The 1689 Toleration Act marked the foundation of enduring legal religious pluralism in England, permitting Protestant Dissenters to worship publicly according to conscience. The legislation exempted them ‘from the Penalties of certaine Lawes’, nullifying much of the legal framework of religious conformity. Protestants estranged from the Church of England were now free to absent themselves from parish worship and form alternative congregations. The granting of statutory toleration would fundamentally transform the English religious landscape, sealing an end to establishment persecution of fellow Protestants while triggering decades of controversy rooted in the profound ambiguities of the 1689 law. The clergy of the Church of England would have to come to terms with dramatically changed circumstances for their institution and its spiritual mission. At the same time, groups of Protestants outside the Church would develop the architecture of distinct denominations, asserting a lasting place in public life. This study explores the process of adaption to a new religious reality, primarily by examining specific points of controversy between the ecclesiastical establishment and tolerated Protestants. It emphasises ambiguity, uncertainty, and confusion, yet highlights how the practical experience of toleration nonetheless generated new paradigms for the structuring of English society. Religious plurality presented significant practical challenges for establishment clergy. Some controversial ambiguities would resolve themselves over time, while others would be settled by the authorities following the succession of the Hanoverian dynasty. The decades after 1689 were a period in which the pastoral, as well as the political, consequences of toleration were debated and negotiated.

The significance of the Toleration Act

Statutory toleration both secured Protestant plurality in England and at the same time entrenched official anti-Catholicism in English politics and government; the legislation was both tolerant and exclusionary. The Toleration Act is inseparable from the political transformation which immediately preceded it, the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688–89. In a remarkably brief period the Catholic monarch James II had succeeded in alienating the Protestant loyalists whose support had secured his succession to the throne in 1685.