Occasional Conformity Act

Historical Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.05: English Writing and Culture from the Glorious Revolution to the French Revolution, 1689-1789.
Vol. editors: Paul Baines (University of Liverpool), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Pat Rogers (University of South Florida), Nicholas Seager (University of Keele)

Domains

Legislation (Bills, Acts, Laws ...)

Dates

Date of occurrence 1711-12-15

Places

United Kingdom (Location)

Resources

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The Act of Uniformity (1559) required that priests, government officers, and men taking university degrees swear an oath affirming the supremacy of the monarch, or lose their office. This demand for religious conformity remained in place until 1829. In the years following the Restoration (1660), some Protestant nonconformists (dissenters) had got around this requirement by taking Anglican communion once a year, but the practice annoyed both staunch Protestants (such as Defoe, who wrote pamphlets against occasional conformity, and the Tories, who tended to support hierarchical, divine right, and Episcopalian social and religious models. As the Tories had the ear of Queen Anne, so in 1711 they succeeded in passing The Occasional Conformity Act (1711) which took away from dissenters the…

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127 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Occasional Conformity Act". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 June 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=784, accessed 06 May 2024.]

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