John Gascoigne
Cambridge in the Age of the Enlightenment: Science, Religion
and Politics from the Restoration to the French Revolution.
Cambridge University Press, 1989. First edition. 0521351391
xi/358 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.5" x 9.5", is bound in red
cloth, with stamped gilt lettering to spine. Book shows very
light shelfwear. Binding is firm. Lightly age-toned pages
arte clean and without markings. Jacket is well preserved in mylar cover.
"This book attempts to defend the use of the term 'English
Enlightenment' by using late seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century Cambridge as an illustration of the widespread
diffusion of some of the chief characteristics of the
Enlightenment within the Church of England and the English
'Establishment' more generally. It also seeks to provide a
social context for the dissemination of such ideas by
indicating how the political and ecclesiastical consequences
of such events as the Restoration, the Glorious Revolution
and the French Revolution helped either to facilitate or to
impede that linkage between Anglicanism and sceince which is
sometimes refereed to as "the holy alliance. In summary, the
book argues that in the period 1660-88 there was little
political or ecclesiastical encouragement for such an
alliance while the period 1688-1760 was, by contrast, its
heyday."