CHAPTER IV.

CIVIL WAR PERIOD.

1625-1700.

THE literature of this period will be better understood after a brief explanation has been given of the political changes which attended the fall, restoration, and ultimate expulsion of the Stuart dynasty.

The Puritan party, whose proceedings and opinions in the two preceding reigns have been already noticed, continued to grow in importance, and demanded with increasing loudness a reform in the Church establishment. They were met at first by a bigotry at least equal, and a power superior, to their own. Archbishop Laud, who presided in the High Commission Court,1 had taken for his motto the word "thorough," and had persuaded himself that only by a system of severity could conformity to the established religion be enforced. Those who wrote against, or even impugned in conversation, the doctrine, discipline, or government of the Church of England, were brought before the High Commission Court, and heavily fined; and a repetition of the offence, particularly if any expressions were used out of which a seditious meaning could be extracted, frequently led to an indictment of the offender in the Star Chamber (in which, also, Laud had a seat), and to his imprisonment and mutilation by order of

1 Established by Queen Elizabeth, to try ecclesiastical offences.

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that iniquitous tribunal. Thus Prynne, a lawyer, Bastwick, a physician, and Burton, a clergyman, after having run the gauntlet of the High Commission Court, and been there sentenced to suspension from the practice of their professions, fined, imprisoned, and excommunicated, were, in 1632, summoned before the Star Chamber, and sentenced to stand in the pillory, to lose their ears, and be imprisoned for life. In 1633 Leighton, father of the eminent Archbishop Leighton, was, by the same court, sentenced to be publicly whipped, to lose both ears, to have his nostrils slit, to be branded on both cheeks, and imprisoned for life. In all these cases the offence was of the same kind; the publication of some book or tract, generally couched, it must be admitted, in scurrilous and inflammatory language, assailing the government of the Church by bishops, or the Church liturgy and ceremonies, or some of the common popular amusements, such as dancing and play-going, to which these fanatics imputed most of the vice which corrupted society.

To these ecclesiastical grievances, Charles I. took care to add political. By his levies of ship-money and of tonnage and poundage, by his stretches of the prerogative, by his long delay in convoking the parliament, and many other illegal or irritating proceedings, he estranged most of the leading politicians, — the Pyms, Hampdens, Seldens, and Hydes,—just as by supporting Laud he estranged the commercial and burgher classes, among whom Puritanism had its stronghold. In November, 1640, the famous Long Parliament met. The quarrel became too envenomed to be composed otherwise than by recourse to arms; and in 1642 the civil war broke out. In the following year, London being completely in the power of the parliament, the Puritans were able to gratify their old grudge against

the play-writers by closing all the theatres. Gradually the conduct of the war passed out of the hands of the more numerous section of the Puritan party, the Presbyterians, into those of a section hitherto obscure,— the Independents, who were supported by the genius of Milton and Cromwell. This sect originally bore the name of "Brownists," from their founder, Robert Browne (1549-1630). They went beyond the moderate Puritans in regarding conformity to the Establishment as a sin, and therefore forming, in defiance of the law, separate congregations; but their later writers, such as Milton and Owen, compensated for this indomitable sectarianism by maintaining the doctrine of toleration. Against the Presbyterians they argued that the civil magistrate had no right to force the consciences of individuals. They took care, indeed, to make one exception there was to be no toleration for the Roman Catholic worship. "As for what you mention about liberty of conscience," said Cromwell to the delegates from Ross, "I meddle not with any man's conscience. But, if by liberty of conscience you mean a liberty to exercise the mass, I judge it best to use plain dealing, and to let you know, where the parliament of England have power, that will not be permitted." Still it was a great thing to have the principle once boldly asserted and partially applied; for Roman Catholics, as well as others, were sure to benefit, sooner or later, from its extension.

In the civil war, the clergy, four-fifths of the aristocracy and landed gentry, with the rural population depending on them, and some few cities, adhered to the king. The poets, wits, and artists, between whom and Puritanism a kind of natural enmity subsisted, sought, with few exceptions, the royal camp, where 1 See Carlyle's "Letters and Speeches of Cromwell."

they were probably more noisy than serviceable. On the other hand, the parliament was supported by the great middle class, and by the yeomen or small landed proprietors. It had at first but one poet (Wither was then a royalist), but that one was John Milton.

The king's cause became hopeless after the defeat of Naseby in 1645; and after a lengthened imprisonment he was brought to the block by the army and the Independents, ostensibly as a traitor and malefactor against his people; really, because, while he lived, the revolutionary leaders could never feel secure. There is a significant query in one of Cromwell's letters, written in 1648, "whether • Salus populi summa lex' be not a sound maxim."

But before the fatal window in Whitehall the reaction in the public sentiment and conscience commenced. Cromwell, indeed, carried on the government with consummate ability and vigor; but, after all, he represented only his own stern genius, and the victorious army which he had created; and when he died, and in the rivalries of his generals the power of that army was neutralized, England, by a kind of irresistible gravitation, returned to that position of defined and prescriptive freedom which had been elaborated during the long course of the middle ages.

At the Restoration (1660), the courtiers, wits, and poets returned from exile not uninfluenced, whether for good or evil, by their long sojourn abroad; the Anglican clergy saw their Church established on a firmer footing than ever; and their Puritan adversaries, ejected and silenced, passed below the surface of society, and secretly organized the earlier varieties of that many-headed British dissent which now numbers nearly half the people of England among its adherents. The theatres were re-opened; and every loyal subject.

to prove himself no Puritan, tried to be as wild, reckless, and dissolute as possible. Yet in the course of years the defeated party, with changed tactics indeed, and in a soberer mood, began to make itself felt. Instead of asking for a theocracy, they now agitated for toleration; and, renouncing their republicanism as impracticable, they took up the watchword of constitutional reform. The Puritans and Roundheads of the civil war re-appear towards the close of Charles II.'s reign, under the more permanent appellation of the Whig party.

One of the points in which the party was found least altered after its transformation was its bitter and traditional hostility to the Church of Rome. Hence, after it became known that the heir-presumptive to the crown, James, Duke of York, had become a Roman Catholic, the Whigs formed the design of excluding him on that ground from the throne, and placing the crown upon the head of the next Protestant heir. The party of the court and the Cavaliers (who began about this time to be called Tories) vigorously opposed the scheme, and with success. James II. succeeded in 1685, and immediately began to take measures for the relief of Catholics from the many disabilites under which they labored. But he pursued his object with all the indiscretion and unfairness habitual to his family. Though the Whigs had been defeated and cowed, though the great majority of the nation desired to be loyal, though the Anglican clergy in particular had committed themselves irrevocably to the position that a king ought to be obeyed, no matter to what lengths he might go in tyranny, - he so managed matters as almost to compel the divines to eat their own words, and, by forfeiting the affection and confidence of the people, to throw the game into the hands of the Whigs. The

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