oodwin replied to the booksellers in _A
fresh Discovery of the High Presbyterian Spirit, or the Quenching of
"The Second Beacon Fired_," published in Jan. 1654-5, and so
found himself in a new quarrel. There was a reply called _An
Apology for the Six Booksellers_.]

A very fair amount of Liberty of the Press, though not to newspapers,
nor to publications clearly immoral, seems to have been allowed by
Cromwell. Through 1655 and 1656 there were books and pamphlets of the
most various kinds, and advocating the most various opinions. There
were Episcopalian books and Anabaptist books, arguments for Tithes
and arguments against Tithes, Fifth Monarchy tracts, Quaker Tracts
and Anti-Quaker Tracts, in extraordinary profusion. Prynne would
publish one day _The Quakers unmasked and clearly detected to be
but the spawn of Romish frogs, Jesuits and Franciscan Friars, sent
from Rome to seduce the intoxicated giddy-headed English nation_,
and George Fox would print the next day _The Unmasking and
Discovery of Antichrist, with all the False Prophets, by the true
light which comes from Christ Jesus_. Nor, of course, was there,
any interference with the religious meetings of any of the ordinary
Puritan sects, Baptists or whatever else, that chose to form
separatist congregations. Even those who so far passed the bounds
that they were called Ranters or Fanatics were quite safe in their
own conventicles; and altogether one has to conclude that much that
went by the still worse names of Blasphemy, Atheism, Infidelity, and
Anti-Christianism, had as quiet a life under the Protectorate as in
any later time. Practically, all that is of interest in the enquiry
as to the amount of Religious Toleration under Cromwell's Government
lies in what is known of his dealings with five denominations of
Dissenters from his Established Church--the Papists, the
Episcopalians, the Socinians or Anti-Trinitarians, the Quakers, and
the Jews.

(1) _The Papists._ Papists might be Papists under Cromwell's
government in the sense that there was no positive compulsion on them
to abjure their creed and profess another. The question, however, is
as to open liberty of Roman Catholic worship. This question had
passed through Cromwell's mind, and the results of his ruminations
upon it appear most succinctly in one of his letters to Mazarin.
After the Treaty made with France, the Cardinal very naturally
pressed the subject of a toleration for Catholics in England, the