characterises as persons that for a painted
glass window would pull down the whole church. At that early period
these nicknames were soon used in an odious sense; for Warner, a poet in
the reign of Elizabeth, says,--

If hypocrites why _puritaines_ we term be asked, in breese,
'Tis but an _ironised terme_; good-fellow so spels theese!

Honest Fuller, who knew that many good men were among these _Puritans_,
wished to decline the term altogether, under the less offensive one of
_Non-conformists_. But the fierce and the fiery of this party, in
Charles the First's time had been too obtrusive not to fully merit the
ironical appellative; and the peaceful expedient of our moderator
dropped away with the page in which it was written. The people have
frequently expressed their own notions of different parliaments by some
apt nickname. In Richard the Second's time, to express their dislike of
the extraordinary and irregular proceedings of the lords against the
sovereign, as well as their sanguinary measures, they called it "The
_wonder-working_ and the _unmerciful_ parliament." In Edward the Third's
reign, when the Black Prince was yet living, the parliament, for having
pursued with severity the party of the Duke of Lancaster, was so
popular, that the people distinguished it as the _good_ parliament. In
Henry the Third's time, the parliament opposing the king, was called
"_Parliamentum insanum_," the mad parliament, because the lords came
armed to insist on the confirmation of the great charter. A Scottish
parliament, from its perpetual shiftings from place to place was
ludicrously nicknamed the _running_ parliament; in the same spirit we
had our _long_ parliament. The nickname of _Pensioner_ parliament stuck
to the House of Commons which sate nearly eighteen years without
dissolution, under Charles the Second; and others have borne satirical
or laudatory epithets. So true it is, as old Holingshed observed, "The
common people will manie times give such _bie names_ as seemeth _best
liking to themselves_." It would be a curious speculation to discover
the sources of the popular feeling; influenced by delusion, or impelled
by good sense!

The exterminating political nickname of _malignant_ darkened the nation
through the civil wars: it was a proscription--and a list of _good_ and
_bad_ lords was read by the leaders of the first tumults. Of all these
inventions, this diabolical one was most adapted to exasperate the
animositie