As Isaac Disraeli has observed, "we must go back to the reign of Elizabeth to comprehend an event which occurred in that of Charles I." A sanctimonious sect urged extravagant reforms--at first, perhaps, in all simplicity--founding their opinions upon cramped and literal interpretations of divine precepts, and forming views of human nature "more practicable in a desert than a city, and rather suited to a monastic order than to a polished people." Still, these fanatics could scarcely have dreamed that power would ever be given them to carry their peculiar theories into practice, and to govern a nation as though it were composed entirely of precisians and bigots.

For two generations--from the Reformation to the Civil War--the Puritans had been the butt of the satirical, the jest of the wits--ridiculed and laughed at on all sides.

Then came a time, "when," in the words of Macaulay, "the laughers began to look grave in their turn.

The rigid ungainly zealots ...

rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly smiling, trod down under their feet the whole crowd of mockers." Yet from the first the Puritans had not neglected the pen as a weapon of offence.