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.
(1) _The Papists._ Papists might be Papists under Cromwell's government in the sense that there was no positive compulsion on them to abjure their creed and profess another.

The question, however, is as to open liberty of Roman Catholic worship.

This question had passed through Cromwell's mind, and the results of his ruminations upon it appear most succinctly in one of his letters to Mazarin.
After the Treaty made with France, the Cardinal very naturally pressed the subject of a toleration for Catholics in England, the rather as Cromwell was always so energetic for a toleration of Protestants in Catholic countries.

"Although I have this set home to my spirit," Cromwell wrote in reply, "I may not (shall I tell you I _cannot_ ?) at this juncture of time, and as the face of my affairs now stands, answer your call for Toleration.

I say _I cannot_, as to a public declaration of my sense in that point; although I believe that under my government your Eminency, in behalf of Catholics, has less reason for complaint, as to rigour on men's consciences, than under the Parliament.