies in Church History, Subsidia 10 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).Google Scholar More generally see Firth, K., Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 1530–1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

7. Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 276–77.Google Scholar

8. See Foxe, John, Actes and Monuments of Matters Happening in the Church (1563), ed. Townsend, George (New York: AMS, 1965), 1:152,306,404.Google Scholar Although the claim for the visit of St. Joseph of Arimathea is found in William of Malmesbury's De antiquitate Glastoniensis ecclesiae, the passage on this subject is an addition of at least a hundred years later. On the legend of Joseph of Arimathea see Treharne, R. F., The Glastonbury Legends: Joseph of Arimathea, the Holy Grail, and King Arthur (London: Cresset, 1971).Google Scholar

9. Bale, John, The Vocacyon of johân Bale (Rome, 1553), sig. B4v.Google Scholar

10. The Vaudois still survive in Piedmont as the Chiesa Evangelica Valdese. On the Waldenses and the Reformation attitude to them see Cameron, Reformation of the Heretics, and his “Medieval Heretics as Protestant Martyrs”; Lambert, Malcolm D., Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1977), 361–69;Google Scholarand Molnar, Amedeo, Hugon, Augusto Armand, and Vinay, Valdo, Storia dei Valdesi, 3 vols. (Turin: Claudiana, 1974–1980).Google Scholar

11. The Cathari were, however, first recorded in eleventh-century France.Google Scholar

12. For a work focusing on Wycliffe as the principal Protestant forebear see the anonymous Predecessours, Luthers: Or an Answere to the Question of the Papists: Where was your Church before Luther? (London, 1624).Google Scholar

13. See, for example Richard Field, Of the Church, Five Bookes (London, 1606), 19–20, 72, 76.Google Scholar

14. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 300–302,305.Google Scholar

15. Foxe, John, Acts and Monuments of these latter and perilous days touching matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and described the great persecutions & horrible troubles, that have bene wrought and practised by the Romishe Prelates (London, 1563), 42a–14a.Google Scholar

16. On the visit of Joseph of Arimathea to England see Fuller, Thomas, Church-History of Britain, from the Birth of Jesus Christ, untill the Year 1648 (1655), ed. Brewer, J. S. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1845), 1:16–23.Google ScholarFor an another Anglican work asserting the visit of Joseph of Arimathea (but not identifying the Waldenses as Protestant forebears) see the Somerset rector Bernard Richard's tract Look Beyond Luther: or an Answere to that Question so often and so insultingly proposed by our Adversaries, asking us; Where this our Religion was before Luthers time? (London, 1623).Google Scholar

17. On King Lucius see Treharne, Glastonbury Legends. For a discussion of the early modern debate on Joseph of Arimathea and King Lucius, see Champion, Justin, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 53–98.Google Scholar

18. Both the Episcopalian Peter Heylyn (1600–1662) and the Latirudinarian Edward Stillingfleet (1635–99) felt that there was insufficient evidence to verify the Joseph of Arimathea legend (on Heylyn and Stillingfleet, see below).Google Scholar

19. On the seventeenth-century debate on Joseph of Arimathea and King Lucius see also Heylyn, Peter, History of Episcopacy, first published in 1657 as part of his Ecclesia vindicata, or the Church of England Justified (London, 1657);Google ScholarStillingfleet, Edward, Origines britannicae or the Antiquities of the British Churches (London, 1685);Google ScholarGeaves, William (pseudonym G. Gearing), The History of the Church of Great Britain (London, 1674).Google Scholar

20. Beza, Theodore, Histoire ecclésiastique des églises réformées au royaume de France (Geneva, 1580), 1: 35, 39. Some historians have claimed this work was not written by Beza, but is rather a compilation of memoirs sent to him from all parts of France.Google Scholar

21. Theodore Beza, Les Vrais Pourtraits des homines illustres en piété et doctrine (n.p., 1581), 185; this is the French translation of Beza's Latin original (1580).Google Scholar

22. Miolo, Girolam, Historia breve e vera de gli'affari de i valdesi delle valli (cd. 1587), ed. Balmas, Enea (Turin: Claudiana, 1971), 81. Mornay's Mystère d'iniquité was also translated into English by Samson Lennard (The Mysterie oflniquitie, 1612).Google Scholar

23. On early modern historiography of the medieval church and the “pagano-papism” indictment, see Harrison, Peter, “Religion” and the Religions in theEnglish Enlightenment (Avon: Cambridge University Press, 1990);and my Idol Temples and Crafty Priests.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 173–74.Google Scholar

25. Field, Of the Church, 82–85.Google Scholar

26. Anonymous (wrongly attributed to Isaac Casaubon), The Original of Popish Idolatrie (1624, published in French; London, 1630), 34.Google Scholar

27. The reign of Constantine provided a benchmark in the chronology of the corruption of the church by Rome independent of the fact that the supposed territorial Donation (the western Empire) of Constantine to the church had already been proven a fraud by Lorenzo Valla in 1440; see Lorenzo Valla, De falsa credita et ementita Constantini Donatione declamatio (1440).Google Scholar

28. On the confusion between supposed deists and Dissenters, see my Idol Temples and Crafty Priests, esp. chapters 6–7.Google Scholar

29. Collinson, Patrick, The Birthpangs of Protestant England (New York: St. Martin's, 1988),Google Scholar

30. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 31–32.Google Scholar

31. For an account of anti-Catholic fears in the 1670s and 1680s, see Scott, Jonathan, “England's Troubles: Exhuming the Popish Plot,“ in Politics of Religion in Restoration England, ed. Harris, Tim, Seaward, Paul, and Goldie, Mark (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).Google Scholar On the political and social content of anti-Catholicism more generally see my Idol Temples and Crafty Priests; more generally on eighteenth-century anti-Catholicism, see Haydon, Colin,Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, c. 1714–1780 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

32. For a relatively recent comment on this subject, but one relating only to the first half of the seventeenth century, see Milton, , Catholic and Reformed, 281.Google Scholar

33. Ussher, James, Gravissimae quaestionis de Christianarum ecclesiarum … continua successione et statu, historica explicatio (London, 1613), 209–211.Google Scholar

34. Little biographical information is as yet available on Perrin.Google Scholar

35. Perrin, Jean-Paul, Histoire des Vaudois, divisée in tre parties (Geneva, 1619), 3–4;Google Scholarsee also Lennard's, Samson translation of Perrin, , Luthers Fore-runners: or a Cloud of Witnesses … Gathered together in the Historie of the Waldenses: Who for divers hundred yeares before Luther sucessively opposed Popery, professed the truth of the Gospell, and sealed it with their bloud (London, 1624), part 1, 2.Google Scholar

36. Delaune, Thomas, A Plea for the Non-Conformists, giving the True State of the Dissenters Case (London, 1684), 26.Google Scholar

37. Morland, Samuel, The History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piemont (London, 1658), 8–11.Google Scholar

38. See, for example, An Account of the Late Persecution of the Protestants in the Valleys of Piemont … in the year 1686 (Oxford, 1688), 1–2;Google Scholar also The History of the Persecutions of the Reformed Churches in France, Orange and Piedmont from the year 1655 (London, 1699), 8–9.Google Scholar

39. Peter (Pierre) Allix, Some Remarks upon the Ecclesiastical History of the Ancient Churches of Piedmont (London, 1690), 4–7, 175–83, 295.Google ScholarOn the etymological argument see also Boyer, Pierre, The History of the Vaudois, 2d ed. (London, 1692), 1–2.Google ScholarThe same etymological argument was inserted into the 1711 edition of the original translation of Perrin's Histoire des Vaudois by Lennard, Samson (Luthers Fore-runners: or a Cloud of Witnesses, 1624) by the editor Thomas Bray;Google Scholar see The History of the old Waldenses and Albigenses; those Two Glorious Witnesses to the Truth of Christianity in opposition to the Anti-Christianism of Rome (London, 1711), 1 n, 3 n;Google Scholarthis was printed as part of a collection of tracts edited by Bray, and titled Papal Usurpation and Persecution (London, 1712).Google ScholarSee also A Brief Account of the Vaudois, his Sardinian Majesty's Protestant Subjects in the Valleys of Piedmont (London, 1753), 4–5;Google ScholarTaylor, Thomas, The History of the Waldenses and the Albigenses (Bolton, 1793), 8;Google ScholarMilner, Joseph, History of the Church of Christ (1794–1809; reprint, London, 1819), 3:437–38; 4:202.Google Scholar

40. Beza, Les Vrais Pourtraits des hommes (1580), 185.Google Scholar

41. Boyer, History of the Vaudois, 1–5; the identity of the translator is unknown. On Boyer, it seems, there are no biographical details available.Google Scholar

42. Miolo, Historia breve e vera, 104, text and n. 29.Google Scholar

43. Perrin, , Histoire des Vaudois, part 1, 5–7; part 2, 1–2; Perrin, Luthers Fore-runners: or a Cloud of Witnesses, part 1,1.Google Scholar

44. Allix, Remarks upon the Ecclesiastical History of the Ancient Churches of the Albigenses, 3–4, 112–20, 201–204.Google Scholar

45. Picenino, Giacomo, Apologia per I Riformatori e per la Religione Riformata (Coira, 1706), 2, 125,129. Beyond the fact that he was a Protestant minister, little biographical information is available on Picenino.Google Scholar

46. On these legends see notes 17 and 19 above.Google Scholar

47. Collier, Jeremy, An Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, Chiefly of England (London, 1708), 1: 7–18, 80.Google Scholar

48. There seems to be no biographical information available on A. Blackamore.Google Scholar

49. Collier, , Ecclesiastical History, 1: 388–90,582–83;Google ScholarBlackamore, A., “Index haereticus, containing a Short Account of all the Principal Heresies,” published as part of his Ecclesiae primitives notitia; or a Summary of Christian Antiquities (abridged by A. Blackamore from [Stillingfleef's] “Origines ecclesiasticae”) (London, 1722), 1: 4, 36, 39–10, 78–80.Google Scholar Interestingly, Collier's fellow Nonjuror Laurence Howell (16647–1720), although not subscribing to the forebears theory, did not condemn Wycliffe, , the Albigenses, or the Waldenses in his View of the Pontificate (London, 1712). Instead Howell praised them, indicating a surprising degree of heterogeneity in Nonjuring thought (View of the Pontificate, 347,454).Google Scholar

50. Blackamore, , Index haereticus, 4, 36, 39–40.Google Scholar

51. Wake, William, The Case of the Exiled Vaudois and French Protestants Stated: And their relief recommended to all good Christians … in a sermon preached at St. James Westminster, April 5, 1699 (London, 1699), 13–14, 17–18.Google Scholar

52. Anonymous, Popery a Novelty, or, the Protestant Religion more Ancient: being an answer to the question of the Papists, Where was your Religion before Luther? By a Protestant of the Church of England (London, 1713), 6–9,12,14–16,19.Google Scholar

53. Gisborne, Thomas, A Familiar Survey of the Christian Religion (London, 1799), 462–63, 465, 474.Google Scholar

54. Perrin, , The History of the old Waldenses and Albigenses, ed. Bray, T., 1 n, 3 n. Cameron, Reformation of the Heretics, 251 n. 101, states that Bray reprinted the work of Perrin, but does not note that Bray denied Perrin's argument for the origin of the Waldenses.Google Scholar

55. The first of these publications has yet to be traced. The other two are: Clayton, Robert (Protestant), A Replication to the Rejoinder: being a State of the Case, together with the History of Popery; containing an Account of its Rise, Progress and Decay (Dublin, 1743);Google Scholar and O'Brien, Timothy (Catholic), Truth Triumphant: in the Defeat of a Book, intitled, A Replication to the Rejoinder, & c. (Cork, 1745).Google Scholar

56. Gentlemen, Several, The history of Popery, with such Alterations of Phrase, as may be more suitable to the taste of this age; and such additions, as may improve the history, strengthen the argument and better accommodate it to the present state of Popery in Great Britain (London, 1735), 1: 419–20, 422, 426.Google Scholar From 1679, periodical, Care'sA Pacquet of Advice from Rome was retitled the Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome. Another anonymous publication, A Brief Account of the Vaudois, his Sardinian Majesty's Protestant Subjects in the Valleys of Piedmont. In a Letter from a Gentleman on his Travels in Italy (London, 1753), provides a similar analysis of Protestant forebears to that of The History of Popery. The ecclesiological stance of the writer cannot, however, be determined with any certainty, although the forthright nature of his claims may indicate a Dissenting orientation.Google Scholar

57. Angell, John the Elder, The History of Religion: particularly of the Principal Denominations of Christians (London, 1764; the date of 1744 on the title page of vol. 1 is incorrect), 1: 93, 205–206; 2: 108; 4: 114.Google Scholar Angell wrote anonymously, signing his work “By an Impartial Hand.” On Angell see Wright, Alexander T., The Two Angells of Stenography (London: Truslove and Bray, 1919).Google Scholar

58. Wesley, John, A Concise Ecclesiastical History (London, 1781), 1: 290, 2: 213–14. Wesley was already not well disposed towards Maclaine because, in his appendix, Maclaine had listed the Methodists as heretics.Google Scholar

59. Von Mosheim, Johann Lorenz, An Ecclesiastical History, trans. Maclaine, (London, 1765), 1: 616.Google Scholar

60. It is in the 1768 and 1774 editions of his translation that Maclaine's addition to Mosheim's original footnote appears: see 452–53 in both the 1768 edition (London) and the 1774 edition (London).Google Scholar

61. Mosheim, , Ecclesiastical History, 1: 616.Google Scholar

62. Taylor, Thomas, History of the Waldenses, 5–9 (original in italics); see also 15–17.Google Scholar

63. Milner, , History of the Church, 3: 381–82, 390, 437–38, 443–45, 459–60, 462, 477, 482; 4: 283. On Claudius of Turin see also:A Brief Account of the Vaudois, 5–6;Google Scholarand the Scottish Secession Church minister Brown's, JohnCompendious History of the Church of England and of the Protestant Churches in Ireland and America (Glasgow, 1784), 1: 6–7; Several Gentlemen, History of Popery, 1:420.Google Scholar

64. Milner, , History of the Church, 3: 246, 511; 4: 4–5.Google Scholar

65. Milner, , History of the Church, 3: 437–38, 509. Milner, however, was critical of some elements of Wycliffe's thought (see 4:138–40). The origin of the term “Lollard” seems to be in the middle Dutch term lollen or lullen, to sing; or possibly from the Latin lolia, tares.Google Scholar

66. Priestley, Joseph, A General History of the Christian Church from the Fall of the Western Empire to the Present Time (Northumberland, 1802–1803), 2: 103–104, 106–107. This is the continuation of Priestley's General History of the Christian Church to the Fall of the Western Empire, 1790.Google Scholar

67. Priestley, , General History, 2:107, 456, 458–59, 464–65.Google Scholar

68. Blackamore, , “Index haereticus,” 43. For another example of the Anglican rebuttal of Manicheism see Thomas Gisborne, A Familiar Survey (London, 1799), 462–63.Google Scholar

69. On the rebuttal of links between Manicheism and the Waldenses and Albigenses (and their portrayal as Protestant forebears) see also Brown, Compendious History, 1: 7–8.Google Scholar

70. Wesley, , Concise History, 2:150–53.Google Scholar

71. Priestley, , General History, 1: preface, 12.Google Scholar

72. Milner, , History of the Church, 3: 97; 4:145.Google Scholar