The Act of Uniformity (1559) required that priests, government officers, and men taking university degrees swear an oath affirming the supremacy of the monarch, or lose their office. This demand for religious conformity remained in place until 1829. In the years following the Restoration (1660), some Protestant nonconformists (dissenters) had got around this requirement by taking Anglican communion once a year, but the practice annoyed both staunch Protestants (such as Defoe, who wrote pamphlets against occasional conformity, and the Tories, who tended to support hierarchical, divine right, and Episcopalian social and religious models. As the Tories had the ear of Queen Anne, so in 1711 they succeeded in passing The Occasional Conformity Act (1711) which took away from dissenters the ability to apparently conform merely by occasional worship at their parish church.

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Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Occasional Conformity Act". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 June 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=784, accessed 10 June 2026.]