The Radical Whigs, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon

Book excerpt: This monograph is an envisaging study of the ideologies of Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard. The work demonstrates that both writers were intimately identified with the Independent Whigs and vociferously denounced the absolutistic thinking and counterrevolutionary threats and activities of High Church Tories and Jacobites. The first two chapters detail the political and religious posture of High Church clergymen during the 1688-89 Revolution. The next three chapters offer vivid profiles of Gordon and Trenchard as being radical, court, and Harringtonian Whigs and assesses their roles as propagandists in early Hanoverian England. There are stimulating accounts concerning the personalities and collaborative efforts of these two men, the origins and functions of The Independent Whig and Cato's Letters, the responses of these writers to the political and religious policies of Walpole, and the repudiation by these Radical Whigs of the tyrannical and seditious behavior of Stuart sympathizers. In the conclusion, the author offers a review of significant points made in the study