Nigel Aston is a reader emeritus in early modern history at the University of Leicester and a research associate at the University of York. He is the author of Enlightened Oxford: The University and the Cultural and Political Life of Eighteenth-century Britainand Beyond. William Gibson is professor of ecclesiastical history at Oxford Brookes University and director of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History. He is the author of Samuel Wesley and the Crisis of Tory Piety, 1685-1720.