Introduction : the view from 1710

The articles in this volume, planned to mark the tercentenary of the impeachment of Dr Henry Sacheverell on 23 March 1710, reassess the importance of his trial. Sacheverell's attack on the revolution of 1688, and the principles which underpinned it, allows us to question how far, 20 years later, a whig revolution had prevailed. The articles suggest that the revolution continued to be contested; that in 1710 the high church tory vision temporarily triumphed; that the flood of print showed the importance of religious dispute in shaping the public sphere; that the debate over Sacheverell connected Westminster and the public, not just in England but also in Ireland; that there was an important disagreement between high and low church about how to respond to the press's licentiousness, part of a story about the shift away from prepublication censorship towards regulation of print and copyright; that the print controversy over the trial was vituperative, ‘impolite’ and traded lies and misrepresentations; that Sacheverell's critics sought to associate him with harlots in a bid to suggest that his strong influence over women was unhealthy; that Sacheverell, on the other hand, deliberately depicted himself as a martyr; and that, for all its religious heat, 1710 was also important for an early enlightenment debate about political economy, since the tory vision on Church and state also embraced a reoriented foreign policy and that this contest over imperial visions had important consequences for the development of the colonies after 1714