England's Dissenters ranged from Quakers to Muggletonians who cursed their critics
Between the 16th and 19th centuries, many English Protestants broke away from the Church of England, which they saw as too Catholic, though they rarely agreed on the remedy. Some founded lasting denominations like the Baptists and Quakers; others, such as the Diggers or Fifth Monarchists, vanished within a generation.
Dissenters rejected state meddling in religion and built their own churches, schools and communities. Some emigrated, and the Brownists founded the Plymouth Colony. They flourished under Oliver Cromwell, who turned James I's slogan no bishop, no king against the crown by abolishing both. After 1660 bishops returned, and the Act of Uniformity of 1662 demanded Anglican ordination, pushing many ministers out of the state church; they became known as Nonconformists.
Robert Browne tried to set up a separate congregation in Norwich around 1580, was arrested and freed on the advice of his kinsman William Cecil, and later returned to the Church of England as a parish priest. Scholars mostly trace the Baptists to the English Separatists of the 17th century, though others link them to continental Anabaptists. George Fox's journal says a judge in 1650 dubbed his followers Quakers after Fox told him to tremble before the Lord; they worship in silence until inspired.
Stranger groups abounded. Gerrard Winstanley's Diggers, begun in 1649, sought small egalitarian farming communities. The Fifth Monarchists read in the Book of Daniel that four empires would precede Christ's return and watched the year 1666 closely. The Familists, followers of the Dutch mystic Hendrik Niclaes, hid within the established church and held that heaven and hell were both on Earth.
The Muggletonians began in 1651 when two London tailors proclaimed themselves the last prophets of Revelation. They shunned worship and preaching, avoided evangelism and believed God ignores daily affairs until the end of the world, yet they became notorious for cursing anyone who mocked their faith. In the next century the Methodists John Wesley and George Whitefield were accused of enthusiasm, a charge they answered by describing a religion of the heart.
Source: English Dissenters
