| | by admin | | posted on 8th February 2023 in The English Revolution | | views 1030 | |
The Church of England was designed to orderly control state religion, but its garden soon became full of Nonconformist weeds.
The Church of England (CofE) was created in 1534 by Henry VIII (1491 – 1547), who passed the Act of Succession and then the Act of Supremacy in the mid 1530s. These recognised that the king was “the only supreme head of the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia”. This resulted in England officially splitting from the Catholic Church and the Pope.
It was the religious Brexit of its day.
Henry VIII wanted to break from the Catholic Church for two main reasons. Firstly, the Pope would not grant the king an annulment of his marriage to the Catholic Catherine of Aragon – who had failed to provide Henry with a male heir. Secondly, Henry had been swept up in the ideas of the Reformation and the Protestant faith – which viewed the Catholic Church as corrupt and in need of reform.
Protestantism was ‘established’ as the official religion of England.
There were several uprisings in England over such a radical change, where the population was forced to worship the new faith regardless of individual beliefs. For the next 100 years, there was a bitter divide between Catholics and Protestants as the Church of England sought to control the population.
By the start of the English Civil War Period (1642 – 1651), the Church of England itself was perceived as corrupt and too powerful. Many groups, such as the Puritans, wanted to purify the Church. But those in charge of the CofE’s religious authority were not going to give up their power without a fight. As the civil war raged on, it soon became not just a conflict between monarchy and Parliament – it became a battle for England’s broken soul.
Several political and religious groups sprang up during this period that dissented from the CofE and chose to worship outside it, including the Quakers. In 1662 the Act of Uniformity was introduced to rein in those who had separated themselves from the Church. Anyone who continued to worship outside it became officially known as a Nonconformist and was subject to punishment in the form of fines and or imprisonment. The adjoining Quaker Act, also in 1662, specifically banned assembled gatherings of Nonconformists – whether Quaker or of another faith.
Despite the state’s increasing pressure to force CofE worship on the English population, Nonconformists continued to practise their faith as they saw fit, with the largest group being the Quakers. Forced to break the law in order to worship, Quakers were arrested in large numbers and subjected to harsh treatment by the authorities.
However, the Quakers persisted in holding their meetings and it became clear that they would continue regardless of the punishments imposed. Other Nonconformists also continued to break the law, many of whom were inspired by the teachings of the Puritan preacher Roger Williams (1603 – 1683). He believed there should be a clear separation between church and state and that ‘forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils’. He argued:
“Religion out of the church will not hurt the church, any more than weeds in the wilderness hurt an enclosed garden, or poisons hurt the body when they are not taken, and antidotes are received against them.”
Being too outspoken, Williams was forced to flee the country and join the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where he became embroiled in the Antinomian Controversy. Meanwhile, in England the authorities were still determined to pull up the Nonconformist ‘weeds’ in the Church’s garden – of which the Quakers remained the largest group.
Nonconformists were barred from public office and from entering universities, and were socially stigmatised as having ‘civil disabilities’. However, they persisted, and it was not until the Act of Toleration in 1689 that it finally became legal for them to worship outside the CofE – although discrimination would continue for decades afterwards.
