the throng had long
been fenced were gradually losing their strength. During two hundred
years all the sovereigns who had ruled England, with the exception of
Henry the Sixth, had been strongminded, highspirited, courageous, and of
princely bearing. Almost all had possessed abilities above the ordinary
level. It was no light thing that on the very eve of the decisive
struggle between our Kings and their Parliaments, royalty should be
exhibited to the world stammering, slobbering, shedding unmanly tears,
trembling at a drawn sword, and talking in the style alternately of a
buffoon and of a pedagogue.

In the meantime the religious dissensions, by which, from the days of
Edward the Sixth, the Protestant body had been distracted, had become
more formidable than ever. The interval which had separated the first
generation of Puritans from Cranmer and Jewel was small indeed when
compared with the interval which separated the third generation of
Puritans from Laud and Hammond. While the recollection of Mary's
cruelties was still fresh, while the powers of the Roman Catholic party
still inspired apprehension, while Spain still retained ascendency and
aspired to universal dominion, all the reformed sects knew that they had
a strong common interest and a deadly common enemy. The animosity
which they felt towards each other was languid when compared with
the animosity which they all felt towards Rome. Conformists and
Nonconformists had heartily joined in enacting penal laws of extreme
severity against the Papists. But when more than half a century of
undisturbed possession had given confidence to the Established Church,
when nine tenths of the nation had become heartily Protestant, when
England was at peace with all the world, when there was no danger that
Popery would be forced by foreign arms on the nation, when the last
confessors who had stood before Bonner had passed away, a change took
place in the feeling of the Anglican clergy. Their hostility to the
Roman Catholic doctrine and discipline was considerably mitigated.
Their dislike of the Puritans, on the other hand, increased daily. The
controversies which had from the beginning divided the Protestant party
took such a form as made reconciliation hopeless; and new controversies
of still greater importance were added to the old subjects of dispute.

The founders of the Anglican Church had retained episcopacy as an
ancient, a decent, and a convenient ecclesiastical polity,