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The Great Ejection followed the Act of Uniformity 1662 in England. Several thousand Puritan ministers were forced out of their positions by Church of England clergy, following the changes after the restoration to power of Charles II. It was a consequence (not necessarily intended) of the Savoy Conference of 1661.
Contents
History
The Act of Uniformity prescribed that any minister who refused to conform to the Book of Common Prayer by St. Bartholomew's Day (24 August) 1662 should be ejected from the Church of England. This date became known as Black Bartholomew's Day, among dissenters, a reference to the fact that it occurred on the same day as the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572. Oliver Heywood estimated the number of ministers ejected at 2,500. This group included Richard Baxter, Edmund Calamy the Elder, Simeon Ashe, Thomas Case, John Flavel, William Jenkyn, Joseph Caryl, Thomas Brooks, Thomas Manton, William Sclater, Thomas Doolittle and Thomas Watson. Biographical details of ejected ministers and their fates were later collected by the historian Edmund Calamy, grandson of the elder Calamy.
Although there had already been ministers outside the established church, the Great Ejection created an abiding concept of non-conformity. Strict religious tests of the Clarendon code and other Penal Laws left a substantial section of English society excluded from public affairs, and also university degrees, for a century and a half. Culturally, in England and Wales, nonconformism endured longer than that.
Historiography
The bicentennial in 1862 led to a sharp debate, with the nonconformist agenda being questioned, and the account in Calamy being reviewed.
Iain Murray argues that the issue was deeper than "phrases in the Book of Common Prayer and forms of church order," but regarded the "nature of true Christianity."
Legacy
The Bishop of Liverpool, J. C. Ryle, referred to the Ejection as an "injury to the cause of true religion in England which will probably never be repaired".
A Service of Reconciliation was held at Westminster Abbey on 7 February 2012 to mark the 350th anniversary of the Great Ejection. Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury, preached at the service which was attended by clergy and laity of the Church of England and the United Reformed Church.