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own fault,' he said, that I have not come back sooner, for I find nobody who does not tell me he has always wished for my return.' In reality it was the fault of the Puritan army. The strongest feeling amongst Englishmen then was dislike of an army which had enabled Cromwell to rule over them. They wanted to be again as they were in the old days before the Civil War, when there had been no soldiers in England except the farmers or shopkeepers, who came out to be drilled for a few days in the year, and then went quietly to their work. Charles had therefore no difficulty in sending Cromwell's soldiers back to their homes. Only three regiments were kept, and these regiments were the beginning of the present royal army. Some of the men who had sat in the Court which condemned Charles I. to death, or had taken part against him very violently, were tried and executed. The bodies of Cromwell and of two others were actually dug up and hanged, though they had been dead some time.

3. Treatment of the Puritans. About a year after the King came back a new Parliament was elected. Scarcely any one was chosen to it who had not taken part with Charles I. It was therefore known as the Cavalier Parliament. When people have been very much frightened, they sometimes think that they can get rid by force of those who have frightened them. Englishmen had been very much frightened by the Puritans in Cromwell's time. Those who liked the old church service had not been allowed to have it, and those who did not care at all about

church services had been prevented from amusing themselves as they pleased. The Parliament and the people were, therefore, very angry with the Puritans. The bishops were restored, and the services of the Church of England were again used in all the churches. Laws were passed which were expected to make an end of the Puritans. All of the clergy who were unwilling to use the Prayer Book were turned out of their parishes. But they were not permitted to preach in chapels or even in private houses. No man was to be allowed to gather in his house for purposes of worship more than five persons beyond the members of his own family. Besides this, none of the Puritan clergy who had been turned out were to come within five miles of a town. It was believed that many more of the people who were willing to listen to them in private lived in the towns than in the country, and that, if the Puritan clergy were kept away from the towns, they would not be likely to find a congregation even in secret. The Parliament forgot that even harder laws had been made against the Catholics in Elizabeth's time, without putting an end to them, and that it was therefore not likely that these laws would put an end to the Puritans. The Puritans were very badly treated. They had by this time given up all hope of changing the prayers of the Church of England, and they therefore now only wished to be allowed to worship without punishment in churches of their own. For this reason they were now called Dissenters, because they dissented from the Church, and wanted to separate from it. They were brave men, ready to

endure persecution rather than do what they thought to be wrong.

4. John Bunyan.-Amongst these men was John Bunyan, who wrote the Pilgrim's Progress' when he was imprisoned in Bedford Gaol for his religion. He was born in Bedfordshire, of very poor parents. As a young man he was irreligious, but he afterwards changed his character entirely. After the Restoration he was greatly persecuted, because he refused to go to church, and preached to congregations of his He was thrown into prison, and kept there more than twelve years. He was a tinker by trade, and he provided for himself in prison by making metal tags for the ends of laces. He wrote many religious books, the most famous of which is the 'Pilgrim's Progress.'

own.

5. John Milton.--John Milton, the Puritan poet of England, published the Paradise Lost' in the reign of Charles II. He had written many beautiful poems when he was a young man, in the time of Charles I. When the Long Parliament met, he thought it to be his duty to give up writing poems almost entirely, and to write books about the state of the Church. He thought that true religion was only hindered by the ceremonies used in the churches, and that the bishops were making men irreligious by making them use these ceremonies. He therefore wrote very violently against the bishops, and was very glad when the king was defeated. He admired Cromwell very much, and, though he was blind, he was employed in the time of the Commonwealth and Protectorate to write letters in Latin to foreign

princes. The Restoration, when it came, made him very sad. After 'Paradise Lost' was finished he wrote a poem about Samson. His own blindness made him think of Samson's blindness at the end of his life; and when he wrote about the Philistines who ill-

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treated Samson, he was thinking of the riotous. courtiers of Charles II., who did such wicked things.

6. Lord Chancellor Clarendon. Soon after the Restoration, Monk was made Duke of Albemarle, but he never had much to do with the Government. The man who managed business for the King at this time was the Hyde who had been one of the chief

men of the Royalist party in the beginning of the Long Parliament. He was now made Earl of Clarendon and Lord Chancellor. He had been at the head of those who wished to restore the bishops. He thought that the King ought always to have a Parliament, but that under no circumstances should the Parliament take up arms against the king, whatever he might choose to do. This was what the Parliament itself thought at that time. People are very often inclined to be very violent in condemning things which their enemies do, and which they do not think of doing themselves; and as it had been the Puritans who had fought against the King in the time of Charles I., it never entered into the heads of the Royalists that they themselves might some day want to resist him. They therefore condemned all persons who thought that any king ought ever to be resisted.

7. The First Dutch War.-It was not long before even this Cavalier Parliament found out that the King deserved at least to be blamed. The Dutch were a great commercial people, with ships on every sea. England had now become commercial, and the two nations regarded one another with feelings as unfriendly as those of the owners of two shops which sell the same articles next door to one another. When nations are in a bad temper, they easily find an excuse for quarrelling, and so the English and the Dutch began a war in 1664.

8. The Plague and the Fire of London. In the hot summer of 1665 a terrible sickness broke out in London called the plague. It was an infectious disease, which had appeared in England several

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