The Episcopalians were exposed to a cross fire from the Puritans, who charged them with Popery, and from the Papists, who charged them with schism. The story of the Nag's Head consecration was revived. Laud had treated Presbyterians and Independents as schismatics. M. de la Milletiere, counsellor in ordinary to the King of France, in an epistle, written in the year 1653, with a view of inviting Charles II. to embrace the Catholic faith, maintained, that everybody knew the Archbishop, who had been nourished in the English schism, had no other thought than to reunite in one body the people who were divided into sects amongst themselves, and to make himself chief head of one schismatical Church. "And we see," he adds, "God hath permitted that his own people, divided against itself, hath caused his head to be cut off." This passage illustrates the view which was entertained of Laud and his followers by foreign Roman Catholics, and also of the sort of controversy the refugees had to maintain in their travels through Roman Catholic countries. Bramhall published at the Hague, in 1653, a reply to this performance, repelling the charge of schism, and vindicating the memory of his friend. He calls Laud a most glorious martyr, a man of profound learning, exemplary life, clean hands, a most sincere heart, a patron of learning, and a friend of order and uniformity, but not for sinister ends.[330] The defence was honestly written, and indicated what many honest exiles thought of Laud--how they dwelt on his virtues, and were totally blind to the folly, mischief, and sin of his intolerance; but by holding up to admiration such a Prelate, without a word of condemnation for his faults, Bramhall and others gave bad omen of what they would do themselves if they should ever be restored to power. [Sidenote: _Bramhall._] An elaborate confutation of the Nag's Head fable engaged the pen of the same writer, and issued from a press at the Hague in the year 1658.[331] In connection with his zeal and diligence in this controversy it is worth while to notice the suspicions which Bramhall entertained of Romanist intrigues in England throughout the Commonwealth era. These suspicions on the part of Presbyterians and Baptists have been already described. There must have been immense exaggeration in such reports; yet their extensive circulation amongst people of different opinions--all of them, however, agreeing in a hatred of Rome--is somewhat remarkable. Impossible as it now is to ascertain the amount of truth which these rumours might contain, they are curious as signs of what was a prevalent belief in those days. That the reader may see for himself what such a man as Bramhall heard and credited on this subject, we subjoin the greater part of a letter to Ussher, which he wrote in the year 1654:-- [Sidenote: _Bramhall on Romanists._]