Church and State, 1550-1750 : The Emergence of Dissent

The history of Dissent has usually been written with the end in view. Church and Dissent were to become separate entities, and historians of Anglicanism and Nonconformity were inclined to write a teleological history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, explaining why this came to pass. This was not an illegitimate approach, for one of the duties of the historian is to explain why things have come to be the way they are. But too often, weak teleology became strong teleology, and a sense of inevitability crept into the narratives. [Opening paragraph]