Free and Candid Disquisitions[note 1] is a 1749 pamphlet written and compiled by John Jones, a Welsh Church of England clergyman, and published anonymously.

Free and Candid Disquisitions followed a failed attempt at a revised Book of Common Prayer in 1689 and other unsuccessful efforts towards reintegrating the independent Protestant Dissenters.

Jones's proposals included combining and abbreviating the Sunday liturgies, removing latent Catholic influences from several rites, and providing improved hymns and psalms.

Until the beginning of the Tractarian movement in the 19th century, Free and Candid Disquisitions remained a major influence on proposed liturgical changes in the Church of England.

Following the collapse of the Protectorate – a republican government which had been established after the 1642–1651 English Civil War and favoured the more Protestant practices of Puritanism – and the re-establishment of the monarchy with the 1660 Stuart Restoration, Charles II came to power as the King of England.

He elevated the Episcopalian party – members of the Church of England who favoured bishops and whose worship was more similar to Catholic practices – that had been marginalized during the preceding Interregnum.

Charles had promised religious toleration to both Royalist Presbyterians – who did not approve of bishops and worshipped according to Reformed forms within the Church of England – and Episcopalians with the Declaration of Breda in 1660.

[note 2] The Savoy Conference ended without compromise: Parliament rejected proposals from both Presbyterians and the surviving Durham House Group of Caroline Divines over sentiments that they were each responsible for the violence of the preceding 20 years.

[7] While Sancroft was deprived of his benefice as part of the Nonjuring schism, William III supported comprehension and the new king established a commission in September 1689 to draft a comprehending liturgy.

Those interested in using the Liturgy of Comprehension for their own proposed revisions to the prayer book in the 18th century would rely upon distorted records of the 1689 commission's findings published by William Nicholls and Edmund Calamy.

[27] The matters of the sign of the cross and ending the practice of sponsors at baptism were raised due to Jones's identification of these actions as vestiges of Catholicism that should be expunged.

[35] Free and Candid Disquisitions also argued for other substantial reform in the Church of England, including reducing the number of tenets to which clergy would be required to subscribe.

This piece defended the 1662 prayer book as containing the best of early Christian liturgies and supported continuing both clerical subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles and the restrictions of the Test Acts.

[43] The second volume of Boswell's critique of Free and Candid Disquisitions was also replying to Blackburne's 1750 pamphlet and the two-volume An Appeal to Common Reason and Candor, the latter published anonymously in 1750–1751.

A New Form of Common-Prayer offered liturgical revisions that answered Jones's queries, submitting these proposals and the duty of finally perfecting the Reformation to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

[50] Free and Candid Disquisitions, along with Blackburne's 1766 The Confessional,[note 8] proved influential upon the 1771–1774 Feathers Tavern Petition against the requirement of clerical subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles.

[27] Between 1751 and 1768, six people created their own formulas for revising the prayer book – including A New Form of Common-Prayer – with each demonstrating varying degrees of influence from the 1689 proposal and Jones's work.

[58][note 11] John Wesley's 1784 The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America shared similarities to Lindsey's liturgy, Jones's suggestions, and the Savoy Conference's Puritan proposals.

[63] William Smith's work in creating the 1786 proposed prayer book led some of his fellow clergymen to believe he had made the revision while consulting a copy of Free and Candid Disquisitions.

According to Hatchett, influences from Free and Candid Disquisitions and other early 18th-century texts that advocated for reforms acceptable to a broader set of Protestants (a belief known as latitudinarianism) were more significant in the production of the 1789 prayer book than described by other scholarship.

[66][note 13] A shortened version of the 1786 preface retaining the influence from Free and Candid Disquisitions has been used in the succeeding prayer books of the Episcopal Church through to its present, 1979-dated edition.

[67] Richard Watson, the Bishop of Llandaff, published an anonymous pamphlet[note 14] in 1790 containing liturgical proposals also based on Clarke and Free and Candid Disquisitions.

[71] Hull's proposed liturgical revisions were similar to others in the early 19th century, demonstrating a Low-Church bias and relying upon the prior works of the 1689 effort, Clarke, and Jones.