‘State Whiggs, but such Bigotted Church Toryes’: The Irish Toleration Act of 1719 and the Politics of Religion^*

Abstract

This article examines the origins and implications of the Irish Toleration Act of 1719. It makes three related arguments. First, it highlights what Britons during the early 18th century thought religious toleration was meant to achieve and to whom and under what circumstances religious toleration might be extended. Second, it demonstrates the steady desacralisation of post‐revolutionary British politics, even in a country like Ireland so obviously riven along confessional lines. Finally, it contends that both the arguments for and against the Irish Toleration Act illustrate that the established churches in the composite post‐revolutionary British state were functionally civil religions.