Background
With fears that James II of England and his male heir would establish a Catholic dynasty the previous violent divisions among different English Protestant sects were put aside to focus on their common enemy - Catholicism. A political and religious elite among this coalition invited William, the Stadholder of the Netherlands who was married to James' daughter Mary (whom had been raised Protestant) to invade the nation and seize the crown. The resulting Revolution of 1688 (commonly referred to as the Glorious Revolution) resulted in success for William and Mary who became sovereigns. A series of legal acts assured a constitutional settlement of this new situation, these include The Bill of Rights (1689), The Mutiny Act (1689), the Act of Toleration (1689), and later the Act of Settlement (1701) and the Act of Union (1707).
Historians (like Kenneth Pearl) see the Act of Toleration as "in many ways a compromise bill. To get nonconformists' (Protestants who were not members of the Church of England) support in the crucial months of 1688". Both the Whig and Tory parties that had rallied around William and Mary had promised nonconformists that such an act would be granted if the revolution succeeded. James II had issued an act of toleration but the nonconformists believed their future more secure if the Sovereign was a Protestant.
Catholics and Unitarians were not hunted down after the Act was passed but they still had no right to assemble and pray.
As there still remained a Test Act, non-Anglicans could not sit in Parliament (this included all Protestant non-Conformists, Jews, Catholics, and Unitarians). The Test Act remained in force until the nineteenth century.
Read more about this topic: Act Of Toleration 1689
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