Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in this book. The book discusses persecution than about toleration, and it emphasises the power of religious intolerance in early modern England. It concentrates on the fluctuating fortunes of these groups following the Elizabethan Settlement. The book includes a sketch of developments after 1689, tracing the steps taken from mere toleration to full religious liberty and civil equality. It argues that the traditional consensus concerning persecution and the ideal of uniformity was still in place in Tudor and early Stuart England. The political theorist John Gray argues that the liberal tradition was born in seventeenth-century England, in the debates of the English Civil War, the work of Locke, and the period of Whig ascendancy following the Glorious Revolution. The book tries to reclaim some of the positive aspects of Whig historiography, including its curiosity about the origins of modern ideals that the study of the past is of some practical value.