2. c. 4[2]) that forbade conventicles, defined as religious assemblies of more than five people other than an immediate family, outside the auspices of the Church of England and the rubrics of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

[citation needed] The operation of the Clarendon Code at least as far as Protestants were concerned was mitigated somewhat by Charles II's Royal Declaration of Indulgence in 1672, which suspended the execution of the Penal Laws and allowed a certain number of non-conformist chapels to be staffed and constructed, with the pastors subject to royal approval.

A special clause applied to Quakers who refused to swear an oath in court without due reason.

[6] Although aimed at Nonconformists, when the Conventicle Act was passed, the Jews, led by their new rabbi Jacob Sasportas, took their anxieties to Charles II, who told them, "laughing and spitting", not to worry; later the Privy Council put it in writing that Jews could "promise themselves the effects of the same favour as formerly they have had, so long as they demean themselves peaceably and quietly, with due obedience to His Majesty's laws and without scandal to his government".

Thus the English Jews, by an act of omission, as it were, became subjects, under no more disabilities than those inherent in their own unwillingness, like Catholics and Nonconformists, to belong to the Church of England or, in their particular case, to swear Christian oaths.