Quaker Schoolmasters, Toleration and the Law, 1689–1714

The 1689 Toleration Act allowed Protestant dissenters freedom to worship in public, but it was only a limited toleration and dissenters continued to suffer discrimination. This article examines the experience of Quakers in one important area, the Anglican monopoly in teaching. Although the prosecution of unlicensed teachers was patchy, localised, and dependent upon the hostility and zeal of particular individuals, few dissenters escaped harassment. Moreover, Friends appear to have suffered more severely because of the particular dislike that they still provoked and their unwillingness to compromise which often led to imprisonment. The growth in High Church feeling during Anne's reign led to a more rigorous enforcement of the existing statutes and the passing of the Schism Act (1714). The consequences of an Anglican educational monopoly have not been properly considered by historians largely from the assumption that the Schism Act was fatally compromised by the death of Queen Anne, and because little attention has been paid to the continued harassment of dissenters after toleration who attempted to teach. The Schism Act was repealed in 1719, but freedom for Quakers and other dissenters to teach had already been achieved largely through the courts.