Wilbur Kitchener Jordan

Who was Wilbur Kitchener Jordan?

Wilbur Kitchener Jordan, was an American historian, specializing in sixteenth and seventeenth century Britain.

Raised in Lynnville, Indiana, Jordan received a bachelor's degree from Oakland City College in 1923, before earning a master's and doctoral degree from Harvard University. Jordan went on to become a leading historian of sixteenth and seventeenth century England, accruing many honors, and producing books, including Men of Substance: Revolutionary Thinkers of 1640, Philanthropy in England, 1480-1660, and a two-volume study of the reign of Edward IV.

Jordan's most enduring scholarly work, however has been his four-volume The Development of Religious Toleration in England, published from 1932-1940, in which Jordan documented the origins of religious toleration in Elizabethan, Stuart, and revolutionary England and the evolution of these ideas into the late seventeenth century, following the English Civil War. Though sometimes criticized for attributing too great an importance to skeptical and secular motives for toleration, this capacious and well-sourced work continues to provide the foundation for contemporary studies of the history of religious toleration in England.