Chapter 1 explores the process of adjusting to England's new and uncertain religious settlement, and the broader impact that this process had on the way that religious differences were discussed. It does so by seeking answers to two questions. First, why was the legislation of 1689 an inadequate framework for managing religious difference? Secondly, how did contemporaries seek to overcome these perceived inadequacies? Through exploring these questions, it becomes apparent that adaptation to toleration involved the development of rhetorical strategies – particularly in contemporary print – that set up oppositions between Church and Dissent not just in political or religious terms, but also in terms of social status and behaviour. As the process of coming to terms with toleration unfolded, therefore, religious difference came to shape the developing social and cultural norms of the period.

While the Toleration Act provided significant legal protection that made the lives of Dissenters much easier, it also sparked a new and difficult process whereby differing parties jostled to secure their place in public religious life. The greater confidence of Dissenters in expressing their religion publicly, combined with the desire of Church interests to limit Dissenting influence, served to stimulate contests over religion on a local level. Chapter 2 explores the key effects of this on print, parish politics, attitudes to the physical presence of meeting houses, and inter-denominational relations at funerals and burials. Ultimately, disputes over the place of Dissent within the public religious landscape resulting from the settlement of 1689 acted to keep issues of religious difference alive in new ways, even as the embers of Restoration persecution burned out. As the concluding section of this chapter emphasises, considering the prominence of such disputes may help us to reconsider the place of the first half of the eighteenth century within longer narratives of the privatisation of belief.

Chapter 9 explores the period 1649-53 as a time when all religious groups were forced to rethink the Church of England and to contemplate significant changes to their religious lives. Beginning with the radical reform programmes of 1649-53, it argues that many of these reforms (such as attacks on lay impropriations and tithes) had been prefigured in pre-war debates or could command more mainstream support, and can be studied in continuity with earlier reforming initiatives rather than as a radical break with the past. The stymieing of the 1640s Presbyterian settlement, and the political troubles of presbyterian royalists, are examined. The chapter discusses the practical and ideological problems that both Presbyterians and episcopalian royalists faced over how far they should adapt their customary forms of worship and administration of communion in the face of the new settlement, and documents their failure to create agreed positions on conformity. The chapter also outlines the negotiations conducted by Charles II and his ministers with the Scottish Covenanters, delineating not a simple capitulation but a series of negotiations involving foreign divines, where forms of reduced episcopacy were still being discussed, but ending with an alliance which drove episcopalian royalists to question the royal supremacy.