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What was occasional conformity in early 18th-century England?

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Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe, engraving by M. Van der Gucht, after a portrait by J. Taverner, first half of the 18th century.

In early 18th-century England, occasional conformity was a practice used by some Protestant Nonconformists to circumvent legal restrictions on public officeholding.12

Under the Test Act, individuals were required to receive Holy Communion according to the rites of the Church of England as a condition for accepting public office. Dissenters of "flexible conscience" would occasionally attend Anglican services and take the sacrament to qualify for these positions, while continuing to worship at their own Nonconformist meetinghouses the rest of the time.23

This practice became a significant point of political and religious contention. High-Church Tories, or "highfliers," sought to end this alliance between Dissenters and the Whig party by banning the practice. This tension prompted Daniel Defoe—a staunch Dissenter—to write his famous ironic pamphlet, The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters (1702). The practice was eventually restricted by the Occasional Conformity Act of 1711, which imposed fines on those who attended Nonconformist services after taking Anglican communion.341