They were now very numerous, going about in England, Scotland, Ireland, and everywhere else, as before, and mingling denunciations of every form of the existing ministry with their softer and richer teachings.

They were still liable, of course, to varieties of penal treatment, according to the degrees of their aggressiveness and the moods of the local authorities; but the disposition at head-quarters was decidedly towards gentleness with them.

Hardly had the new Council of State been constituted when, Cromwell himself present, three of the most eminent London physicians, Dr.Wright, Dr.Cox, and Dr.Bates, were instructed "to visit James Nayler, prisoner in Bridewell, and to consider of his condition as to the state both of his mind and body in point of health"; and, from that date (July 16, 1657), his farther detention seems to have been merely for his cure.

George Fox, whose circuits of preaching took him as far as Edinburgh and the Scottish Highlands, could never be in London without addressing a pious letter or two to Cromwell, or even going to see him; and another Quaker, Edward Burrough, was so drawn to Cromwell that he was continually penning letters to him and leaving them at Whitehall.

During and after the Kingship question these letters were particularly frequent, the Quakers being all _Contrariants_ on that point.