The district of Blackfriars claimed to be independent of the municipal authorities of London. The inhabitants asserted an inheritance of the privileges of sanctuary, formerly pertaining to that famous monastery which had given its name to the neighbourhood. Hence, to find shelter and protection within the precincts of the ancient foundation, players, who had been driven out of the city, here erected a theatre; and Papists, who were proscribed by law, here assembled for worship. And it is not a little curious that Puritans also were somewhat numerous in the same locality; a fact which is indicated by their presenting what seems to have been an influential petition to the Lords of the Privy Council against the continuance of stage-plays by their dramatic neighbours.[62] Blackfriars, as we have seen, is also mentioned among the places in which certain Nonconformists were wont to meet in the first quarter of the seventeenth century; and in this same place we now meet with an Anabaptist assembly listening to the popular preachers of millenarianism. [Sidenote: _Feake and Powell._] A letter from an eye-witness communicates additional information respecting these meetings. The writer states that he had been to one of them, and had heard Feake preach upon the subject of the little horn described in the book of Daniel; and he states that in the course of the sermon the preacher exclaimed, "I know some would have the late King Charles to be meant by this little horn; but as I said at first, I'll name nobody. God will make it clear shortly to His people who is meant here." When Feake had concluded his portion of the service, Vavasour Powell continued to discourse on the same subject, in a similar strain of interpretation--still more explicitly reflecting on public men and measures than his predecessor had done--interpreting the king of the north to signify the late monarch, and inveighing bitterly against the military commanders of the day, as the sole cause of the pressure of taxation. The leading points of the sermon were, that Christ was setting up a fifth monarchy in the world; that a spirit of prophecy had been communicated to the saints, whereby they were enabled to describe future events; and that the design of Christ was to destroy all antichristian forms, including established churches together with their clergy. Upon this third particular, the reporter states that Powell was somewhat copious, and said "they must down, though they were never so strongly protected, for Christ is none of their Lord Protectors, though the army-men protect them." "Yes," said he, "and rather than those shall down, they will pull Parliaments in pieces, and this made them break the last Parliament; for on Saturday, the 10th of December, the House refused to settle a commission of ministers to ride in circuits, as the judges did, and judge who were fit to be continued or put out of their livings, and so to maintain them upon the old corrupt foundation still.