those of the church, had been sold, and, as Ludlow tells us, had fetched a good price; such was the confidence then reposed in the parliament. In short, a process which had been slowly going on for generations had been violently hastened by the civil wars. A great shifting of power had taken place; but this was accomplished by a great change in men's opinions, and a great change in the distribution of property. The throne was overturned along with the king. The feudal nobility had taken part with him, and the remains of feudalism had perished in the struggle. The English commonwealth was, therefore, not a merely superficial change of government, brought about by artifice or by violence, but a great revolution, in which the foundation was altered as well as the superstructure, to use the words of Harrington, the greatest political writer of the republicans of England. The overturn in the church was even more farreaching, as it affected the daily life of each parish. During the civil war neither of the combatant parties would suffer opposing preachers in their domains. As the Puritans gained in the struggle, they proceeded to pull down the whole fabric of episcopacy. The Confession of Faith and the Directory were presented in place of the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-nine Articles. The lands of the bishops, deans, and chapters were sold, and the cathedrals cleansed of all decorations which might recall the Catholic liturgy. The ministers and lecturers chased away by Laud were recalled or put into parishes from which the royalist parsons had fled. Hundreds of ministers, who would not conform to the new rule, VARIATIONS IN RELIGION 305 were ejected from their livings. These changes were made under the direction of committees of the Lords and Commons who examined complaints against scandalous priests, and exercised the rights of expulsion and presentation. In these committees the name of Sir Henry Vane sometimes appears. Provision was generally made to save the sequestered ministers from destitution-sometimes half or a quarter of the living; in time it settled into an allowance of one-fifth.1 To other parishes lecturers were sent who could claim no more than the use of the church for their ministrations. In many country parishes parishes the Presbyterian government took a feeble growth from the indifference of the laity to take up the function of elders. In this general exaltation, this fermentation of thought, no question remained untouched: all the varieties of religious belief, all the sects, all the virtual divisions of opinion which engage men's minds to-day, had already taken form in the days of the commonwealth, though it was not yet safe to proclaim opinions too wide from the received faith. Thomas Webb, delivering deistical opinions in a private house, was arrested for blasphemy; and John Biddle, who denied the divinity of Christ, was imprisoned under the Long Parliament. Milton's unitarian treatise on Christian doctrine remained unpublished till the nineteenth century, when it had ceased to be anything save a literary curiosity. Very few people thought of granting toleration to the Catholics, and this for reasons political as well as religious. In their over Shaw's History of the English Church during the Civil Wars, etc., vol. ii., p. 192. U powering sense of an all-seeing God, watchful to take a severe account, the amusements of life seemed an idle, if not a sinful, waste of the time to be used to gain salvation. The Puritan come into power had no taste for social freedom, which he thought no better than the right to do wrong. The Book of Sports, which King James had framed to make the Sundays less wearisome, and which Charles had forced the clergy to read in their pulpits, was burned by the order of the parliament. Christmas and other holidays of the old church were abolished as having been superstitiously observed, and the second Tuesday in every month was assigned for reasonable recreation for working people. In 1647 the parliament passed a severe ordinance against stage plays "condemned by ancient heathens and much less to be tolerated amongst professors of the Christian religion; the magistrates of London were to pull down the galleries and boxes of the theatrical buildings, stage players were to be punished as rogues, and even spectators of a play were liable to be fined five shillings to go to the poor of the parish. It is noteworthy that at this time actors in France were denied Christian burial, yet the gaiety and light raillery of the French were not dimmed even by the wars of the Fronde. In England the mirth and the wit of the Elizabethan days had vanished: every one was in such grim earnest. The political songs and ballads of the Cavaliers are coarse and dull lampoons, not to be compared with the brilliant Jacobite literature after the exile of the Stuarts. England had well-nigh forgotten her great dramatic poet. The second folio 1 Cobbett's Parliamentary History, vol. iii., p. 846. PERILS OF THE COMMONWEALTH 307 edition of Shakespeare's works of 1630 sufficed for the readers of the next thirty-two years. Many people, or cared whether the who scarcely knew who reigned at debated at Westminster, eucharist should be taken from a table or from an altar, felt the loss of their maypoles and their dances, were weary of long preachings, and chilled by the sanctimonious spirit which frowned at the appearance of gaiety, under the notion that, by making themselves happy in this world, people were in danger of losing happiness in the next. Many perils begirt the new commonwealth; the royalists, though held under, were ready to rise: Ireland was still in rebel hands: Scotland turned against the parliament by the execution of the king: the most powerful states in Europe regarded the new republic with unconcealed dislike. No way appalled, those bold men who had taken command of the state made ready to attack their enemies. CHAPTER XVIII Cromwell's Campaign in Ireland. Affairs in Scotland. Charles Stuart takes the Covenant. English Invasion of Scotland. Leslie's Generalship. Battle of Dunbar. Battle of Worcester. Vane's Visit to Paris. Goes as Commissioner to Scotland. Negotiations for the Union. NEARLY eight years had passed away since the first tidings of the cruelties of the Irish rebellion had aroused a fury in the hearts of the Protestants, like that following the massacres of Meerut, Delhi, and Cawnpore in the Indian Mutiny. The parliament judged that the time for vengeance had now come. The Earl of Ormonde, Lord Deputy, one of the ablest of the Cavaliers, in the collapse of the royal power in England, found nothing better than to unite in a loose confederacy his own party with the Irish rebels. Owen Roe O'Neill, the general of the old Irish party, had offered to submit to the parliament, if security to their lives, estates, and religion were accorded; but this was refused. Ormonde's army advanced to besiege Dublin, which was held for the parliament by Colonel Michael Jones. By a welltimed sally the parliamentary leader put the besiegers to rout with great loss. Such was the situation when Cromwell, with a well-trained army of 12,000 men, landed at Dublin in August 1649. "We are come "such were the ominous words of the Puritan general |