of James I. and that of his son, Charles I.
(1625-1649) a worse ruler on the same lines, thousands of Englishmen
came to New England to enjoy religious liberty. The Pilgrim Fathers
landed at Plymouth in 1620. The exodus was very rapid during the next
twenty years, since those who insisted on worshiping God as they chose
were thrown into prison and sometimes had their ears cut off and their
noses mutilated. In the sixteenth century, the religious struggle was
between Catholics and Protestants, but in this age both of the
contestants were Protestant. The Church of England (Episcopal church)
was persecuting those who would not conform to its beliefs.

Side by side with the religious strife was a struggle for
constitutional government, for legal taxes, for the right of freedom
of speech in Parliament. James I. and Charles I. both collected
illegal taxes. Finally, when Charles became involved in war with
Spain, Parliament forced him in return for a grant of money to sign
the _Petition of Right_ (1628), which was in some respects a new
_Magna Charta_.

Charles did not keep his promises. For eleven years he ruled in a
despotic way without Parliament. In 1642 civil war broke out between
the Puritans, on one side, and the king, nobles, landed gentry, and
adherents of the Church of England, on the other. The Puritans under
the great Oliver Cromwell were victorious, and in 1649 they beheaded
Charles as a "tyrant, traitor and murderer." Cromwell finally became
Protector of the Commonwealth of England. The greatest Puritan writer,
John Milton, not only upheld the Commonwealth with powerful
argumentative prose, but also became the government's most important
secretary. Though his blindness would not allow him to write after
1652, he used to translate aloud, either into Latin or the language of
the foreign country, what Cromwell dictated or suggested. Milton's
under-secretary, Andrew Marvel, wrote down this translation.

[Illustration: CROMWELL DICTATING TO MILTON DISPATCHES TO THE KING OF
FRANCE CONCERNING THE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT.[1] _From the painting by
Ford Madox Brown._]

The Puritans remained in the ascendancy until 1660, when the Stuart
line was restored in the person of Charles II.

The Puritan Ideals.--The Renaissance had at first seemed to promise
everything, the power to reveal the secrets of Nature, to cause her to
gratify man's every wish, and to furnish a perpetual fountain of happy
youth. These expectations had n