Sir Jonathan Trelawny (1650–1721)

This 1708 portrait of Sir Jonathan Trelawny depicts the Bishop of Winchester who had been one of the Seven Bishops whose trial by James II in 1688 became a watershed moment in the Glorious Revolution. The bishops' acquittal, cheered by crowds across England, demonstrated that royal prerogative had limits that even bishops would resist — a signal contribution to the constitutional crisis that brought William III to the throne. Trelawny's portrait by Kneller twenty years after this defining moment preserves the image of a man whose resistance to royal tyranny had become part of the national historical narrative, celebrated in the Cornish ballad 'And shall Trelawny die?'

The episcopal portrait renders the Bishop-hero with the combination of ecclesiastical dignity and personal forcefulness appropriate to a man who helped change the course of English history.