Chapter 1 explores the process of adjusting to England's new and uncertain religious settlement, and the broader impact that this process had on the way that religious differences were discussed. It does so by seeking answers to two questions. First, why was the legislation of 1689 an inadequate framework for managing religious difference? Secondly, how did contemporaries seek to overcome these perceived inadequacies? Through exploring these questions, it becomes apparent that adaptation to toleration involved the development of rhetorical strategies – particularly in contemporary print – that set up oppositions between Church and Dissent not just in political or religious terms, but also in terms of social status and behaviour. As the process of coming to terms with toleration unfolded, therefore, religious difference came to shape the developing social and cultural norms of the period.

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.