Dissenting academies

The dissenting academies were schools, colleges and seminaries (often institutions with aspects of all three) run by Dissenters, that is, those who did not conform to the Church of England. They formed a significant part of England’s educational systems from the mid-seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.

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 the old English universities, at Cambridge and Oxford. The University of Oxford, in particular, required - until the Oxford University Act 1854 - a religious test on admission that was comparable to that for joining the Church. The situation at the University of Cambridge was that a statutory test was required to take a bachelor's degree.

English Dissenters in this context were Nonconformist Protestants who could not in good conscience subscribe (i.e. conform) to the articles of the Church of England. As their sons were debarred from taking degrees in the only two English universities, many of them attended the dissenting academies. Many of those who could afford it completed their education at the universities of Leyden, Utrecht, Glasgow or Edinburgh, the last, particularly, those who were studying medicine or law. Many students attending Utrecht were supported by the Presbyterian Fund.

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