Millenarians, and enjoying their establishments and tithes, were not
averse to his government; though he still entertained a great jealousy
of that ambitious and restless spirit by which they were actuated. He
granted an unbounded liberty of conscience to all but Catholics and
Prelatists; and by that means he both attached the wild sectaries to
his person, and employed them in curbing the domineering spirit of the
Presbyterians. "I am the only man," he was often heard to say, "who
has known how to subdue that insolent sect, which can suffer none but
itself."

The Protestant zeal which possessed the Presbyterians and Independents,
was highly gratified by the haughty manner in which the protector so
successfully supported the persecuted Protestants throughout all Europe.
Even the duke of Savoy, so remote a power, and so little exposed to
the naval force of England, was obliged, by the authority of France,
to comply with his mediation, and to tolerate the Protestants of the
valleys, against whom that prince had commenced a furious persecution.
France itself was constrained to bear, not only with the religion, but
even, in some instances, with the seditious insolence of the Hugonots;
and when the French court applied for a reciprocal toleration of the
Catholic religion in England, the protector, who arrogated in every
thing the superiority, would hearken to no such proposal. He had
entertained a project of instituting a college, in imitation of that
at Rome, for the propagation of the faith; and his apostles, in zeal,
though not in unanimity, had certainly been a full match for the
Catholics.

Cromwell retained the church of England in constraint though he
permitted its clergy a little more liberty than the Republican
parliament had formerly allowed. He was pleased that the superior lenity
of his administration should in every thing be remarked. He bridled the
royalists, both by the army which he retained, and by those secret spies
which he found means to intermix in all their counsels. Manning being
detected, and punished with death, he corrupted Sir Richard Willis, who
was much trusted by Chancellor Hyde and all the royalists; and by means
of this man he was let into every design and conspiracy of the party.
He could disconcert any project, by confining the persons who were to
be the actors in it; and as he restored them afterwards to liberty, his
severity passed only for the result of general jealousy and suspicion,
T