Abstract
Samuel Johnson was, wrote Boswell, ‘a sincere and zealous Christian, of high-Church-of-England and monarchical principles, which he would not tamely suffer to be questioned’.1 He was an attentive reader of theological works, conscientious in private devotion and devout when attending public worship. His various homes, including Gough Square (1746?–59), Inner Temple Lane (1760–65), Johnson’s Court (1765–76) and Bolt Court (1776–84), were close to the parish churches of St. Bride’s and St. Dunstan’s in Fleet Street, and also to the Temple Church. Not much further away was St. Andrew’s, Holborn, where Dr. Henry Sacheverell had been Rector from 1713 until his death in 1724, and where a tradition of High Church observance was sustained throughout the eighteenth century.2 Yet Johnson frequented none of these churches. Instead, he preferred to walk further, to a church where, he said, ‘he was best known’.3
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