Toleration Act

Toleration Act, (May 24, 1689), act of Parliament granting freedom of worship to Nonconformists (i.e., dissenting Protestants such as Baptists and Congregationalists). It was one of a series of measures that firmly established the Glorious Revolution (1688–89) in England.

The Toleration Act demonstrated that the idea of a “comprehensive” Church of England had been abandoned and that hope lay only in toleration of division. It allowed Nonconformists their own places of worship and their own teachers and preachers, subject to acceptance of certain oaths of allegiance. Social and political disabilities remained, however, and Nonconformists were still denied political office (as were Roman Catholics). That led to the practice of “occasional conformity,” but in 1711 the Occasional Conformity Act imposed fines on anyone who, after receiving Anglican communion, was found worshiping at Nonconformist meetinghouses. A bill by Henry Saint John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, to prevent the growth of schism by forcing all those who taught or kept schools to take an oath of allegiance to the Church of England was frustrated by Queen Anne’s death, on August 1, 1714, the day when it was to take effect.

Had the bill become law, it would have destroyed the intellectual and educational power of dissent, which had made an important contribution to education by the foundation of “dissenting academies.” Between 1663 and 1688, more than 20 academies had been founded; more than 30 more were started during 1690–1750. Established for the training of Nonconformist ministers to whom the universities were closed, the academies became centres of learning, offering a more-liberal education than the universities then provided, including business, science, and sociology as well as theology and the classics. The act did not apply to Roman Catholics and Unitarians.