Jeremy Collier

Jeremy Collier 1650-1726, English clergyman. Collier was imprisoned as one of the nonjurors , who refused to pledge allegiance to William III and Mary II. He later was outlawed (1696) for absolving on the scaffold two of those involved in the assassination plot against William. Collier's principal fame comes from his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698) and Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain (1708, 1714). In 1713 he was ordained a nonjuring bishop.

Bibliography: See A. Rose, The Jeremy Collier Stage Controversy (1966).

Collier, Jeremy (1650–1726), English Nonjuror. In 1696 he was outlawed for giving absolution on the scaffold to two attempted assassins of William III, but he returned to London in 1697. In 1713 he was consecrated as a ‘bishop of the Nonjurors’ and he joined in their attempt at reunion with the Orthodox Church. He was largely responsible for the production of the Nonjurors' Communion Office of 1718.

Collier, Jeremy (1650–1726), became a non-juring bishop in 1713. He is chiefly remembered for his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698), in which he attacked Dryden, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, D'Urfey, and Otway, complaining particularly of profanity in stage dialogue and mockery of the clergy. The work created a great impact; Congreve and D'Urfey were prosecuted, Betterton and Mrs Bracegirdle were fined, and several of the poets replied, though not very effectively. Collier contributed towards the climate that produced the ‘reformed’ drama of C. Cibber and his successors. (See also Restoration.)