Louis XIV persecutes the Huguenots by means of dragonnades - the billetting of unruly dragoons in the homes of villagers

William Penn approves the Great Law, allowing complete freedom of religious belief in Pennsylvania

Mennonites and other from Germany (later known as the Pennsylvania Dutch) begin to settle in Penn's liberal colony

James II succeeds to the throne in Britain and immediately introduces pro-Catholic policies

400,000 Huguenots leave France after Louis XIV deprives them of their rights by revoking the Edict of Nantes

James II, landing in Ireland, is acclaimed as king in Dublin by enthusiastic Irish Catholics

The Church of Scotland finally wins recognition as an independent Presbyterian body

In the years after the battle of the Boyne, Catholic ownership of land in Ireland is reduced to just 14% of the total

The Act of Settlement declares that no Catholic may inherit the English crown

John and Charles Wesley form a Holy Club at Oxford which becomes the cradle of Methodism

A revivalist movement in America, led by Jonathan Edwards, becomes known as the Great Awakening

American revivalism is inflamed by Jonathan Edwards' vivid sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

In Freedom of Will American evangelist Jonathan Edwards makes an uncompromising defence of orthodox against liberal Calvinism

The Portuguese expel the Jesuits from Brazil, beginning a widespread reaction against the order in Catholic Europe

Franciscan missionary Junipero Serra begins work at San Diego de Cala, the first of his nine California missions

Responding to pressure from the Catholic monarchs of Europe, Clement XIV abolishes the Jesuit Order

The treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji grants Russia special rights in relation to the Christian Holy Places under Ottoman control

Talleyrand begins an extremely varied career by becoming an abbot at the age of twenty-one

Joseph II passes an Edict of Toleration, for the first time allowing Protestant worship in Habsburg territories

A second great revivalist movement sweeps northeast America, inspired by the earlier example of Jonathan Edwards

Thomas Paine publishes his completed Age of Reason, an attack on conventional Christianity

A secret Protestant group, the Orange Society, is formed in Co. Armagh to resist Irish nationalism

Pope Pius VI is seized by a French army in Rome and is taken off to captivity in France

Napoleon mends France's fences with Roman Catholicism by agreeing a Concordat with Pope Pius VII

Napoleon annexes the Papal States and is excommunicated by the pope, Pius VII