Historians have bestowed little attention to that important period in our great commonwealth, just after the restoration in England.

Though one hundred years before liberty was actually obtained, the sleeping goddess seemed to have opened her eyes on that occasion and yawned, though she closed them the next moment for a sleep of a century longer.
Events produce such strange and lasting impressions on individuals as well as on nations, that the historian may not be much out of the way, who fancies that he sees in the reign of Cromwell the outgrowth of republicanism, which culminated in the establishment of a free and independent English-speaking people on the American continent.

The two principal classes of English colonists were the cavaliers and the Puritans, though there were also Quakers, Catholics, and settlers of other creeds.

Generally the cavaliers were the "king's men," or royalists, and the Puritans republicans.

The different characteristics of these two sects were quite marked.