But payment of tithes and
performance of parish duties were still obligatory. Non-conformist
preachers had to subscribe to the tenets of belief listed in the
first eighteen Articles of Religion, but were exempted from the
articles on expounding inconsistencies in scripture, the
traditions of the church, homilies, and consecration of bishops
and ministers of the Elizabethan statute and the statute on
uniformity of prayers and sacraments of Charles II.
Quakers were active in the countryside. They were about one tenth
of the population and did not believe in a state church. There
were some Quakers schools and some Quaker workhouses to give work
to the poor. For the reason that they met together in large
numbers to the great endangering of public peace and safety and to
the terror of the people, and because they had secret
communications and separated themselves from the rest of the
people and from the usual places of worship, a statute was passed
in 1662, that any Quakers who assembled to the number of five or
more under the pretense of unauthorized religious worship and any
person maintaining that taking an oath before a magistrate was
unlawful and contrary to the word of God or refusing to take a
required oath was to forfeit 5 pounds for the first offence or be
imprisoned for 3 months if he couldn't pay. For the second
offence, the penalty was 10 pounds or imprisonment for 6 months
with hard labor.
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