Readers of Parson Woodforde's Diary could be forgiven for thinking that the French Revolution made little impact upon the English pulpit. The Fall of the Bastille was noted, on 24 July 1789, in just eight words, and the removal of the French Royal Family to Paris was recorded on 16 October 1789 almost as briefly, with the comment, ‘Sad News from France all anarchy and Confusion’. By 14 July 1791, Woodforde was sufficiently uncertain to describe these events as having taken place ‘last year’. Clearly, he felt no urge to reflect on French politics in his sermons. Woodforde's parish of Weston Longeville was, however, only a few miles from Norwich, a radical centre, where the Revolution was warmly greeted in the Baptist Chapel of St Paul's; and Woodforde's Bishop from June 1790 to January 1792 was a staunch supporter of royal government both in France and in Britain. The country parson's relative silence on these matters, however, cautions us not to assume that the political sermons considered in this chapter were universal, or even perhaps the norm.

That a number of clergymen did preach and publish their reflections on the implications of events in France, should not surprise us. The tradition of political sermons was a well-established one. Although a barrage of criticism was directed at the nature of the views expressed in Richard Price's Discourse on the Love of Our Country, at least one critic recognised that ‘General truths in politics have indeed a dignity from their high importance to society, which may well permit them to be delivered even from the place where the gospel is usually expounded’.