The laws against them were immediately increased in severity, and the gradual advance towards religious toleration was put back for centuries.
In a letter to the city, possibly written by Cromwell himself, the officers repudiated any wish to alter the civil government or upset the establishment of Presbyterianism, but demanded religious toleration.
It is coming to be recognized that the growth of religious toleration owed much to the early Quakers who, with the exception of a few Baptists at the first, stood almost alone among Dissenters in holding their public meetings openly and regularly.
Also it is to be said that with the single exception of religious toleration the record of the state in devotion to human rights has been from the first a splendid one, whether in human principles of criminal law, or in the defence of the civil rights commonly declared in American constitutions.
He was also a strenuous advocate of religious toleration in Poland.
