ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes a preliminary, tracing the last and for the purposes critical phase of formation of the Anglican polity by the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and its effects, and perceptions of those effects. Many histories of Anglicanism, after retelling the long and bloody story of the Reformation through until the Civil War, seem to reach 1662 with something of a sigh of relief, and move on to the Tractarians. But collective amnesia reigns over the huge contextual difference to 1662 made by the Toleration Act 1689. The presence and activity of the jurisdiction had a major impact on contemporary views of the Church, and the desire for toleration which grew in the late seventeenth century. A famous 1692 remark of Archdeacon Humphrey Prideaux of Suffolk is often cited in support of the contention that the Toleration Act had introduced religious freedom.
