Overview

In the circumstances, the accession of George I was remarkably peaceful. Jacobite sentiment was fairly strong in Scotland, but an attempted landing there by the pretender James Stuart was unsuccessful and no other part of the king's dominions rose in rebellion. The Hanoverians were foreigners and unpopular with their new subjects, but they were tolerated, and although disgruntled opponents sometimes gravitated into the Jacobite camp, this remained a fairly eccentric occurrence and certainly never developed into a mass movement. Unfortunately, in the conservative high-church circles of the Church of England suspicions of latent Jacobitism were particularly strong, and the tragic career of Francis Atterbury did nothing to allay this. Never very diplomatic, Atterbury allowed himself to be seduced by the lure of a Stuart restoration, and he unwisely entered into correspondence with James’ court at St Germain. In the end, he was denounced as a traitor but allowed to flee the country, ending up as an exile in France where he depended on the pretender for what was left of his substance and reputation. He never converted to Roman Catholicism, however, and remained true to his somewhat fanciful belief that Jacobitism and Anglicanism were natural allies.

The revived convocation, which in so many ways was Atterbury's creation, could only suffer from this. It started out much as it had broken off at the death of Queen Anne, and might have been able to complete the business she had assigned to it in spite of a now unsympathetic political regime, but the old urge to prosecute heretics soon got in the way. Benjamin Hoadly, a supporter of the new order, was made bishop of Bangor, much to the disgust of the conservative elements in the church, and when he preached a sermon before the king on 31 March 1717 on the words of Jesus: ‘My kingdom is not of this world', the floodgates opened. Hoadly maintained that the kingdom of God was a spiritual reality, not dependent on visible institutions and hierarchies. This was not ‘heresy’ in any theological sense, but it undermined what most Anglican clergy thought of themselves and their church, and made Hoadly an instant target. He was denounced in convocation, and it was expected that he would be censured on 10 May 1717. Instead, an order came for prorogation, and no further business was transacted.