Toleration Act 1689

Timeline

1. 1689Parliament at Westminster · WestminsterParliament passed the Toleration Act, allowing Protestant nonconformists who accepted specified allegiance and supremacy oaths to maintain their own places of worship and ministers. The established church no longer sought to force all Protestants into a single "comprehensive church." Catholics, Unitarians denying the Trinity, and non-Christians were not protected, and the office-holding bar remained.
2. 1689–1710Counties and towns of England · EnglandNonconformists had to register their meeting houses and submit to local magistrates' supervision in exchange for immunity from prosecution under certain old penal laws. Social and political disabilities remained: they could not lawfully hold many public offices, so "occasional conformity" emerged—taking communion in the established church and then returning to their own congregation. Toleration permitted worship, not civic equality.
3. 1711–1719Parliament at Westminster · WestminsterThe Occasional Conformity Act of 1711 fined those who attended nonconformist meetings after receiving communion in the established church, attempting to tighten the opening made in 1689. Once the Whigs gained power the restriction was repealed, showing that the 1689 settlement was a contestable political arrangement rather than a once-and-for-all charter of freedom of conscience.
4. 1779England · EnglandFrom the late 18th to the 19th century, restrictions on nonconformist education and office-holding were gradually relaxed, Catholic emancipation and Jewish political rights were legislated in turn, and the 1689 framework of "tolerating only some Protestants' worship" was progressively opened up. Religious freedom in Britain today far exceeds the original Act, but its starting point of legalizing sectarian division still traces back to 1689.