NONJURORS, the name given to those beneficed clergy of the Church of England who refused to take the oaths of alle giance to William and Mary in 1689. They were about 400 in number, and included William Sancroft, archbishop of Canter bury, and four others of the "seven bishops": Thomas Ken of Bath and Wells, John Lake of Chichester, Thomas White of Peterborough and Francis Turner of Ely, together with the bishops of Gloucester, Worcester and Norwich. Other distinguished non jurors were : William Sherlock, master of the Temple, Jeremy Collier, the ecclesiastical historian, George Hickes, dean of Wor cester, Nathanael Spinckes, John Fitzwilliam, canon of Windsor, Henry Dodwell, Camden professor of history at Oxford, Henry Hyde, second earl of Clarendon, and Roger North, the lawyer. Afterwards their number was augmented by refusals to swear the oaths of allegiance to George I. Ken, the most eminent of the nonjurors, disapproved of their subsequent proceedings, and Sher lock and Dodwell afterwards took the required oaths, the former becoming dean of St. Paul's.
Believing in the doctrine of non-resistance to established au thority, the nonjurors argued that James II. was still the right ful king, and likened the position of William to that of Cromwell. With the approval of William III., Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, attempted to reconcile them to the new order; and it was only when the generous terms offered by Burnet had been refused, that, in Feb. 1690, they were deprived of their sees and other benefices. Although they had only a small following among the mass of the people, who were not required to take the oaths of allegiance, Sancroft and his colleagues claimed to represent the true Church of England, and requested James II. in his exile to nominate two new bishops to carry on the episcopal succes sion. James chose Hickes and Thomas Wagstaffe who were consecrated in 1694 as bishops of Thetford and Ips wich respectively. A further consecration took place in 1713
when Collier, Spinckes and Samuel Hawes (d. 1722), were con secrated "bishops at large." In 1718 the introduction of a new communion office with some "usages" taken partly from primitive liturgies, and partly from the first prayer-book of Edward VI. caused a schism among the nonjurors, dividing them into "Usagers" and "Non-Usagers." The four "usages" were : The mixed chalice, prayers for the faithful departed, prayer for the descent of the Holy Ghost on the consecrated elements, and the Oblatory Prayer, offering the elements to the Father as symbols of His Son's Body and Blood. Accepting the "usages" the two bodies united in 1731, but other dissensions followed, although the episcopal succession was maintained until the death of a bishop named Charles Booth in 1805. The last nonjuror was probably James Yeowell, who died in 1875. Public worship was conducted in chapels or "oratories," and in private houses.
In Scotland the nonjurors included the greater part of the clergy of the Episcopal Church, which ceased to be the state church in 1689. The Scottish clergy maintained their opposition to the government until the death of Prince Charles Edward Stuart in 1788, when the bishops met at Aberdeen, and unanimously agreed to submit to the government of King George III. A large number of the Presbyterians in Scotland, principally found among the Cameronians, also refused to take the oaths of allegiance to William and Mary ; but as their reasons for this refusal were quite different from those of the episcopalian nonjurors, they are not usually referred to by this name (see CAMERONIANS).
For the history of the nonjurors, see Macaulay, History of England vol. ii. (1895) ; T. Lathbury, History of the Nonjurors ; J. H. Overton, The Nonjurors (1902), a defence of the sect.