Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun One who refuses to take an oath, as of allegiance.
  • noun A beneficed Anglican clergyman who refused to swear allegiance to William and Mary and their successors after the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In English history, one who refuses to swear allegiance to the sovereign: specifically, one of those clergymen of the Church of England who in 1689 refused to swear allegiance to William, Prince of Orange, and the Princess Mary, as king and queen of England, holding that they were still bound by the former oath to King James II., his heirs and successors.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Eng. Hist.) One of those adherents of James II. who refused to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary, or to their successors, after the revolution of 1688; a Jacobite.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun One who is not a juror.
  • noun historical One who refused to swear a particular oath.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[non– + juror, one who takes an oath (obsolete).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

non- +‎ juror

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Examples

  • The nonjuror was a man thoroughly fitted by nature, education, and habit for polemical dispute.

    Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay 1829

  • But unless I am sitting in the jury box armed with that power I, and any other nonjuror for that matter, have no obligation, moral or legal, to embrace that legal fiction.

    Dan Abrams: Presumed Innocent? Bernie Madoff? 2009

  • But unless I am sitting in the jury box armed with that power I, and any other nonjuror for that matter, have no obligation, moral or legal, to embrace that legal fiction.

    Presumed Innocent? Bernie Madoff? Dan Abrams 2009

  • At a very early age he showed such marked ability that Francis Cherry, the nonjuror, who resided at Shottesbrooke in the same neighbourhood, undertook to defray the cost of his education, and first sent him to the free school of Bray, and afterwards, in 1695, to St. Edmund Hall, Oxford.

    English Book Collectors William Younger Fletcher 1871

  • Hearne continued a staunch nonjuror to the end of his days, and refused many University appointments, including the Keepership of the Bodleian Library, which he might have had, had he been willing to take the oath of allegiance to the government; but he preferred, to use his own words, 'a good conscience before all manner of preferment and worldly honour. '

    English Book Collectors William Younger Fletcher 1871

  • These oaths as a nonjuror he could not conscientiously take, and he was in consequence deprived of his office on the ground of 'neglect of duty'; but the Rev. W.D. Macray, in his

    English Book Collectors William Younger Fletcher 1871

  • No wide secession to Rome, however, followed the development of this seventeenth-century school, though it played a large part in the nonjuror schism, and with the decay of that schism and under the latitudinarian tendencies of the eighteenth century it greatly dwindled.

    The Map of Life Conduct and Character William Edward Hartpole Lecky 1870

  • So my Lord Castlewood remained a nonjuror all his life nearly, though his self-denial caused him many a pang, and left him sulky and out of humor.

    The History of Henry Esmond 1852

  • Archbishop Sancroft was led to attempt a similar Comprehensive Scheme, so terrified was he at the dominance of the Roman Church in the Second James's reign: however, William's accession, and his becoming a nonjuror, crossed his design.

    Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. Various 1852

  • So my Lord Castlewood remained a nonjuror all his life nearly, though his self-denial caused him many a pang, and left him sulky and out of humor.

    The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. A Colonel in the Service of Her Majesty Queen Anne William Makepeace Thackeray 1837

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