ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes religious practice by Anglicans in mainland Europe in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and attempts to shed light on how they regarded conformity or nonconformity to the established churches in host countries. In Roman Catholic countries, the English often showed strong defiance towards local authorities all through the period. After all, the Roman Catholic Church was regarded as popery, an abominable superstition worshiping the arch-Antichrist, the pope, and easily linked with tyrannical tendencies. Living in predominantly Roman Catholic countries became much less dangerous. However, the fact that official treaties existed did not necessarily mean they were observed. Efforts by the English to be allowed their own religious practices continued. As early as the 1600s, the English merchants in Lisbon under Spanish rule were already strongly and persistently asserting their right to use the English prayer book in their own houses, not to attend Mass, and not to kneel before the Host, procession in the streets.
