Daniel Neal
G.F. Main
Hardback
691 pages

Daniel Neal's "The History of the Puritans" was published in four volumes between 1732 and 1738. Despite running to over one million words, its popularity was instant and the work went through at least twenty-one editions and reprints in just over one hundred years to 1863. Professor Okie contends that is is 'the closest thing we have to an official Dissenting history of England' and one which demonstrates 'the role of Puritanism in fostering English liberty'.

"The History of the Puritans", despite its worth, has been largely neglected over the last 150 years due to the increasingly secular nature of our age, which little understands that in the past there was a determined party in the land to whom conscience was more important than property, and religious convictions than life or ease. As historian John Spurr states: 'religion in seventeenth century Britain was not a modern political 'problem'; it was not an issue, like inflation or the use of resources in the health services to be managed or solved through political strategies. Religion was part of the way that society and politics were constituted.' Sleepily, we have lost sight of the struggles which won the freedoms enjoyed for so many generations.

This is a one-volume edition, abridged and edited by G.F. Main from the Palmer abridged edition (1811) with additions from the Tegg/Toulman edition (1837) and with reference to the first edition (1732-38).