The execution of Venner and his men did not clear the City of dangerous elements. The Fifth Monarchy people and the Presbyterians exhorted each other to withstand the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer and the idolatry of the Court. Some of them refused to obey the law unless the spirit ordered them. The City was full of disbanded officers and men who were ready and anxious to take up arms again. The King complained that the night watch was unable to cope with these turbulent people, and ordered that only able men should be appointed, and that their watch should continue all night. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 ordered every minister, if he would continue in his benefice, to assent to everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer. On Sunday, August 17, all the Presbyterians took leave of their congregations amid their tears and lamentations. Then persecution set in. It must be confessed that the language and action of some of the Nonconformists seemed to justify, in a certain measure, the rigours of the Government. For instance, the Baptists are said to have spoken openly of the King as the “Beast”; it was reported that Presbyterians and Baptists together were preparing to resist by force of arms; it must be remembered that these people represented the Roundheads of twenty years before. The Act of Uniformity, rigorously enforced, filled the prisons, made the Church of England hateful to the people, and drove hundreds away to America and to Holland. In the same year an Act was passed for raising money for the paving of the streets of London by making every hackney coach—of which there were then four hundred—pay a tax of five pounds a year; every load of hay, sixpence; every load of straw, twopence. The Act provided especially for the paving of Hedge Lane (Whitcomb Street), from Petty France to St. James’s Palace, St. James’s Street, and Pall Mall. The paving was the old-fashioned round cobbles; before they were laid down the road was simply a trodden way, in the summer throwing up clouds of dust, in the winter knee-deep in mud. The Act further provided for the widening of certain ways and passages in the City. It is idle to ask if they were widened, because the Fire came a few years later and swept all away. The King in the same year formally restored to the City their Irish estates, which the Parliament had long before restored. On June 24, 1663, Charles granted the Inspeximus Charter. Accounts of the Plague of 1665 and the Fire of 1666 will be found in other places (pp. 215, 240).