Five Mile Act

In England, act of 1665 forbidding dissenting clergy from coming within five miles of their former parishes or of any large towns, unless they swore an oath of nonresistance. The act, part of the post-Restoration attempt to entrench Anglicanism, also tried to prevent dissenters from becoming teachers. Most of the act's effects were repealed by 1689 but it was not formally abolished until 1812.