For discussion:

What were the major arguments advanced for and against toleration in this period?

How far did its supporters want toleration to extend?

What was the policy of the republic, and of Cromwell as Protector, towards religious toleration? Does Cromwell’s position show any intellectual coherence and consistency?

General surveys:

M Watts, The Dissenters (1978), Part II, esp. chaps. 1-8, 16

C Cross, ‘The Church in England 1646-1660’, in G. Aylmer, ed., The Interregnum (1972)

J Morrill, ‘The Church in England 1642-1649’ in Morrill, ed., Reactions to the English Civil War (1982), reprinted in Morrill, ed., The Nature of the English Revolution (1993)

J Morrill, ‘The Impact of Puritanism’, in Morrill, ed., The Impact of the English Civil War (1991)

Ann Hughes, ‘The Frustrations of the Godly’, in J Morrill, ed., Revolution and Restoration. England in the1650s (1992)

J Coffey, ‘The toleration controversy during the English revolution’, in C Durston and Judith Maltby, eds., Religion in Revolutionary England (2006)

A Hughes, Gangraena and the struggle for the English Revolution (2004) (the debate on toleration at the end of the civil war)

B Worden, ‘Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate’ in Persecution and Toleration, ed. W Sheils (1984), Studies in Church History, 21.

--, ‘Providence and politics in Cromwellian England’, in Past & Present 109 (1985)

--, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the sin of Achan’, in D Beales & G Best, eds., History, society and the churches (1985)

A Fletcher, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the godly nation’, in Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution, ed. Morrill (1990)

J C Davis, ‘Cromwell’s Religion’, also in Morrill, ed., Oliver Cromwell & the English Revolution.

R Howell, ‘Cromwell and English Liberty’ in R C Richardson and G M Ridden, eds. Freedom and the English Revolution (1986)

B. Capp, ‘Cromwell and Toleration’ in Jane Mills, ed., Cromwell’s Legacy (forthcoming)

Hughes, ‘The Pulpit Guarded’, in John Bunyan and his England, ed A. Laurence et al. (1990)

D Hirst, ‘The Failure of Godly Rule in the English revolution’, Past & Present, 132 (1991)

C Durston, ‘Puritan Rule and the Failure of Cultural Revolution, 1645-60’, in C Durston & J Eales, eds., The Culture of English Puritanism (1996)

J C Davis, Fear, Myth and History (1986) on parliamentary ‘panics’.

A L Morton, The World of the Ranters (1970)- ch. 6, on Walwyn, the leading Leveller writer on toleration.

I Gentles, The New Model Army (1992) see pp285-94 on the Levellers, the Grandees and the army debate on religious toleration.

L Damrosch, The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus; James Nayler and the Puritan Crackdown on the Holy Spirit (1996)

B Coward, Oliver Cromwell (1991), (see esp. index under Ireland, James Nayler, Cromwell and religious liberty). On Nayler and the Quakers see also B Reay, The Quakers in the English Revolution, and I Roots, The Great Rebellion, ch. 22.

Primary sources:

T. Edwards, Gangraena (1646; facsimile edition 1977)- most important attack on the radicals.

W. Walwyn, The Writings of William Walwyn, ed J R McMichael and B Taft (1989)

W. Haller, ed., Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution (1936)

Cromwell, Letters and Speeches, ed Carlyle: see esp. letters from Ireland 1649, on the massacres after the sacking of Drogheda and Wexford; also his speech to Parliament, Sept. 1654, on the Fifth Monarchists.

‘The Whitehall Debates’ in Puritanism and Liberty, ed A S P Woodhouse; also in The Clarke Papers, Camden Society.