These laws, however, do not suggest a full idea of all the inconvenience and suffering to which Nonconformists, before the Civil War, had been exposed. That we may understand fully the circumstances in which they were placed, we must add the activity of spiritual courts, the jurisdiction of the High Commission, and the indefinite powers of the Crown. Nor do these laws, statute and canon, exhibit all the forces of oppression which continued to exist after the Restoration, and before the passing of the Act of Uniformity--forces which could be brought into play at any moment, and in any situation. Spiritual courts, it is true, had not yet been re-established; the High Commission no longer existed. The power of the Crown had received a check; but in addition to laws prohibitory of religious gatherings outside the Establishment, there stood the law of Royal Supremacy, which could not be taken by Papists, and was objected to by some Protestant Dissenters. The statute, which had sent More and Fisher to the block, brought sorrow upon a large number of unknown persons, who, on a different principle from that adopted by those sufferers, objected strongly to Royal Supremacy over causes ecclesiastical as well as civil. Their resistance and their trouble, together with the perplexity of magistrates respecting them, are illustrated in the following extract of a letter written from Bristol, in the autumn of 1660:--"Be pleased to take notice that no Quaker, or rarely any Anabaptist, will take these oaths; so that the said oaths are refused by many hundreds of their judgment, being persons of very dangerous principles, and great enemies in this city to His Majesty's royal person, government, and restoration--and some of them [are] petitioners to bring his martyred Majesty, of blessed memory, to his trial,--and will undoubtedly fly out again and kick up the heel against his sovereign authority, should it be in their power, therefore [they] are not worthy His Majesty's protection, refusing to swear loyalty to him. Besides, their said refusal, if suspended or connived at, will cause a general discontent and repining in, by those His Majesty's loyal subjects who have already taken, or are to take the said oaths; for 'tis already the language of many of them, and these not a few, 'Why should any oaths be imposed on or required of us? and the Quakers, Anabaptists, and others, His Majesty's enemies, be gratified with a suspension thereof.' And 'tis the answer of others, 'If the Quakers, Anabaptists, and others of dangerous practices and principles do, or are enforced to, take the said oaths, then will we. In the interim, we want the same liberty which is to them afforded.'" The writer next asks instructions to guide him in his perplexity. "Sir," he continues, "these, I had almost said, monsters of men with us are, yea more numerous than in all the West of England; and here they all centre and have their meetings, at all