Courtier, scholar, and man of the sword. Lord Herbert of Cherbury and his world. By Christine Jackson. Pp. xviii + 381 incl. 23 ills and 2 tables. Oxford–New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. £75. 978 0 19 284722 5

Abstract

in the early Stuart Church while carefully articulating its distinctiveness in historical-theological context. Having hitherto received only cursory attention, Hampton brings this tradition to the foreground of the early Stuart English ecclesiastical landscape, identifiably distinct from (and, as it were, sandwiched inbetween) its contemporary Puritan and Laudian counterparts. Its representatives included ‘theologians without whose work it is not possible to give any useful account of the religious debates that took place during the Early Stuart period’, who were ‘all figures of recognized distinction and influence within the English Church’, and yet were merely ‘the tip’ of a Reformed conformist ‘iceberg’ among the clergy (p. ). Secondly, this book is a landmark contribution to the growing body of scholarship on the variegated nature of the Reformed tradition as shaped by different ecclesio-political contexts, different appropriations of sources and different theological predilections. As Hampton concludes: