Henry Cabot reached Newfoundland on 24 June 1497, the feast of St John the Baptist. Cabot (like Columbus) was an Italian, but he was working for Henry VII, King of England, and the event is included in the calendar of the Canadian Anglican Church. In reality, the English had little interest in these northern areas for over two centuries. The SPG sporadically sent missionaries to Nova Scotia in the eighteenth century to minister to British settlers and to work among First Nation (Native American) communities. But Catholic missionaries had a much greater importance. British interest in the area was transformed by the capture of Quebec in 1759. At the Treaty of Paris in 1763 France accepted the conquest. In turn, ‘His Britannic Majesty … agrees to grant the liberty of the Catholic religion to the inhabitants of Canada.’ British government policy was to secure loyalty to the crown on the part of the French settlers through a policy of religious toleration. By contrast, the Church of England got little tangible support and encouragement. The concern to conciliate Canada's Catholic population was something new for Britain. British Catholics as individuals and the Catholic church as a body were still subject to legal restrictions. In Ireland, penal legislation was in force.

The weakness of the established church in British North America began to be addressed in the years after the American Revolution.