After the Uniformity Act 1662, for about two centuries, it was difficult for any but practising members of the Church of England to gain degrees from Cambridge and Oxford, the ancient English universities.
[2] English Dissenters in this context were Nonconformist Protestants who could not in good conscience subscribe (i.e. conform) to the beliefs of the Church of England.
[5] Tutors in the academies were initially drawn from the ejected ministers of 1662, who had left the Church of England after the passing of the Uniformity Act, and many of whom had English university degrees.
After that generation, some tutors did not have those academic credentials to support their reputations, although in many cases other universities, particularly the Scottish institutions that were sympathetic to their Presbyterian views, awarded them honorary doctorates.
[citation needed] The Independent or Congregational Fund Board was established in 1695 to assist poor ministers, and to give young men who had already received a classical education, the theological and other training preparatory to the Christian ministry.
In the general framework according to which schools must be licensed by the bishop, and ministers (who made up most of the teaching staff) could be in legal trouble for the activities that held together their congregations, some academies simply shut down.
[13] The degree of religious toleration in the later half of the seventeenth century varied considerably according to laws passed by Parliament, and also in line with the public mood.
Some academies, such as that of John Shuttlewood,[14] operated in remote areas of the countryside, and some tutors were required to leave towns where they had previously performed their ministry, for example under the Five Mile Act.
In 1723 the regium donum, initially a grant to support Irish Presbyterians, became a national subsidy, and subsequently dissenting academies were more generally accepted.
The dissenters themselves argued that their academies had stricter discipline than the universities, and were perceived by many to have promoted a more contemporary curriculum based on the practical sciences and modern history.
[15][page needed] The tutors and the students of the dissenting academies contributed in fundamental ways to the development of ideas, notably in the fields of theology, philosophy, literature, and science.
The ODNB goes on to describe its advanced and varied curriculum (religion, classics, history, geography, mathematics, natural science, politics, and modern languages) and a well-equipped laboratory, and even "a bowling green for recreation".
Samuel Wesley the elder, a contemporary of Defoe's, described his teacher "as universal in his learning", although he also attacked the academy on uncertain grounds for promoting king-killing doctrines.
[28] The school moved to Attercliffe, a suburb of Sheffield, Yorkshire, leaving it at the end of July 1689, in consequence of the death of his favourite son, and returning to Rathmell.
His pupil Timothy Jollie, independent minister at Sheffield, began Attercliffe Academy,[29] on a more restricted principle than Frankland's, apparently excluding mathematics "as tending to scepticism".