Modern British Heresy

Arthur Bury 1624-1714 Rector of Exeter College, Oxford Bury, a vicar’s son, went up to Exeter College, Oxford in 1639, aged 15. He was awarded the degree of BA in 1642 and subsequently elected a Fellow of the college. He was a strong royalist and during the civil war helped in the defence of Oxford for the King. Consequently, in 1648, he was expelled from the city and lived out the remainder of the war and the Cromwellian peace in relative quiet with his father in Devonshire. He married Mary Southcott, a widow, and became Rector of Duloe in Cornwall. As a Royalist he was turned out of this living in 1649 and returned to it after the war. The restoration of the monarchy also meant the restoration of his fellowship, and Bury returned to his College. In May 1662 he was elected Rector [head] of the College, on the recommendation of Archbishop Tillotson and the explicit instruction of King Charles II despite the Fellows’ ingrained resentment of external interference in their

This blog is focused on modern heresy in Christian churches in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales from the Act of Toleration (1689) to the present. My starting question was: "what's the point of heresy in a tolerant era?" I have yet to find a single and sufficient answer. ( Why I began to study heresy ) To date, I have identified around 150 individuals who meet my dual criteria  that : 1. they have been formally accused of heresy  and  2. some form of official action followed.  I am confident that other cases will continue to come to light. Some of these accusations and trials are well known to historians. Others have been forgotten because they were - and are - wholly marginal: there has been no need or desire to remember them.  Sometimes there have been clusters of cases as church leaders determined to expel a group or, perhaps more accurately, the ideas the group has expounded, from the boundaries of that church.  But the majority of accusations have been agains