Occasional Conformity Act

Historical Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)
Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Tweet Report an Error

The Act of Uniformity (1559) required that priests, government officers, and men taking university degrees swear an oath affirming the supremacy of the monarch, or lose their office. This demand for religious conformity remained in place until 1829. In the years following the Restoration (1660), some Protestant nonconformists (dissenters) had got around this requirement by taking Anglican communion once a year, but the practice annoyed both staunch Protestants (such as Defoe, who wrote pamphlets against occasional conformity, and the Tories, who tended to support hierarchical, divine right, and Episcopalian social and religious models. As the Tories had the ear of Queen Anne, so in 1711 they succeeded in passing The Occasional …

127 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Occasional Conformity Act". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 June 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=784, accessed 23 November 2024.]

784 Occasional Conformity Act 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.