Abstract

John Toland's writings, after centuries of neglect, now bid fair to secure his rightful place in the fields of European religion, philosophy and politics. His battle-cry, Religious Toleration and Civil Liberty, became over time his vocation. Friend to the great yet an outsider, master of ten languages, spy in European court circles, author and agitator throughout the English Revolution Settlement (1689-1714), enemy of the Stuarts and partisan for the Hanoverians, he envisioned the renaissance of Ciceronian culture in a new Europe dominated less by France than by Great Britain.