1802 EDMUND CALAMY. Nonconformist's Memorial - The Great Ejection Divines. Fine Engravings.

Samuel Palmer’s completely updated and expanded edition of The Nonconformist’s Memorial is the definitive biographical record of the Great Ejection.

By "methodizing" Edmund Calamy’s earlier work, Palmer created a more readable and accessible narrative of the 2,000 ministers who refused the 1662 Act of Uniformity. Palmer painstakingly updated Calamy’s entries with "many additional anecdotes" and lists of printed works. This transformed the volumes into an indispensable reference for 18th- and 19th-century scholars studying Puritanism and intellectual history.

Additionally, Palmer’s "Embellished Heads" (portraits) of the divines provided a visual legacy for Dissent. These engravings helped create a "pantheon" of religious leaders, making their struggle personal and tangible for later generations of readers. These plates almost always pilfered, but all present here.

The work has long been been considered foundational in formation the origin stories later Nonconformist denominations (Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Baptists).

Plates include Edmund Calamy [The Young and Elder], Thomas Doolittle. Henry Jessey, Samuel Annesley, William Bates, John Owen, Thomas Watson, Thomas Goodwin, Samuel Clarke, Nathaniel Vincent, John Hickes, Obadiah Hughes, John Flavel, John Howe, Nathaniel Partridge, Increaser Mather, Thomas Jollie, Samuel Mather, Samuel Shaw, Vincent Alsop, William Bridge, Samuel Craddock, George Newton, Richard Baxter, Oliver Heywood, etc. 

[Puritans, Great Ejection] The Nonconformist's Memorial; being an Account of the Lives, Sufferings, and Printed Works of the Two Thousand Ministers Ejected from the Church of England, chiefly by the Act of Uniformity, August 24, 1666 [sic 1662]. Original Written by Edmund Calamy, D.D. Abridged, Corrected, and Methodized, with many Additional Anecdotes and Several New Lives by Samuel Palmer. The Second Edition. Complete in Three Volumes. Embellished with Heads of the Principal Divines, Chiefly from Original Pictures. London. Button and Son. 1802. 

A good - to fair copy. Textually quite good and solid with some occasional toning and foxing. The bindings in various states of deterioration. An excellent binding set, or these could be rehinged and consolidated. Volume three has some staining at the lower gutter for a few signatures, impacting the lower interior corner of two plates.