all sorts, blasphemous and ignorant mechanics usurping the pulpits everywhere." He tells us that on Christmas Day in 1657 he ventured to go to a Celebration of the Holy Communion, and he found the Church surrounded by soldiers, [1]"who levelled their muskets at the communicants as if they would shoot us at the altar. Afterwards they took all the congregation prisoners."
I have dwelt fully upon this side of the Puritan movement, because the descendants of the Puritans—the Independents and the Baptists of to-day—would not acquaint you with these facts. Perhaps they are ignorant of them, for they read their own history as written by their own partisans, and it is only natural that such facts as these should not be brought into prominence.
Whatever good we may think the Puritans did they certainly did immense harm, and their tyranny was greater than the tyranny which they tried to suppress when they killed the king. Their method was more autocratic than the king's was, and certainly quite as unlawful. The loss which England has sustained through these men in ancient works of art and architecture cannot now be estimated. The nation learned that the last state of the man was worse than the first. Most eagerly did it look forward to the coming back of Charles II. to the throne, and it gave him a hearty welcome when he came.
When Charles II. began his reign a complete reaction set in against Puritan strictness, and many evils grew up alongside of it. The people had been so long kept in restraint by the Puritans, and their most innocent pleasures had been so
- ↑ See Hore, p.361.
