men should allow to others equal liberty with themselves, remembering that Englishmen were living under a free Commonwealth." From the tract it seems that some people threatened to proceed against Mr. Barksdale for using the Common Prayer, and for other offences.[300] Peter Gunning, afterwards Bishop of Ely, read the Liturgy in the Chapel at Exeter House, and "asserted the cause of the Church of England with great pains and courage, when the Parliament was most predominant."[301] He was allowed "a contention for the truth" (1658) in two public disputations with Henry Denn, on infant baptism, before thousands of people, in the church of St. Clement Danes--and, with the assistance of Dr. Pearson, he had a conference with two Romanists, reported by them in a pamphlet entitled, "Schism Unmasked." Wood remarks that there was no considerable sect with which Gunning did not dispute; yet he met with no interference, beyond the Protector's rebuke, and an occasional disturbance whilst he was conducting liturgical worship.[302] William Parsons, Rector of Birchanger, suffered under the Presbyterians, and was kept in jail nineteen weeks for his loyalty to Charles I., but afterwards he returned to his living, and usually read the Common Prayer during the Protectorate.[303] Notwithstanding his Episcopalianism, he was created Doctor of Laws at Oxford under Owen's Vice-Chancellorship. II. The second-class of Episcopalians in the Establishment were those who held office without using the formularies of their Church. [Sidenote: _Farindon._]