The Toleration Act (1 William and Mary, chapter 18)

Parliament of EnglandRoyal assent 24 May 1689

The Act of the English Parliament that exempted Protestants dissenting from the Church of England from the penalties of certain laws. It allowed them to worship in their own registered meeting places on stated conditions.

Read the text at british-history.ac.uk ↗

The Act does not repeal the laws that required attendance at the parish church and forbade other religious meetings. It provides that those laws shall not apply to dissenters who take the oaths appointed by an Act of the same Parliament and make the declaration required by the Act of Charles II that kept Roman Catholics out of Parliament. Their meeting places must be certified and their doors unlocked; their preachers must subscribe the doctrinal articles of the Church of England, with stated exceptions; those who refuse all oaths may make a declaration instead. Roman Catholics and those who deny the Trinity are expressly excluded.

The word “toleration” is not in its title. The pamphlet of 1744 cited in John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism already calls it the Act of Toleration. See the Toleration Act and Locke’s Letter.

Cited in

  1. 1652, firm date
  2. 24 May 1689, firm date

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