ABSTRACT
James II’s first Declaration of Indulgence of April 1687 presented nonconformists with difficult choices. Dissenting authors of all persuasions had developed arguments on behalf of liberty for Protestant conscience since the Anglican settlement of 1662. Presbyterians often combined these cases for conscience with arguments for further reformation of the national church along lines that would permit their inclusion within it; and the House of Commons had responded with serious deliberations about comprehension in 1680. Indeed, reconsideration of the Restoration church settlement was as central to the national crisis of 1679-82 as reconsideration of the succession. Dissenters had paid dearly for their commitment to conscience thereafter: their preachers were silenced, and their meetings were disrupted. The government exploited the plot revelations of 1683 and Monmouth’s rebellion of 1685 to intimidate the dissenting population with thousands of arrests and with hundreds of executions. Little wonder that dissenters breathed more easily when persecution was lifted in 1686 and ended altogether by James’s 1687 toleration.
