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 deprecated--preached it then, and then only. The Independents coming last upon the field, preached it last; but they have no title beyond others to the spirit of toleration. Cromwell put down the mass as he would put down a rebellion--as openly, as decidedly, as rigorously.
"It is remarkable," continued the despatch, "that these people, at the first, set up the mass in some places of the town that had been monasteries; but afterwards grew so insolent, that, the last Lord's day before the storm, the Protestants were thrust out of the great church called St Peter's, and they had public mass there; and in this very place near 1000 of them (_the Catholics--a clear judgment_) were put to the sword, fleeing thither for safety. I believe all their friars were knocked on the head promiscuously but two; the one of which was Father Peter Taaff, brother to the Lord Taaff, whom the soldiers took the next day and made an end of. The other was taken in the Round Tower, under the repute, (_the disguise_) of a lieutenant, and when he understood that the officers in that tower had no quarter, he confessed he was a friar; but that did not save him."