George Berkeley in America. By Edwin S. Gaustad. Pp. xiii + 225 + map. New Haven–London: Yale University Press, 1979. £9.45.

Abstract

senses), but they were human, 'comeing late', 'giving way to sleape', and worse; and the content of the Minute Books, as of the church books of other dissenters, is mainly disciplinary. In 1710 Joshua Arthington, who had fallen into bankruptcy, gave forth a paper confessing his fault, and admitted that 'if-I had kept to the friend at home [i.e. the light within], the tender counsell of parent, and Friends, I had never com'd to this sorrowfull condition'. John Atkinson, on the other hand, who 'had beene at a race, and ... was spoken to one that account', 'was refractory, and said that he would not come to or appear before friends Let 'em do what they would' (p. 153). Jean and Russell Mortimer are both professional editors, and the editing of this volume is exquisite. The introduction is informative and clear, neither too esoteric nor too long-winded. There is an exhaustive index, with breakdown for occupations as well as for persons with numerous entries. Terse footnotes elucidate the text, and forty pages of biographical notes draw on many Quaker archive volumes to give life to the persons named here: their children were often numerous and, again as among dissenters more widely, bore Old Testament names, though the eleventh of Joseph and Mary Elbeck's thirteen, born in 1716, was called Exercise.