dissent

dissent (nonconformity). Though dissenting sects could trace some of their doctrines to well before the Reformation, for example to the lollards, pre‐Reformation heterodoxy is usually termed schism or heresy. The term dissent is reserved for those who did not conform to the Church of England and, though this included catholics, it is usually confined to protestant groups.

The seed time for nonconformity was the Civil War. The confused situation gave dissenting sects the opportunity to establish themselves. The independents or congregationalists dissented from the dissenters, disliking the rigour of presbyterian rule and demanding toleration; the baptists split between the general baptists and the particular baptists, who were closer to Calvinism; George Fox founded the ‘Children of Light’, later known as quakers; Thomas Harrison looked for the imminent establishment of Christ's Fifth Monarchy and the triumph of the saints.

In the declaration of Breda April 1660) Charles II offered ‘a liberty to tender consciences’ in religious matters. But the Cavalier Parliament, elected in March 1661 to replace the Convention, was much less inclined to forgive and forget, and a new Act of Uniformity (1662) led to some 2,000 puritan clergy leaving their livings. The ‘Clarendon code’ waged war against the nonconformists, and the Test Act of 1673 barred dissenters, protestant and catholic, from public office, including membership of Parliament. The reigns of Charles II and James II were difficult for the dissenters, fierce bursts of persecution alternating with efforts to woo them. At the crisis of 1688, the majority of protestant dissenters heeded the warning from Halifax that ‘you are to be hugged now only that you may be the better squeezed at another time’.

After the Glorious Revolution, the Toleration Act of 1689 granted freedom of worship, provided that dissenters took a simple oath of allegiance. At the same time a new schism arose when 400 Anglican clergy decided that they could not swear to the new regime and formed the non‐juring church. The acceptance after 1688 of an avowedly presbyterian church order in Scotland, confirmed by the Act of Union in 1707, was proof that the Church of England no longer had an official monopoly in the British Isles.

Under these comparatively relaxed conditions, the dissenting groups might have been expected to flourish. In practice toleration proved more damaging than persecution. Some of the more prosperous dissenters conformed for social or political reasons, but the dissenters also suffered from internal convulsions. The development of the methodist movement from the 1730s onwards led to a vast increase in dissent, though during Wesley's lifetime his followers remained in the Anglican church. By the 1770s the dissenters had arrested their decline and were growing more confident, fortified by the success of nonconformity in America. This led many of them to oppose the American war, bringing them renewed unpopularity. The support of many dissenters for the French Revolution in its early stages kindled fresh bitterness and Priestley's house in Birmingham was burned in 1791 in church and king riots. In 1828, the long wars safely over, repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts went through with surprising ease. Though nonconformists retained substantial grievances, especially over marriage and tithes, they had at least achieved formal civil equality.

It transpired that they had achieved a good deal more. The early years of the 19th cent. witnessed a remarkable upsurge in support for dissent. The methodists pointed the way to other sects. At the time of Wesley's death in 1791 they numbered some 56,000: by 1836 there were 360,000 in the different methodist churches. Congregationalist membership increased from some 20,000 in 1760 to 127,000 by 1838, baptists from 11,000 to 100,000.

The effect of these changes was a transformation of the religious scene recorded by the religious census of 1851. First the census showed that nearly 40 per cent of those eligible to have attended church on 30 March had not done so. Secondly, it revealed that Anglican attenders scarcely outnumbered the dissenting sects—3,773,000 against 3,487,000, of whom methodists were 1,463,000, independents 793,000, baptists 587,000, catholics 305,000, unitarians 37,000, and quakers 18,000. Dissenters were in a comfortable majority in many northern towns like Sheffield, Leeds, and Bradford, and formed a great majority in Wales.

Anglicans braced themselves for another attack on the established position of the church. Tithes went in 1868; the Irish church was disestablished in 1869; the Welsh church in 1920. But the Church of England held out until the tide of religious belief was clearly ebbing. Meanwhile the influence of dissent was all‐pervasive. TheMunicipal Corporations Act of 1835, which set up elected councils in the large towns, had brought hundreds of dissenters into local government. The nonconformist conscience was a powerful political force, as Charles Dilke and Parnell discovered. The influence of dissent may be seen most clearly in the Liberal Party. Bright and W. E. Forster were quakers, Joseph Chamberlain a unitarian, Asquith from a congregationalist family, Lloyd George from a baptist home. The Parliament of 1905, which gave the Liberals their biggest majority ever, contained over 180 protestant dissenters. But both dissent and the Liberal Party were poised for eclipse. The removal of many of their grievances by the Liberals persuaded some dissenters to move to the political right, while the new Labour Party offered alternative accommodation to those who remained radical.

Dissent itself was also in decline. From 1918 onwards there was a marked falling‐off in membership of both the Church of England and the dissenting denominations. There was increasing difficulty in recruiting clergy. The Church of England had 20,000 clerics in 1900, 10,000 by 1984; the methodists, with 4,700 ministers in 1950, had 2,500 by 1993. The churches responded in a variety of ways—by merging parishes, by abandoning unwanted churches, by institutional amalgamations, and by ordaining women ministers and priests. Though religious issues still surfaced in public life, politics, except in Northern Ireland, was largely secularized.