Authority and Liberty: John Wesley’s View of Medieval England

This article is the first detailed analysis of John Wesley's view of medieval England in his neglected Concise History of England (1776). Although tangled and sometimes contradictory, Wesley's views on medieval royal and ecclesiastical authority, representative government and liberty, were broadly coherent in their emphasis on the necessity of the monarchy to the preservation of freedom, and the requirement that popular uprisings be grounded in a just cause and not conducted against the king. It is argued that Wesley's views expressed in the History help to explain his rapid, and supposedly unexpected, shift in political views in 1775 from supporting the American rebellion to opposing it.