ABSTRACT
Religious dissenters (those Protestants who refused to conform to the Church of England) greeted the accession of George I with joy and relief, but also with expressions of loyalty. 1 In one of the best-known accounts, the prominent London dissenting minister Thomas Bradbury claimed to have been the first person to proclaim George I as king. Preaching on 1 August 1714 at his meeting house in Fetter Lane he had news of Queen Anne’s death signalled to him by the dropping of a handkerchief from the gallery. In the final prayers after the sermon, to the consternation of his congregation unaware of the news, he gave thanks for the deliverance of the three kingdoms from the evil councils and designs of their enemies, and implored divine blessings upon his majesty King George and the house of Hanover. He then gave out the 89th psalm: ‘I will sing of the mercies of the Lord for ever’! He is said subsequently to have preached on the text 2 Kings ix, v. 24: ‘Go, see now this cursed woman’. The latter anecdote is possibly apocryphal, though it was certainly characteristic of Bradbury’s bombastic behaviour which on frequent occasions upset his contemporaries. The account of Bradbury’s proclamation of George I may also not be reliable, for the first reference dates from the early nineteenth century. 2 There are, however, plenty of documented accounts of dissenters expressing their support for the new dynasty. The Non-juror Thomas Carte, writing from Dorset on 18 August, reported in disgust that ‘[t]he Presbyterians of Sherburn called K. G. Their King, & say, now is their Time’. Accounts of the proclamation of King George in the west of England record similar expressions of loyalty by dissenters. 3
