Obviously, Defoe was not a Jacobite, and commentary on the issue, sparse, old, and empty of novelty, suggests that the topic does not deserve any thorough or serious examination.' But the subject turned out to be more complicated, the conclusion less obvious than I initially thought. Thus, while I cannot say that, on the subject of the Jacobites and Jacobitism, Defoe has a melody all his own-Rudolph Stamm's phrase-he does present a position that is distinctive, that makes him something more than another echoing voice in the crowd.2 First, the issue of definition. Defoe attempts precision. George Harris Healey, the scholarly editor of Defoe's Letters, identified Rev. Charles Leslie for his readers as author of the Tory journal, Rehearsal.'3 More likely Defoe would have accepted Paul Monod's identification as currently correct: James III's chief Nonjuring spokesman.4 (Bishop Hoadly, it could be noted, judged him to be an Ecclesiastical Jacobite.5) In the Introduction to his study Monod admits the complexity of the issue. His definitions enable me to finetune Defoe's rhetoric of Jacobitism. The Jacobite journals were thoroughly Tory, and imbued with a High Church religiosity.6 Monod's position makes the High Flier of the day synonymous with Tory extremism, linking him with a party that plotted assassinations and invasions to help a Stuart return to the throne of England. He later writes that whether or not they were active in the cause, the Nonjurors were Jacobites by definition; later Toryism and Jacobitism become synonymous.7 What I would call attention to here is a sort of slippage, from a political preference construed as treasonous at its base, to a party ideology reflecting a legitimate political program, to a distinctive religious faith. I note these obvious distinctions because they appear to be the differences, the subtle distinctions, that I see Defoe himself