For all its symbolic importance, the religious legislation which followed the Revolution of 1688–89 settled very little about the future ecclesiastical landscape of England. Dissenters were now free to worship publicly according to conscience, but this provision barely touched upon the social realities of late Stuart nonconformity. The Toleration Act was in many respects an ambiguous document whose implications would need to be resolved over the following decades. This ambiguity was due in large measure to the unexpected failure of a parallel scheme to ‘comprehend’ non-sectarian Dissenters within the Church of England through conciliatory reforms. The legalisation of Protestant plurality would pose significant pastoral challenges for the established clergy, while those at the highest levels of the Church would endorse new ‘moderate’ pastoral strategies. Episcopal moderation would, however, provoke a furious reaction from among the largely conservative lower clergy. This conservative backlash generated considerable polemical noise and political heat, particularly in the reign of Queen Anne, but this should not obscure the confusion experienced by many parish clergy.

The religious ‘settlement’ of 1689

In the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, religious toleration seemed an almost inevitable development. Toleration offered a method to secure regime change upon a broad Protestant foundation, binding even sectarian Dissenters into the new dispensation. As Jonathan Israel has highlighted, the Protestant deliverer William of Orange was renowned throughout Europe for his personal commitment to a policy of religious toleration, while his Dutch homeland provided a working model of religious pluralism. In his printed Declaration of October 1688, explaining his intervention into England's political crisis, William had announced his intention to shield ‘good subjects, from all persecution on account of their religion’. His hope to improve the treatment of English Catholics swiftly foundered in the face of ingrained Protestant prejudice, only heightened by the events of James II's reign, but William would keep his promise to Protestant Dissenters. The experience of Catholic monarchy had done much to bring English Protestants together. Striving to neutralise James's dual policy of toleration for Catholics and Dissenters, the bishops had notably abandoned the language of Protestant schism and sinful separation.