Chapter 5 - Neighbours, Friends, Company

Summary

Chapter 5 looks at the social dynamics of inter-confessional relations after 1689. Taking up the recent work of historians of sociability, it questions whether the emphasis on neighbourliness common to many studies of inter-confessional relations is the most productive approach. Instead, it examines the different ways in which Dissenters described their 'neighbours', 'friends', and 'company' in relation to one another, using this as a means to understand the extent to which all types of Protestant Dissenters excluded themselves from society. It demonstrates that looking at other ways of describing sociability in addition to the language of neighbourliness provides a much broader view of the different levels and boundaries of inter-confessional social interaction. In particular, it emphasises that the way contemporaries mentally framed different types of social relationship may have helped them to navigate contradictory impulses to foster both group identity and integration with others after 1689.