The difference between these men and the Whigs as to the reciprocal obligations of Kings and subjects was now no longer a difference of principle.

There still remained, it is true, many historical controversies between the party which had always maintained the lawfulness of resistance and the new converts.

The memory of the blessed Martyr was still as much revered as ever by those old Cavaliers who were ready to take arms against his degenerate son.

They still spoke with abhorrence of the Long Parliament, of the Rye House Plot, and of the Western insurrection.

But, whatever they might think about the past, the view which they took of the present was altogether Whiggish: for they now held that extreme oppression might justify resistance, and they held that the oppression which the nation suffered was extreme.