Malcolm R. Thorp was a professor of history at Brigham Young University when this was written. He obtained his PhD at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and is a specialist in British religious history with an emphasis on religious dissent. He is the coeditor of two books: Mormons in Early Victorian Britain, with Richard L. Jensen, and Politics, Religion, and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of De Lamar Jensen, with Arthur J. Slavin. He is the author of Herbert Butterfield and the Reinterpretation of the Christian Historical Perspective and has published numerous scholarly articles. He has six children and one grandchild.