Inventory Controversial Writing Annotation

Dr. Priestley Barbauld could be referencing Priestley’s political writing. Dr. Joseph Priestley was a Dissenter, or a person who did not subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican Church. The English government had passed acts such as the Corporation Act of 1661, which forbade people dissenting from the Church of England from “holding public office, teaching school, attendance at or preaching in a ‘conventicler,’ serving as officers in the armed forces, or graduating from Oxford or Cambridge” (Schofield 203).

Even though by the mid-eighteenth century conditions for Dissenters had improved somewhat, they were often harassed by local officials and mobs
(204), and so Priestley had plenty of fodder for writing political pamphlets. But since his scientific experiments were also controversial, Barbauld could be referencing those, or both.

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