rs being there, our men getting up to them, were
ordered by me to put them all to the sword. _And, indeed, being in the
heat of action_, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the
town; and, I think, that night they put to the sword about 2000 men:
divers of the officers and soldiers being fled over the bridge into the
other part of the town, where about 100 of them possessed St Peter's
church steeple, some the west gate, and others a strong round tower next
the gate called St Sunday's. These being summoned to yield to mercy,
refused; whereupon I ordered the steeple of St Peter's church to be
fired, when one of them was heard to say in the midst of the flames,
'God damn me, God confound me! I burn, I burn.'"

In the same despatch there is rather a noticeable passage, which
illustrates the manner in which the Puritan general was accustomed to
regard the Roman Catholics and their worship. There may be some who have
been so far deceived by the frequent use of the terms "religious
toleration" in conjunction with the name of Cromwell, as to attribute to
him a portion of that liberal spirit which is the greatest boast of
cultivated minds in the present century. His religious toleration
extended only to the small circle of sects whose Christian doctrine,
whose preaching, and whose forms of worship were almost identical; it
was just the same toleration that a Baptist dissenter of our day may be
supposed to extend towards an Independent dissenter, or a member of the
Countess of Huntingdon's connexion. The Independents differed from the
Presbyterians in no one definite article of creed, with this
exception--that they set no value upon _ordination_, and violently
objected to the restraining any good man from public preaching, or any
of the ministrations of a pastor, because he wanted this authorisation
of a visible church. For this point of "religious freedom" (an
expression which in their mouths has little other than this narrow
signification) they had to contend with the Presbyterians. The sect
which has to resist oppression, or the restraints of power, uses, of
course, the language of toleration. The Independents used it in their
controversy with the Presbyterians, just as the latter had employed it
in their controversy with Episcopacy. But Independents and Presbyterians
were alike intolerant of the Episcopalian or the Roman Catholic. All
sects of that age preached toleration when a powerful adversary was to
be deprec