The English Indemnity Acts 1726–1867

Abstract

Modern scholars generally agree that the Indemnity Acts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were enacted to afford legal relief to religious nonconformists from the restrictions placed upon them by the Test Act of 1673 and the Corporation Act of 1661. The oaths required by this legislation were a means of debarring religiously and politically seditious individuals from offices, in national government in the case of the Test Act and from corporation government in that of the Corporation Act. Both acts required the taking of “the several oaths of supremacy and allegiance” in addition to the “sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the usage of the Church of England.” To qualify under the Test Act the sacrament had to be taken in a public church on a Sunday “immediately after divine service and sermon…” within three months of admission to office. The Corporation Act differed significantly in its requirement that the sacrament had to have been received in the year preceding election to corporate office.