During the period from about 1800 to 1870 the Church of England underwent a transformation more rapid, dramatic and enduring than any which it had experienced since the Reformation. The process of change was complex and in certain respects ambiguous, but the most significant adjustment was that which took place in the relationship between Church and State. The Church moved from a uniquely privileged relationship with the State, in which it was closely bound up with the political and legal system, to being one denomination, albeit still the most powerful one and still formally and legally Established, among several in a society in which it appeared that half of those who professed any form of religious allegiance expressed a preference for a non-Anglican variety. This modification in Church–State relations was accompanied by the de-Anglicanisation of English institutions, starting at the heart of the Establishment with the admission of Protestant dissenters to Parliament on equal terms with Anglicans in 1828, and then spreading outwards to the municipal corporations, the universities and the grammar schools.

The relationship between Church and people shifted for a diverse variety of reasons, which included the drift of population to the towns, agitation from disgruntled Nonconformists, the clergy's changing perception of themselves, and the intervention of parliamentarians and Ecclesiastical Commissioners.