“Seven Bishops”). Other distinguished nonjurors among the clergy were: William Sherlock, master of the Temple, Jeremy Collier, the ecclesiastical historian, Charles Leslie, the controversialist, George Hickes, dean of Worcester, Nathanael Spinckes, John Fitzwilliam, canon of Windsor, and John Kettlewell, the devotional writer. The most famous nonjurors among the laity were Henry Dodwell, Camden professor of history at Oxford, Robert Nelson, Henry Hyde, second earl of Clarendon, and Roger North, the lawyer. Afterwards their number was augmented by the refusal of William Law, author of The Serious Call, Thomas Carte, the historian, Thomas Hearne, the antiquary, and others, to take the oaths of allegiance to George I. Ken, the most eminent of the nonjurors, disapproved of their subsequent proceedings, and Sherlock and Dodwell afterwards took the required oaths, the former becoming dean of St Paul’s.
Believing in the doctrine of non-resistance to established authority, the nonjurors argued that James II. was still the rightful king, and likened the position of William to that of Cromwell. Taking examples from the Old Testament and from the practice of the early church, their antagonists traversed these arguments, and a long and voluminous controversy followed. Many have thought that the position of the nonjurors was inconsistent, and Dr Johnson said, “I never knew a nonjuror who could reason,” although he appears to have excepted Leslie from this general condemnation. The government did not treat the nonjurors harshly. With the approval of William III., Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, attempted to reconcile them to the new order; and it was only when the generous terms offered by Burnet had been refused, that, in February 1690, they were deprived of their sees and other benefices. Although they had only a small following among the mass of the people, who were not required to take the oaths of allegiance, Sancroft and his colleagues claimed to represent the true Church of England, and requested James II. in his exile to nominate two new bishops to carry on the episcopal succession. James chose Hickes and Thomas Wagstaffe (1645–1712), who were consecrated in 1694 as bishops of Thetford and Ipswich respectively. A further consecration took place in 1713 when Collier, Spinckes and Samuel Hawes (d. 1722), were consecrated “bishops at large.” In 1718 the introduction of a new communion office with some “usages” taken partly from primitive liturgies, and partly from the first prayer-book of Edward VI. caused a schism among the nonjurors, dividing them into “Usagers” and “Non-Usagers.” The four “usages” were: The mixed chalice, prayers for the faithful departed, prayer for the descent of the Holy Ghost on the consecrated elements, and the Oblatory Prayer, offering the elements to the Father as symbols of His Son’s Body and Blood. Accepting the “usages” the two bodies united in 1731, 'but other dissensions followed, although the episcopal succession was maintained until the death of a bishop named Charles Booth in 1805. The last nonjuror is supposed to have been James Yeowell, who died in 1875. Public worship was conducted in chapels or “oratories,” and sometimes in private houses.
In Scotland the nonjurors included the greater part of the clergy of the Episcopal Church, which ceased to be the state church in 1689. Many of these men and some of their English colleagues were ardent jacobites, and were punished for sharing in the risings of 1715 and 1745, and in other Jacobite movements. The Scottish clergy maintained their attitude of resistance to the government until the death of Prince Charles Edward Stuart in 1788, when the bishops met at Aberdeen, and unanimously agreed to submit to the government of King George III. A large number of the Presbyterians in Scotland, principally found among the Cameronians, also refused to take the oaths of allegiance to William and Mary; but as their reasons for this refusal were quite different from those of the episcopalian nonjurors, they are not usually referred to by this name (see Cameronians).
For the history of the nonjurors, see Macaulay, History of England vol. ii. (London, 1895); T. Lathbury, History of the Nonjurors (London, 1845); and especially J. H. Overton, The Nonjurors (London, 1902), a defence of the sect. (A. W. H.*)
NONNUS (Egyptian for “saint”), Greek epic poet, a native of Panopolis (Akhmim) in the Egyptian Thebaid, probably lived at the end of the 4th or the beginning of the 5th century A.D. His principal work is the Dionysiaca, an epic in forty-eight books,
the main subject of which is the expedition of Dionysus to India and his return. The earlier portions treat of the rape of Europa, the battle of the giants, the mythical history of Thebes, and it is not until the eighth book that the birth of the god is described.
Other poets had already treated the subject, and since the time
of Alexander it had gained popularity from the favourite comparison
of the king with the god and of his enemies with the giants.
In its vast and formless luxuriance, its beautiful but artificial
versification, its delineation of action and passion to the entire
neglect of character, the poem resembles the epics of India.
Like his countryman Claudian, Nonnus is a writer of copious
learning and still more copious fancy, whose faults are those of
the age in which he lived. His chief merit consists in the systematic
perfection to which he brought the Homeric hexameter.
But the very correctness of the versification renders it monotonous.
His influence on the vocabulary of his successors was
likewise very considerable.
We also possess under his name a paraphrase (μεταβολή) of the Gospel of St John, which is chiefly interesting as apparently indicating that Nonnus in his later years was a convert to Christianity. The style is not inferior to that of his epic, but, employed in embellishing the simple narrative of the evangelist, it produces an impression of extreme bombast and want of taste. According to an epigram in the Palatine Anthology (ix. 198), Nonnus was also the author of a Battle of the Giants, and four lines of the Bassarica (also on the subject of Dionysus) have been preserved in Stephanus of Byzantium.
Editio princeps (1569); H. Köchly (“Teubner” series, with critical introduction and full index of names, 1858); the most generally useful edition is that by the comte de Marcellus (1856), with notes and prolegomena, and a French prose translation. On the metre, see J. G. Hermann, Orphica (1805), p. 690; A. Ludwich, Beiträge zur Kritik des Nonnus (1873), critical, grammatical and metrical; C. Lehrs, Quaestiones epicae (1837), pp. 255-302, chiefly on metrical questions; on the sources, R. Köhler, Über die Dionysiaka des Nonnus (1853), a short and connected analysis of the poem, with a comparison of the earlier and later myths; see also I. Negrisoli, Studio critico . . . Nonuse Panopolita, with short bibliography (1903). The paraphrase on St John (editio princeps, c. 1505) is edited by F. Passow (1834) and A. Scheindler (1881), with complete index.
NONPAREIL, the name under which, from its supposed matchless
beauty, a little cage-bird, chiefly imported from New Orleans,
has long been known to English dealers (cf. Edwards, Gleanings,
i. 132). It is the Emberiza ciris of Linnaeus, and the Cyanospiza
ciris of most recent ornithologists, belonging to a small
group, now included with the buntings and finches, although
some authors have regarded it as a tanager (q.v.). The cock
has the head, neck and lesser wing-coverts bright blue, the
upper part of the back yellow, deepening into green, and the
lower parts generally, together with the rump, bright scarlet,
tinged on the latter with purple. This gorgeous colouring is not
assumed until the bird is at least two years old. The hen is
green above and yellow beneath; and the younger cocks present
an appearance intermediate between the adults of both sexes.
The species, which is often also called the painted bunting,
after wintering in Central America or Mexico, arrives in the
Southern states of the American Union in April, but does not
ordinarily proceed to the northward of South Carolina. In
Louisiana, where it is generally known to the French-speaking
inhabitants as the Pape—as it was to the Spaniards of Florida
as the Mariposa pintada (painted butterfly)—it is said to be very
abundant; and on its appearance in spring advantage is, or was,
taken of the pugnacious disposition of the males to capture them
alive in great numbers by means of the stuffed skin of one so
placed in connexion with a cage-trap that they instantly fall into
the latter on attacking what they conceive to be a rival. Belonging
to the same genus as the nonpareil is the indigo-bird, Cyanospiza
cyanea, which, as a summer visitant, is widely diffused from
the Missouri to the Atlantic, and extends into the provinces of
