Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"There is a good deal to be said for Jonathan Clark’s argument that the period after the Hanoverian Succession of 1714 should be described as ‘the Anglican Ascendancy’ rather than the more usual ‘Whig Ascendancy’. Certainly the upper reaches of British society were more Anglican than ever before In the middle of the seventeenth century, around 20 per cent of the English peerage were Catholics and another 20 per cent were Puritans. The Restoration of Charles II in 1660 discouraged the latter, while the expulsion of his brother in 1688 checked the zeal of the former. Attainders, apostasies and attrition then reduced the dissidents to the point of near-extinction: by 1800 the House of Lords was overwhelmingly Anglican by profession if not conviction, with just 3 per cent still adhering to the old faith." [Blanning: Pursuit of Glory, p. 373]