The Clarendon Code and the Making of Nonconformity

Charles II returned in 1660 having promised at Breda a liberty to tender consciences, and the parliament elected the following year had other intentions. Four statutes, known collectively by the name of his chief minister although he did not draft them all, built the settlement. The Corporation Act required municipal officeholders to take communion in the Church of England. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 required every minister to declare his unfeigned assent to everything in the revised Book of Common Prayer by a fixed day, and about two thousand who would not do so lost their livings, an event remembered as the Great Ejection. The Conventicle Act made worship outside the parish church a criminal offence. The Five Mile Act barred an ejected minister from coming within five miles of a place where he had served.

The effect was not what its authors intended. Before 1662 the people who wanted the church further reformed had been a party inside it, arguing for change from within. After 1662 they were outside it and had to organise as separate congregations with their own ministers, buildings and finances, and English Nonconformity dates as a permanent body from that year. John Bunyan wrote in Bedford gaol under these laws.