DISSENTING ACADEMIES

The Clarendon Code

At the time of the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, the Royalists set about punishing the Parliamentarians who had won the Civil War and executed King Charles I. Some of the regicides, such as Colonel Harrison were executed by being hung, drawn and quartered whereas those who had already died, such as Oliver Cromwell, were exhumed and hung. Charles II's advisor, when he had been in exile, was Edward Hyde and he became his chief minister when they returned to England. He was elevated to the peerage as the 1st Earl of Clarendon. The Acts of Parliament against Nonconformists became known as the Clarendon Code.

The Corporation Act of 1661 was designed for the express purpose of restricting public offices in England to members of the Church of England. It applied both to Roman Catholics and Presbyterians or other Nonconformist groups. The Cavalier Parliament aimed at restoring England to its state before the time of the Commonwealth i.e. the period of government from the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the return of his son Charles II from exile in 1660.

The Act of Uniformity 1662 prescribed the form of public prayers, administration of sacraments, and other rites of the Established Church of England, according to the rites and ceremonies prescribed in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Adherence to this was required in order to hold any office in government or the church, although the new version of the Book of Common Prayer prescribed by the Act was so new that most people had never even seen a copy. The Act also required that the Book of Common Prayer 'be truly and exactly Translated into the British or Welsh Tongue'. It also explicitly required ordination for all ministers, i.e. deacons, priests and bishops by a bishop. The Parliamentarians had abolished bishops during the Civil War.

The Conventicle Act of 1664 forbade conventicles, defined as religious assemblies of more than five people other than an immediate family, outside the auspices of the Church of England and the rules of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

The Five Mile Act, or Oxford Act, or Nonconformists Act 1665 forbade clergymen from living within five miles (8 km) of a parish from which they had been expelled, unless they swore an oath never to resist the king, or attempt to alter the government of Church or State. The latter involved swearing to obey the 1662 prayer book. Thousands of ministers were deprived of their "living" (i.e. of their position as a vicar or rector) under this act.

After the Uniformity Act 1662, for about two centuries, it was difficult for any but practising members of the Church of England to gain degrees from the old English universities, at Cambridge and Oxford. The University of Oxford, in particular, required – until the Oxford University Act 1854 – a religious test on admission that was comparable to that for joining the Church. The situation at the University of Cambridge was that a statutory test was required to take a bachelor's degree.

English Dissenters in this context were Nonconformist Protestants who could not in good conscience subscribe (i.e. conform) to the beliefs of the Church of England. As they were debarred from taking degrees in the only two English universities, many of them attended the dissenting academies. If they could afford it, they completed their education at the universities of Leyden, Utrecht, Glasgow or Edinburgh, the last, particularly, those who were studying medicine or law.

While the religious reasons mattered most, the geography of university education also was a factor. The plans for a Durham College of Oliver Cromwell provided an attempt to break the educational monopoly of Oxbridge, and while it failed because of the political change in 1660, the founder of Rathmell Academy was Richard Frankland, who may have been involved in the Durham College project. Almost as soon as dissenting academies began to appear, Frankland was backed by those who wished to see an independent university-standard education available in the north of England.

Tutors in the academies were initially drawn from the ejected ministers of 1662, who had left the Church of England after the passing of the Uniformity Act, and many of whom had English university degrees. After that generation, some tutors did not have those academic credentials to support their reputations, although in many cases other universities, particularly the Scottish institutions that were sympathetic to their Presbyterian views, awarded them honorary doctorates.