The Speaker in the Age of Party, 1672–1715

The discussion by King Charles II and his senior advisors in 1672 of the choice of a new Speaker for the forthcoming parliamentary session reveals both the way in which the appointment was prepared and the government's considerations in the appointment. Prominent among them was the Speaker's personal influence, and his personal views on the great issue to be debated, the Declaration of Indulgence. The choice of Sir Job Charlton, and the behaviour of his successor, Sir Edward Seymour, in the chair, mark a new phase in the history of the speakership, in which Speakers are less likely to be lawyers, for whom the office was a step on the road to high legal office, and more likely to be significant political leaders with their own influence and following. After the 1688 revolution, the tendency for Speakers to be party political leaders became still more marked. Nevertheless, the country ideology espoused by several of them, including Paul Foley, Robert Harley and the tory, Sir Thomas Hanmer, provides a pedigree for the model of the impartial speakership whose invention is often attributed to Arthur Onslow.     

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 The Schism Act was repealed in 1719, but freedom for Quakers and other dissenters to teach had already been achieved largely through the courts.