The religious intolerance of the High-church party was exerted with new energy after the departure of Governor Archdale from the province. This party passed laws, which the Lords Proprietors ratified, to establish the Church of England and to disable dissenters from being members of the Assembly. This was in direct violation of the chartered rights of the colonists. The dissenters remonstrated to the House of Lords; and Queen Anne, upon the advice of that body, caused these laws to be repealed. But the High-church party, steady to their purpose, varied their mode of attack; the spirit of intolerance grew with the growth of the province; emigrations from the Virginia colony and the patronage of the Lords Proprietors gave to this party a decided majority in the Assembly; they levied a tax on each precinct for the support of a minister, and built churches. Protestant dissenters were only permitted to worship in public, and there to be subject to the rules and restrictions contained in the several acts of Parliament. Quakers were permitted to affirm instead of swearing; but they could not hold an office of profit or trust, serve as jurors, or give evidence by affirmation in any criminal case. This contest between the High-church party and the dissenters produced an hostility of feeling which time has softened, but which the lapse of more than a century has been insufficient to allay. This contest, however, promoted freedom of thought and inquiry among the people; it sharpened their understandings, and in a great degree supplied the place of books for instruction. At that time there were few books in the colony: the library of a common man consisted of a Bible and a spelling-book; the lawyers had a few books on law, and the ministers a few on theological subjects, and sometimes a few of the Greek and Roman classics: for they, particularly the Presbyterian ministers, were generally school-masters--and from them the poor young men of the colony, who wished to preach the gospel or plead law, received their humble education. The turbulent spirit of the colonists, their leaning towards republicanism and sectarianism, had induced the Lords Proprietors to forbid the establishment of printing presses in the colony; and Sir William Berkeley, who had the superintendence of this colony in 1661, gave thanks to heaven that there was not a printing office in any of the Southern provinces.