Jonathan Boucher | Biography

Possibly the best-known Loyalist of the American Revolution, the Reverend Jonathan Boucher has consistently been depicted as the most reactionary defender of royal prerogative in colonial America. While his reputation as an arch-Tory may not be entirely deserved, Boucher, having developed a reasonably coherent political philosophy based largely upon his adaptation of Robert Filmer's Patriarcha: The Natural Power of Kings (1680), was one of the last defenders of the patriarchal theory of governmental origins, the divine right of kings, and the biblical requirement of obedience to constituted authority. This Anglican parson fled his Maryland parish in 1775 and returned to his native England where, as vicar of Epsom, Surrey, he continued to enhance his reputation as an articulate preacher, passable poet, reforming educator, compulsive bibliophile, regional historian, and lexicographer of British and American dialects. No amount of explanation of his thought and actions has rehabilitated Boucher from Vernon Louis...
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