Puritans
Religious toleration

Puritan rule in England was marked by limited religious toleration. The Toleration Act of 1650 repealed the Act of Supremacy, Act of Uniformity, and all laws making recusancy a crime. There was no longer a legal requirement to attend the parish church on Sundays (for both Protestants and Catholics). In 1653, responsibility for recording births, marriages and deaths was transferred from the church to a civil registrar. The result was that church baptisms and marriages became private acts, not guarantees of legal rights, which provided greater equality to dissenters.

The 1653 Instrument of Government guaranteed that in matters of religion "none shall be compelled by penalties or otherwise, but endeavours be used to win them by sound Doctrine and the Example of a good conversation". Religious freedom was given to "all who profess Faith in God by Jesus Christ". However, Catholics and some others were excluded. No one was executed for their religion during the Protectorate. In London, those attending Catholic mass or Anglican holy communion were occasionally arrested but released without charge. Many unofficial Protestant congregations, such as Baptist churches, were permitted to meet. Quakers were allowed to publish freely and hold meetings. They were, however, arrested for disrupting parish church services and organising tithe -strikes against the state church.

In New England, where Congregationalism was the official religion, the Puritans exhibited intolerance of other religious views, including Quaker, Anglican and Baptist theologies. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were the most active of the New England persecutors of Quakers, and the persecuting spirit was shared by the Plymouth Colony and the colonies along the Connecticut river.

Four Quakers, known as the Boston martyrs, were executed. The first two of the four Boston martyrs were executed by the Puritans on 27 October 1659, and in memory of this, 27 October is now International Religious Freedom Day to recognise the importance of freedom of religion. In 1660, one of the most notable victims of the religious intolerance was English Quaker Mary Dyer, who was hanged in Boston for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony. The hanging of Dyer on Boston Common marked the beginning of the end of the Puritan theocracy. In 1661, King Charles II explicitly forbade Massachusetts from executing anyone for professing Quakerism. In 1684, England revoked the Massachusetts charter, sent over a royal governor to enforce English laws in 1686 and, in 1689, passed a broad Toleration Act.

Anti-Catholic sentiment appeared in New England with the first Pilgrim and Puritan settlers. In 1647, Massachusetts passed a law prohibiting any Jesuit Roman Catholic priests from entering territory under Puritan jurisdiction. Any suspected Catholic who could not clear himself was to be banished from the colony; a second offense carried a death penalty. A plaque in Southwick Hall at the University of Massachusetts Lowell commemorates "Royal Southwick, Lowell's anti-slavery Quaker senator and manufacturer and a descendant of Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick who were despoiled, imprisoned, starved, whipped, banished from Massachusetts Colony and persecuted to death in the year 1660 for being Quakers".
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