To what extent was there religious tolerance in British North America during this period?

Candidates will consider the merits or otherwise of the suggestion that religious tolerance was present within the given timeframe. There is no set number of groups that candidates need to address and candidates could elect to follow a comparative approach should they choose. Issues that may be addressed include the general intolerance, mistreatment and exclusion practiced by Puritans toward Catholics, Quakers, Jews and others who dissented from Puritan theology, the conflict, including occasional armed conflict, between Catholic and Anglican colonies, the Society of Friends’ (Quakers’) practice of religious toleration, and the Maryland Act of Toleration. The Quebec Act of 1774, which granted toleration to the French Canadians’ practice of Catholicism, may also be mentioned. Candidates may argue that the extent of religious toleration was quite variable in the early colonial period and that the US Bill of Rights illustrates the growth of religious tolerance that emerged out of the British colonial period.