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The Enforcement of the Conventicle Acts 1664–1679

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Anthony Fletcher
Anthony Fletcher*
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
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Extract

The denominational writers on late Stuart dissent used to put their emphasis upon the heroism and sufferings of forbears in the faith and on cherished works of spiritual autobiography produced under restraint such as John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding and William Penn’s No Cross, No Crown.’ The most important, and to my mind the most interesting, questions about persecution in this period have therefore gone unasked and unanswered. Aware of the most dramatic cases of malice and brutality, we have too readily accepted that the decades between the Restoration and the Toleration Act can be represented as the period of the ‘Great Persecution’. But how far did the acts which are conventionally summarised as the Clarendon Code represent the settled mind of the Anglican gentry, whose supremacy was confirmed by the political events of 1660 and 1670? How far were these acts actually enforced? How easy were they to enforce? These are large questions, much too large for a short communication. What I shall attempt here is an analysis of the enforcement of two statutes, the Conventicle Acts of 1664 and 1670, in a limited number of counties over a confined period. By 1679 popery, the alternative bogey to dissent, was at the front of magisterial minds and the 1670 act was for the moment largely in abeyance. Greater glory for the Second Conventicle Act was yet to come, with the Tory reaction of 1682 to 1686, but that period is beyond the scope of this paper.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 21: Persecution and Toleration , 1984 , pp. 235 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1984

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References

1 For a useful summary see [M. R.] Watts, The Dissenters [(Oxford 1978)] pp 227–43.

2 J. S. Morrill, ‘The Church in England 1642–9’ in his Reactions to the English Civil War (London 1982) pp 89–114; I. M. Green, The Re-establishment of the Church of England 1660–1663 (Oxford 1978). See also A. J. Fletcher, The Outbreak of the English Civil War (London 1981) pp 284–90.

3 R. A. Beddard, ‘The Restoration Church’ in J. R. Jones, ed The Restored Monarchy (London 1979) pp 155–75.

4 Statutes of the Realm VI pp 516–20.

5 A. Browning, English Historical Documents 1660–1714 (London 1953) pp 384–6.

6 [A.] Grey, Debates [of the House of Commons 1667–1694 (London 1763)] I pp 220–3; D. R. Whitcombe, Charles II and the Cavalier House of Commons 1663–1674 (Man chester 1966) pp 100–1.

7 HMC Kenyon MSS pp 84.

8 Grey, Debates I pp 227–8.

9 HMC Le Fleming MSS pp 58, 63, 68–9.

10 HMC, Le Fleming MSS pp 71, 86, 90, 109–10, 118.

11 CSPD 1664–5 pp 484–5.

12 HMC Kenyon MSS pp 84–5.

13 B. Quintrell, ed Proceedings of the Lancashire Justices of the Peace at the Sheriffs Table during Assizes Week 1578–1694 (Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire CXXI 1981) pp 32–3, 145, 147; HMC Le Fleming MSS p 109.

14 H. Copnall, Nottinghamshire County Records (Nottingham 1915) p 141; J. Simmons, ed English County Historians (Wakefield 1978) pp 22–32.

15 [F.] Bate, The Declaration of Indulgence [1672 (Liverpool 1908)] appendix, pp xliv, lxxv-lxxvi.

16 S. C. Ratcliffand H. C. Johnson, eds, Warwick County Records (Warwick 1939) V p xxiv; DNB.

17 CSPD 1666–7 p 168.

18 CSPD 1671 pp 20–1.

19 Bate, Declaration of Indulgence pp lii, lxxxi.

20 J. J. Hurwich, ‘Dissent and Catholicism in English Society: A Study of Warwick shire 1660–1720’Journal of British Studies XVI (1976–7) pp 30–1.

21 Bate, Declaration of Indulgence p 134.

22 East Suffolk RO, B 105/2/7.

23 S. Wilton Rix, ed The Diary and Autobiography of Edmund Bohun (Beccles 1853) pp 16–17, 37, 42, 46.

24 J. C. Jeaffreson, ed Middlesex County Records (Clerkenwell 1888) 111 pp 340–9.

25 CSPD1670 pp 147–8.

26 HMC Various Collections I p 151; B. H. Cunnington, ed Wiltshire Quarter Session Records (Devizes 1932) pp 247–8.

27 East Sussex RO, QO/EW6, fols 15v, 16r, 36v-38r, 43r, 126v QO/EW7, fols 74v, 85v.

28 Bate, Declaration of Indulgence, appendix pp li, lii, lxxx-lxxxi.

29 A. J. Fletcher, A County Community in Peace and War (London 1975) pp 123–4.

30 See e.g. CSPD 1676–7 p 210; Watts, The Dissenters p 246.

31 G. R. Cragg, From Puritanism to the Age of Reason (London 1950) pp 190–224.

32 See e.g. CSPD 1672–3 p 613, CSPD 1673 pp 120, 369.

33 P. Jenkins, The Making of A Ruling Class (Cambridge 1983) p 124.

34 M. Goldie, ‘John Locke and Anglican Royalism’, Political Studies XXXI (1983) pp 75–85.