United Kingdom legislation
The
Toleration Act 1689
(
1 Will. & Mar.
c. 18), also referred to as the
Act of Toleration
,
[3]
was an
Act
of the
Parliament of England
. Passed in the aftermath of the
Glorious Revolution
, it received
royal assent
on 24 May 1689.
[4]
The Act allowed for freedom of worship to
nonconformists
who had pledged to the oaths of
Allegiance
and
Supremacy
and rejected
transubstantiation
, i.e., to
Protestants
who dissented from the
Church of England
such as
Baptists
,
Congregationalists
or
English Presbyterians
, but not to
Roman Catholics
. Nonconformists were allowed their own places of worship and their own schoolteachers, so long as they accepted certain oaths of allegiance.
The Act intentionally did not apply to Roman Catholics, Jews,
nontrinitarians
,
[5]
and atheists.
[6]
Further, it continued the existing social and political disabilities for
dissenters
, including their exclusion from holding political offices and also from the universities. Dissenters were required to register their meeting houses and were forbidden from meeting in private homes. Any preachers who dissented had to be licensed.
Between 1772 and 1774,
Edward Pickard
gathered together dissenting ministers, to campaign for the terms of the Toleration Act for dissenting clergy to be modified. Under his leadership, Parliament twice considered bills to modify the law, but both were unsuccessful and it was not until Pickard and many others had ended their efforts that a new attempt was made in 1779.
[7]
The Act was amended in 1779 by substituting belief in the Christians' Scriptures for belief in the
Thirty-Nine Articles
of the Anglican churches, but some penalties on holding property remained. Penalties against
Unitarians
were finally removed in the
Doctrine of the Trinity Act 1813
.
Background
[
edit
]
During both the
English Commonwealth
and the reign of
Charles II
, nonconforming
dissenters
including
Roman Catholics
, were subject to religious persecution and precluded from holding official office. Following the restoration of Charles II, Anglican leaders debated in correspondence and public sermon the extent to which the Anglican church should allow doctrinal latitude; this debate was related to the corresponding debate on broadening church membership and tolerating dissenters.
[8]
The succession of the Roman Catholic
James II
was challenged on religious grounds prior to his accession in what became known as the
Exclusion Crisis
and after he took the crown in 1686 in the
Monmouth Rebellion
. However, the Tory leadership of the Anglican church initially supported his right to rule based on the theology of active obedience to the monarch. James II sought a repeal of the
Test Acts
, which imposed various civil disabilities on both Catholics and Protestant non-conformists, to broaden his political support and allow for the appointment of Roman Catholics to civilian and military roles. Failing to secure parliamentary support, James II's attempt to dispense with the Test Acts through the 1687 and 1688
Declarations of Indulgence
helped spark the constitutional crises that culminated in the
Glorious Revolution
and the accession of
William
and
Mary
, who became joint sovereigns. A series of Acts of parliament assured a new constitutional settlement of this situation; these include the
Bill of Rights 1689
, the
Crown and Parliament Recognition Act 1689
, the
Mutiny Act 1689
, the Toleration Act of 1689, and later the
Act of Settlement 1701
and the
Act of Union 1707
.
[9]
The historian Kenneth Pearl sees the Act of Toleration as "in many ways a compromise bill. To get nonconformists' (Protestants who were not members of the Church of England) support in the crucial months of 1688".
[9]
Both the
Whig
and
Tory
parties that had rallied around William and Mary had promised nonconformists that such an act would be enacted if the revolution succeeded. James II had himself issued a declaration of indulgence that suspended the laws against religious nonconformity, but nonconformists believed James II's efforts to undermine their civil liberties and circumvent parliament placed the religious liberties provided via the Declarations of Indulgence at risk.
[10]
Catholics and Unitarians were not hunted down after the Act was passed but they still had no right to assemble and pray.
[9]
As there still remained a
Test Act
, non-Anglicans (including all Protestant non-Conformists, Jews, Catholics, and Unitarians) could not sit in Parliament even following the passage of the Toleration Act.
[11]
The Toleration Act of 1712, passed following the
union between Scotland and England
, granted limited toleration, specifically the right to worship for Scottish Episcopalians who prayed for the monarch and used the English
Book of Common Prayer
.
[12]
Unitarians were only granted toleration after the
Doctrine of the Trinity Act 1813
;
[11]
prior to that time, denying the Trinity was a capital offence in Scotland.
[11]
The Test Act remained in force until the nineteenth century.
[9]
Influences
[
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]
Historians (such as John J. Patrick) see
John Locke
's
A Letter Concerning Toleration
advocating religious toleration (written in 1685 and published in 1689) as "the philosophical foundation for the English Act of Toleration of 1689".
[6]
While Locke had advocated coexistence between the Church of England (the
established church
) and dissenting Protestant denominations (including Congregationalists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Quakers) he had excluded Catholics from toleration ? the same policy that the Act of Toleration enacted.
[6]
Implementation in the overseas colonies
[
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]
The terms of the Act of Toleration within the English colonies in America were applied either by charter or by acts by the royal governors.
[6]
The ideas of toleration as advocated by Locke (which excluded Roman Catholics) became accepted through most of the colonies, even in the Congregational strongholds within New England which had previously punished or excluded dissenters.
[6]
The colonies of
Pennsylvania
,
Rhode Island
,
Delaware
, and
New Jersey
went further than the Act of Toleration by outlawing the establishment of any church and allowing a greater religious diversity.
[6]
Within the colonies in the year 1700 Roman Catholics were allowed to practice their religion freely only in Rhode Island.
[13]
Provisions
[
edit
]
Section 5
[
edit
]
This section, from "bee it" to "aforesaid that" was repealed by section 1 of, and Part I of the Schedule to, the
Statute Law Revision Act 1888
.
In this section, the words "as aforesaid" were repealed by section 1 of, and Schedule 1 to, the
Statute Law Revision Act 1948
.
Section 8
[
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]
This section, from "bee it" to "aforesaid that" was repealed by section 1 of, and Part I of the Schedule to, the Statute Law Revision Act 1888.
Section 15
[
edit
]
This section, from "bee it" to "aforesaid" was repealed by section 1 of, and Part I of the Schedule to, the Statute Law Revision Act 1888.
In this section, the words "after the tenth day of June" were repealed by section 1 of, and Schedule 1 to, the Statute Law Revision Act 1948.
Section 18
[
edit
]
Section 6 of the
Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act 1860
provided that nothing contained thereinbefore in that Act was to be taken to repeal or alter section 18 of the Toleration Act 1689.
Repeal
[
edit
]
The whole Act, except section 5 and so much of section 8 as specified the service and offices from which certain persons were exempt and section 15, was repealed by section 1 of, and Part II of Schedule 1 to, the
Promissory Oaths Act 1871
.
The whole Act, so far as unrepealed, was repealed by section 1 of, and Part II of the Schedule to, the
Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1969
.
Later developments
[
edit
]
Toleration of worship was later extended to Protestants who did not believe in Trinitarian doctrine in the
Unitarians Relief Act 1813
. Catholics were allowed to worship under strict conditions through the
Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791
. As time went on, oaths and tests that barred non-conformists and Roman Catholics from holding public offices, keeping schools, and owning land were rescinded by laws such as
Roman Catholic Relief Act, 1778
, the Roman Catholic Charities Act 1832, the Test Abolition Act 1867, the Promissory Oaths Act 1868, the
Promissory Oaths Act 1871
and the
Oaths Act 1978
. The
Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829
allowed followers of that religion to be elected to Parliament and to hold most offices under the Crown, while the
Jews Relief Act 1858
had a similar effect for adherents of Judaism. The Religious Disabilities Act 1846 ended restrictions on Roman Catholics for education, charities, and owning property, although Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham universities were allowed to continue to exclude Roman Catholics until
Universities Tests Act 1871
took effect. By the passage of the
Places of Worship Registration Act 1855
, an optional system of registration for non-Anglican places of worship was passed which gave certain legal and fiscal advantages for those that registered, and "alternative religion was not only lawful, but was often facilitated by the law."
[14]
See also
[
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]
References
[
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]
- ^
The citation of this Act by this
short title
was authorised by section 5 of, and Schedule 2 to, the
Statute Law Revision Act 1948
. Due to the repeal of those provisions, it is now authorised by section 19(2) of the
Interpretation Act 1978
.
- ^
These words are printed against this Act in the second column of Schedule 2 to the Statute Law Revision Act 1948, which is headed "Title".
- ^
Mews, John.
The Digest of English Case Law Containing the Reported Decisions of the Superior Courts: And a Selection from Those of the Irish Courts [from 1557] to the End of 1897
. Sweet and Maxwell. 1898. vol. 12. p. 101.
- ^
House of Lords Journal: 24 May 1689: record of royal assent
British History Online;
Text of the Act
British History Online
- ^
Bromley, John Selwyn (1970).
The new Cambridge modern history
.
Cambridge University Press
. p. 210.
ISBN
0-521-07524-6
.
OCLC
58643836
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Patrick, John J.; Long, Gerald P. (1999).
Constitutional Debates on Freedom of Religion: A Documentary History
. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
- ^
John Stephens, ‘Pickard, Edward (1714?1778)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
accessed 18 February 2010
- ^
Pincus, Steve.
1688: The First Modern Revolution
, Yale University Press (2009) p. 406
- ^
a
b
c
d
Kenneth Pearl (2011).
Cracking the AP European History Exam
. Princeton Review, Inc.
- ^
Harris, Tim.
Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarch, 1685?1720
, Allen Lane (2006) p. 217
- ^
a
b
c
Jeremy Black,
Eighteenth-Century Britain, 1688?1783
(2nd ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 131.
- ^
Stewart J. Brown, "Religion and Society to c. 1900" in
The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History
(eds. T. M. Devine & Jenny Wormald: Oxford University Press, 2012).
- ^
Ray Allen Billington,
"The Protestant Crusade: 1800?1860; a study of the origins of American nativism
(1938) p. 9.
online
- ^
Russell Sandberg (2011).
Law and Religion
. Cambridge University Press.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Grell, Ole Peter, and Jonathan Irvine Israel.
From persecution to toleration: the Glorious Revolution and religion in England
(Oxford UP, 1991).
- Mullett, Charles F. "The Legal Position of English Protestant Dissenters, 1689?1767."
Virginia Law Review
(1937): 389?418.
in JSTOR
- Spurr, John. "The Church of England, comprehension and the Toleration Act of 1689."
English Historical Review
104.413 (1989): 927?946.
in JSTOR
- Wykes, David L. "Friends, parliament and the toleration act."
Journal of Ecclesiastical History
45.01 (1994): 42?63.
- Zwicker, Laura. "Politics of Toleration: The Establishment Clause and the Act of Toleration Examined, The."
Indiana Law Journal
66 (1990): 773+.
online