the Commonwealth period. Restrictions imposed upon them initially by the Clarendon Code of 1661 were still on the statute book. The Methodists had, officially, been a party within the Church of England at least until the death of John Wesley in 1791. Now, partly as local magistrates and bishops moved against them and caused them to register their meeting places, and partly as the logic of their own position forced them into open criticism of the structure of the Church of England, they were gradually
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