John Toland (1670-1722) was an Irish born scholar and philosopher of international renown. In his considerable volume of writings, he challenged political and ecclesiastical authority and was a prolific writer on important political and religious issues of his day: a radical republican who questioned the divine right of kings; a diplomat whose
Account of the Courts of Prussia and Hanover is still quoted by historians of the period; the first person to be called a freethinker (by Bishop Berkeley); the first to advocate full citizenship and equal rights for Jewish people.
John Toland was born in Donegal, Ireland to a Gaelic-speaking Catholic family on 30 November 1670. At the age of sixteen, he joined the Church of Ireland, which enabled him to receive an education at the Protestant school of Redcastle. He attended the University of Glasgow, where he gained a scholarship to study theology and later graduated with a Master of Arts from Edinburgh University, in July 1689 (the day before the Battle of the Boyne, as he later recalled). He also attended the University of Leyden before returning to England, where he stayed in prominent Whig households in Oxford and London, earning his living as a propagandist for the Whig party.
He is chiefly remembered today for what was, in fact, his first work,
Christianity Not Mysterious (1696) - a book which was denounced in the English and Irish Parliaments and publicly burned in Dublin.
J.N. Duggan, who is the General Editor for this project, first came across the name of John Toland while researching her biography of
Sophia of Hanover: Winter Princess, which was published by Peter Owen Publishers in 2010 (ISBN: 978 0 7206 1342 1). This prompted her to write her own short biography of Toland -
John Toland: Ireland's Forgotten Philosopher, Scholar ... and Heretic published the same year (ISBN: 978-1-907522-08-6).
