To their fidelity alone their oppressor owed the power which he was now employing to their ruin.

They had long been in the habit of recounting in acrimonious language all that they had suffered at the hand of the Puritan in the day of his power.

Yet for the Puritan there was some excuse.

He was an avowed enemy: he had wrongs to avenge; and even he, while remodelling the ecclesiastical constitution of the country, and ejecting all who would not subscribe his Covenant, had not been altogether without compassion.
He had at least granted to those whose benefices he seized a pittance sufficient to support life.

But the hatred felt by the King towards that Church which had saved him from exile and placed him on a throne was not to be so easily satiated.