ABSTRACT
Seduced by the stark polarities embedded in early modern polemic, historians of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century England have long assumed that the communities that comprised it were irreparably severed along confessional lines. They have perpetuated the impression that social relations between Protestants, Catholics and dissenters were characterised by latent hostility, if not by visceral hatred. Over the last few years, however, a more nuanced picture has begun to emerge. Shifting their gaze away from moments of violent verbal and physical confrontation, scholars have paid growing attention to the practical compromises and ‘private treaties of toleration’ that made it possible for people who adhered to rival creeds to coexist in relative peace. They have unearthed from local archives powerful evidence of the ‘everyday ecumenism’ that tempered the fierce spiritual antagonism that contemporaries were taught should prevail between those divided by faith.1 Finding appropriate terms to describe this state of affairs is by no means straightforward. What words best capture the texture of these interactions without falling into the trap of anachronism? In a perceptive recent essay on the subject, Bill Sheils has suggested that the vocabulary of ‘tolerance’ may be less helpful in
this regard than ‘the language of neighbourliness and commonality’ – of ‘getting on’ and ‘getting along’.2
