Non-Jurors

A historical term denoting those who in earlier times refused to swear an oath of allegiance to the English monarch. Since English law has the notion of an established church of which the monarch is the titular head, the necessity or willingness of the clergy to swear allegiance to the monarch has been a requirement since 1534, when Henry VIII proclaimed himself Supreme Head of the Church of England. The subsequent arrival of Catholic claimants to the English throne consequently created crises of conscience and constitutionality. The term non-juror was coined to denote those of the beneficed clergy and officers who refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Protestants William and Mary in 1689. However, the term came to be used in a hostile and emotive fashion to imply that a non-juror was a rebel and a traitor. Thus the diarist John Evelyn has an entry for February 26, 1696, describing “a conspiracy of about 30 Knights … many of the Irish and English Papists and Non-jurors or Jacobites (so call’d), to murder K[ing] William.” The great legal authority William Blackstone ruled in 1796: “Every person properly called a non-juror, shall be adjudged a popish recusant convict.” ( A recusant was a Catholic who refused to accept Protestant authority.) The term is now historical, although members of the British Parliament are still required to make an oath of allegiance to the monarch.