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test act
British history
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- United Kingdom
- law
test act, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, any law that made a person’s eligibility for public office depend upon his profession of the established religion. In Scotland, the principle was adopted immediately after the Reformation, and an act of 1567 made profession of the reformed faith a condition of public office. Such a law was not at first necessary in England, where penal laws against those who failed to conform to the established church were so severe as automatically to exclude such persons from public life. In the more tolerant climate of the late 17th and 18th centuries, Roman Catholics ...(100 of 371 words)