The Church of England, then, can justify its existence as English Christianity, and in no other way. It began its separate career with a series of (doubtless) illogical compromises, in the belief that there is an underlying unity, though not uniformity, in the religion as well as in the character of the English people, which would be strong enough to hold a national Church together. The dissenters from the Reformation settlement were numerically insignificant, and their existence was not regarded as a peril to the Church, for it was recognised that in a free country absolute agreement cannot be secured. The Roman Catholics, after some futile persecution, were allowed to remain loyal to their old allegiance in spiritual matters, while the Independents and similar bodies were anarchical on principle, and upheld the 'dissidence of Dissent' as a thing desirable in itself. But the defection of the Wesleyan Methodists was another matter. This was a blow to the Church of England as irreparable as the loss of Northern Europe to the Papacy. It finally upset the balance of parties in the Church, by detaching from it the larger number of the Evangelicals, particularly in the tradesman class. It gave a great stimulus to Nonconformity, which now became for the first time an important factor in the national life. Till the Wesleyan secession, the Nonconformists in England had been a feeble folk. From a return made to the Crown in 1700, it appeared that the Dissenters numbered about one in twenty of the population. Now they are as numerous as the Anglicans. Their prestige has also been largely augmented by their dominating position in the United States, where the Episcopal Church, long viewed with disfavour as tainted with British sympathies, has never recovered its lost ground, and is a comparatively small, though wealthy and influential sect. Within the Anglican communion, the inevitable religious revival of the nineteenth century began on Evangelical lines, but soon took a form determined by other influences than those which covered England with the ostentatiously hideous chapels of the Wesleyans. The extent of the revival has indeed been much exaggerated by the numerous apologists of the Catholic movement. The undoubted increase of professional zeal, activity, and efficiency among the clergy has been taken as proof of a corresponding access of enthusiasm among the laity, for which there is not much evidence. In spite of slovenly services and an easy standard of clerical duty, the observances of religion held a larger place in the average English home before the Oxford Movement than is often supposed, larger, indeed, than they do now, when family prayers and Bible reading have been abandoned in most households.