The statute known as the Act of Settlement1 was enacted in 1701. As its name suggests, it amended or ‘settled’ the royal succession – the second such amendment in little over a decade. In 1689 the Bill of Rights2 had not only declared Prince William of Orange and his wife Princess Mary to be King William III and Queen Mary II of England, it had also vested the royal succession firstly in the survivor of them, then in Mary’s descendants, next in her younger sister Princess Anne and her descendants, and finally in the descendants of William. At the time this had seemed adequate, but circumstances had proven otherwise. William and Mary were childless, he remained a widower after her death in 1694, and none of Princess Anne’s children thrived. When the last of these died in July 1700 at the age of eleven, it appeared that the childless William III would be succeeded by the childless Anne. The Act of Settlement therefore determined that following the deaths of William and Anne, respectively, and in the absence of descendants, the Crown would pass to Princess Sophia, a granddaughter of King James I of England through her mother, Princess Elizabeth Stuart.

This chapter argues that, even before Swift, Defoe’s satire employed the strategy of identifying admirable traits in the satirized object, which implicates both the thing itself and those who already see themselves as morally superior to the thing under attack. Defoe's deadpan satires work to more slowly build the ironic tension to the point that a new perspective suddenly and disruptively makes its presence felt; that the ironic status of this presence is also sometimes doubtful, indeterminate, or uncertain simply strengthens its effects. Defoe’s most famous satire, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, predicts A Modest Proposal, not just by using extremist rhetoric but also by suggesting that an earnest engagement can be much more subversive than cynical manipulation. Defoe satirizes the practice of occasional conformity by showing that it engages the Church in a purely cynical way. Like Swift later, Defoe seriously engages with the ideology of his target, in this case the Tory bigot, whose hostility to Dissenters also leads him to reveal the key insight of the satire: if Dissenters are willing to conform occasionally, there is no reason not to enforce conformity permanently.

Already a noted theorist and agitator on behalf of religious toleration in England when he turned his attention to American colonization, William Penn (1644–1718) played a central role in the development of liberty of conscience as a fundamental element of legitimate government. This chapter explores the foundations of Penn’s understanding of liberty of conscience and the important role he saw it playing as a foundational social, political, and legal principle. After an overview of Penn’s life and career, the focus turns to Penn’s role in the tolerationist movement during the 1670s in England and the main components of his theory as it developed over the course of his public career; his defense of representative institutions like juries and Parliament; his understanding of fundamental law; and his defense of “civil interest” as a social bond for uniting a religiously-diverse population like England and, later, Pennsylvania. The chapter concludes with a brief examination of the founding documents and early history of Penn’s colony.