Cromwell's favourite Independents, Messrs. Owen and the rest, with their twenty fundamentals! Add the difficulties arising from the nature of some of the current heresies themselves, as tending directly to the defamation of his government, the subversion of laws and institutions, and the disturbance of the peace.[1] [Footnote 1: Various Thomason Pamphlets of 1654-1656. The _Second Beacon Fired_ was published in Oct. 1654 by six London booksellers--Luke Fawne, John Rothwell, Samuel Gellibrand, Thomas Underhill, Joshua Kirton, and Nathaniel Webb. Two of them, Rothwell and Underhill, had published for Milton in former days. The heretics chiefly denounced are Biddle, Dell, Farnworth, Norwood, Braine, John Webster, and Feake. John Goodwin replied to the booksellers in _A fresh Discovery of the High Presbyterian Spirit, or the Quenching of "The Second Beacon Fired_," published in Jan. 1654-5, and so found himself in a new quarrel. There was a reply called _An Apology for the Six Booksellers_.] A very fair amount of Liberty of the Press, though not to newspapers, nor to publications clearly immoral, seems to have been allowed by Cromwell. Through 1655 and 1656 there were books and pamphlets of the most various kinds, and advocating the most various opinions. There were Episcopalian books and Anabaptist books, arguments for Tithes and arguments against Tithes, Fifth Monarchy tracts, Quaker Tracts and Anti-Quaker Tracts, in extraordinary profusion. Prynne would publish one day _The Quakers unmasked and clearly detected to be but the spawn of Romish frogs, Jesuits and Franciscan Friars, sent from Rome to seduce the intoxicated giddy-headed English nation_, and George Fox would print the next day _The Unmasking and Discovery of Antichrist, with all the False Prophets, by the true light which comes from Christ Jesus_. Nor, of course, was there, any interference with the religious meetings of any of the ordinary Puritan sects, Baptists or whatever else, that chose to form separatist congregations. Even those who so far passed the bounds that they were called Ranters or Fanatics were quite safe in their own conventicles; and altogether one has to conclude that much that went by the still worse names of Blasphemy, Atheism, Infidelity, and Anti-Christianism, had as quiet a life under the Protectorate as in any later time. Practically, all that is of interest in the enquiry as to the amount of Religious Toleration under Cromwell's Government lies in what is known of his dealings with five denominations of Dissenters from his Established Church--the Papists, the Episcopalians, the Socinians or Anti-Trinitarians, the Quakers, and the Jews.