This book focusses on sermons for national thanksgiving days in Britain from 1689 to 1816. It is based on material found in 587 published sermons produced for more than forty commemorations of national thanksgiving during that period. These celebrated some of the most significant events in Britain from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. They include the Revolution of 1688–89, the numerous military successes of Queen Anne's reign, the Union of England and Scotland, the Hanoverian succession, the defeat of the Jacobite rebellions, victories over the French in the War of the Austrian Succession and in the Seven Years’ War, and the victories at the Battle of the Nile, Trafalgar, and Waterloo. Each of these was marked by special thanksgiving services, allowing windows into cultural, social, and political ideas articulated on such occasions over the course of the ‘long eighteenth century’.

The study examines thanksgiving-day sermons in particular and will not include sermons for annual observances like the anniversary of the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot (5 November) or of the ‘martyrdom’ of Charles I (30 January): while significant in their own right, such annual commemorations were associated with a fixed and historical set of circumstances and often followed a traditional rhetoric and message. They were not so much ‘of a moment’ and usually tended to have a purposeful and significant part of their attention aimed at looking backwards. In contrast, thanksgiving days were very much occasional in their topics and in their placement within the year. This allowed for, and indeed inspired, a much more spontaneous response to the topics being considered and the conditions which the nation found itself in on those days, in the present and looking forward.

For convenience, the term the ‘long eighteenth century’ will be used throughout the book as a general description of the chronological period from 1689 to 1816. ‘Britain’ and ‘Britons’ refer to the territories and people of the British Isles. These expediencies are not an argument to suggest an entire national cohesion and unanimity for this 127-year period, nor do they neglect an awareness that Scotland, England, and Wales did not exist as a single political entity before 1707, and that Ireland was not absorbed into the United Kingdom until the turn of the nineteenth century; neither are they ignorant of the complexities and diversities of Britain's various nationalisms, regional variants, and colonial holdings.