Once Birmingham Dissenters started to agitate for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, which restricted Dissenters' civil rights (preventing them, for instance, from attending the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge, or from holding public office), the semblance of unity among the town's elite disappeared. Unitarians such as Priestley were at the forefront of the repeal campaign, and orthodox Anglicans grew nervous and angry. After 1787, the emergence of Dissenting groups formed for the sole purpose of overturning these laws began to divide the community; however, the repeal efforts failed in 1787, 1789 and 1790. Priestley's support of the repeal and his heterodox religious views, which were widely published, inflamed the populace. In February 1790, a group of activists came together not only to oppose the interests of the Dissenters but also to counteract what they saw as the undesirable importation of French Revolutionary ideals. Dissenters by and large supported the French Revolution and its efforts to question the role monarchy should play in government.