ABSTRACT

On St Bartholomew’s Day, 24 August 1662, Parliament enforced the Act of Uniformity, which had been passed in April. As a result, more than nine hundred clergy, dons and schoolmasters were ejected from their livings for failure to give their assent to the Book of Common Prayer and to renounce the Solemn League and Covenant. Combined with earlier ejections, the total number of Dissenters rose to slightly more than two thousand.1 Some estimate that approximately 10 per cent of the English belonged to one Protestant sect or another, in addition to the approximately 5 per cent who were Roman Catholic.2 This was the formal beginning of the Dissenting movement in Britain, but it was a movement which had roots going down deep into the soil of the English Reformation.3