NONCONFORMIST SCHOOLS, THE SCHISM ACT, AND THE LIMITS OF TOLERATION IN ENGLAND’S CONFESSIONAL STATE
James E. Bradley
Following the Restoration and the Act of Uniformity (1662), the Anglican Church widely assumed that any form of religious dissent was schismatic and enforced religious uniformity with legal sanctions that oblige us to think of England at the time as a unitary, confessional state.1 “Noncon formists” or Protestant Dissenters (principally Presbyterians, Indepen dents, Baptists, and Quakers) began an extended if intermittent defense of their legitimate, non-schismatic status in the early 1680s that arguably witnessed some success in the religious compromise at the Revolution of 1689. Under the Toleration Act and throughout the reign of William and Mary, the Nonconformists enjoyed the limited freedom of legal toleration, though the Act merely suspended the legal penalties against Protestant Dissenters—Catholics and those who denied the Trinity were specifically excluded. During this period Nonconformist academies multiplied, even though their teachers endured numerous cases of prosecution. Under Queen Anne (1701–1714) this limited toleration was radically restricted, particularly through the Schism Act of 1714 that was designed to stop reli gious instruction in the Dissenting schools and academies and thereby contain, if not end, the growth of “schism.” This essay explores one aspect of the longer quest of Nonconformity for a legitimate, separate status of individual congregations and how that new status bore on a national, con fessing church and state. The repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts in 1719 has been quite thoroughly studied, but surprisingly little attention has been given to the controversy leading up to the Schism Act and how it related to the Toleration Act. While the broader political and religious contexts of the Act itself have also been examined in detail, the pamphlet literature has not been sufficiently explored.2 Here we will examine the public
1 I am very grateful Dr. David L. Wykes, Director of Dr. Williams’ Library, London, for his generous advice regarding the Schism Act, the many resources he made available to me, and for his helpful suggestions on an earlier draft of the essay. 2 David L. Wykes, “Religious Dissent, the Church, and the Repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts, 1714–19,” in Religion, Politics and Dissent, 1660–1832, ed. Cornwall and Gibson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), 165–183; G.M. Townend, “Religious
Radicalism and Conservatism in the Whig Party under George I: The Repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts,” Parliamentary History 7 (1988): 24–44; Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne, rev. ed. (London: Hambledon, 1987), 103–104; G.V. Bennett, The Tory Crisis in Church and State, 1688–1730: The Career of Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester (Oxford: OUP, 1975), 176–179. 3 The study of Nonconformist schools is the subject of a major research project under the direction of Isabel Rivers and David Wykes. Here space does not permit the heretofore neglected matter of prosecutions under the Act, which did occur, nor will it be possible to go into any depth concerning the legal side of the Act, the actual formed opposition to it, and the technical matters of the movement of the Bill and its amendments through Parliament. 4 Edward Cardwell, Synodalia: A Collection of Articles of Religion, Canons, and Pro ceedings of Convocation, 2 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 1842), 2:712–713, 718.