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 own. 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.'

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

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

times before, but it had never been so bad as it now was. The streets of London and of all other towns were narrow and dirty, and the upper storeys of the houses were made larger than the lower ones, so that those on one side of the street almost met those on the other, and left little room for fresh air to circulate. This was quite enough to make people ill. There was more sickness and there were more early deaths at that time than now. When any man caught the plague the doctors did not know how to do anything for him. A red cross was painted on the door of his house, and the words, "The Lord have mercy upon us!' were written above it. Then the house was shut up, and nobody was allowed to go in or to come out. Every one who could afford to leave London hurried into the country, leaving the poor to suffer. The dread of catching the plague spread far and wide. 'How fearful,' wrote one who lived at the time, 'people were, thirty, or forty, if not a hundred miles from London, of anything that they brought from any mercer's or draper's shop; or of any goods that were brought to them, or of any persons that came to their houses. How they would shut their doors against their friends; and if a man passed over the fields, how one would avoid another.' The deaths became so numerous that it was impossible to bury the dead in the usual way. Carts went about the streets at night, preceded by a man ringing a bell, and calling out, 'Bring out your dead.' The corpses were thrown into a huge pit, because it was impossible to provide coffins for so many. Fires were lit in the streets, under the