NON-JURORS (« non-giurati »). – When, after the revolution of 1688, the Prince of Orange, husband of Maria, daughter of Giacomo II, wished to be recognized as king of England together with his consort (which Parliament granted him in February of the following year), all state officials, and consequently Anglican bishops and ministers as well, were required to swear an oath of allegiance to the new sovereign.
All had already sworn an oath of allegiance to Giacomo II, to his heir and legitimate successors. The legitimate heir was not his daughter Maria, but the son of Giacomo II, who had withdrawn to the Continent with his father. Some bishops and ministers did not believe, in conscience, that they could take the new oath. When the appointed deadline arrived (1 August 1689), there were seven bishops, among them the archbishop of Canterbury (Sancroft) and the bishop of Bath and Wells (Tommaso Ken), together with approximately 400 ministers, who had not taken the oath; hence they came to be called N.-j. or “Non-Jurors,” and were therefore all deposed and deprived of their offices. This schism extended to the Scottish Anglican bishops, partisans of the Stuarts, and lasted throughout the eighteenth century, since the N.-j., considering themselves the only legitimate bishops, ordained other bishops and ministers until the extinction of the schism at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Two important events occurred within the N.-j. schism: the relations initiated with the Eastern dissidents, which failed with the death of the emperor of Russia, Pietro il Grande (1725); and the consecration conferred by the non-juring bishops upon Samuele Seabury. After the independence of the American colonies, he had been sent by the American Episcopalians to England to be ordained bishop; and when the archbishop of Canterbury, for political reasons, was unwilling to do so, the non-juring bishops of Scotland ordained him in November 1784. Seabury, together with three other bishops, who some years later (1787) had been ordained without difficulty by the archbishop of Canterbury, consecrated John Clagget in 1792, inaugurating the episcopate ordained in the United States.