Of the cruel persecutions to which many of this sect in Lancashire were subjected, many examples might be cited; indeed, at one time the castle at Lancaster was said to be almost full of them, that town being one of their centres. In November, 1660, the Quakers of Lancaster, being assembled at one of their meetings, were surprised by a party of soldiers, who entered the room where they were with "drawn swords and pistols cockt," and took the whole of them prisoners. A Lancaster Quaker called John Lawson, in 1652, was seized at Malpas (in Cheshire), where he had been preaching in what he called "the Steeple House[213] Yard." He was set in the stocks for four hours, and afterwards imprisoned for twenty-three weeks; but shortly after his release he repeated the offence in the Lancaster churchyard, for which at the assizes he was fined £20 or in default one year's imprisonment; and again in 1660 he was sent a prisoner to the castle for refusing to take the oath tendered to him in court. Another example of the treatment which the early converts in Lancashire to this sect met with is found in the case of John Fielden, of Inchfield, near Todmorden, who in 1664 was fined £5 for attending a Quakers' meeting, and his goods were seized by the churchwarden and sold to pay the church-rate. In 1668 he was kept in prison thirty-one weeks for being absent from church, and this kind of persecution continued until he was quite an old man, as seventeen years later we find him in Preston House of Correction, where he was retained for eight weeks, the offence being his having attended a meeting of the Society of Friends at Padiham. Very many similar cases might be quoted. In 1689 the Toleration Act was passed, which recognised all the various forms of Dissent, which now became entitled to a place amongst the religious institutions of the county. No time was now lost in establishing meeting-houses all over the county, and in almost every parish there soon arose Presbyterian or Independent chapels; many of the former ultimately passed to the Unitarians. From a list prepared for Dr. Evans in 1715, it would appear that there were then in Lancashire forty-three Presbyterian and Independent congregations, consisting of 18,310 regular hearers; and that in Manchester there were 1,515 Dissenters, in Liverpool 1,158, in Bolton 1,094, and in Chowbent 1,064. Bishop Gastrell,[214] writing a little later, reports that in Rochdale there were no Papists, but about 200 Dissenters, who had a meeting-house; Bolton he puts down as having only 400 Dissenters, and to Manchester he gives 233 Dissenting families.