Ideas and Practices of Religious Toleration and Intolerance in Seventeenth-Century England

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The aim of this research project was to examine the complex processes in which political, theological and intellectual negotiations about religious toleration and/or intolerance evolved in mid-seventeenth century England. The emphasis was on revising the conventional historiography of "Puritan revolution" which had pictured a progressive development of modern tolerationist ideas as opposed to intolerant pre-modern sociability. The study has revealed that both the idea of "toleration" and its opposition emerged as products of various negotiations, between parliaments and churches of the two kingdoms--England and Scotland--, or between different channels of communication such as correspondence, petitions, sermons and pamphlets.