Fate seemed bent on persecuting him to the last.
He vehemently opposed the persecuting acts now passed - the Corporation Act, the Uniformity Bill, against which he is said to have spoken three hundred times, and the Militia Act.
Stokesley opposed all changes in the doctrines of the Church and was very active in persecuting heretics.
Like the mass of the nation, he grew more Protestant as time wore on; he was readier to persecute Papists than Puritans; he had no love for ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and he warmly remonstrated with Whitgift over his persecuting Articles of 1583.
The means whereby he engaged the energies of the Italians on behalf of the French Republic and yet refrained from persecuting the Roman Catholic Church in the way only too common among revolutionary generals, bespoke political insight of no ordinary kind.
