CHARLES II. 37 



depose him, and then set limits to the authority of the new 

 sovereign whom they placed in his stead. 



Tf in addition to this g:eneral view it was to be asked what 

 peculiar causes arising from the events and character of those 

 times most contributed to the course which these transactions 

 took, I should look not to any change in national opinions, but 

 to the uniform operation of that which I conceive to be the leading 

 characteristic of our whole history from the Reformation to the 

 Revolution. AVhat most distinguishes that period from those 

 which preceded and followed it, is the intimate connexion 

 and decisive influence of contested religious opinions on political 

 conduct and principle, which have indeed had some effect on 

 every part of our history, but which I hold to be the master key 

 of the internal affairs of this country during the latter half of 

 the sixteenth, and nearly the whole of the seventeenth century. 

 He then who should write a history of the civil wars, and conclude 

 that, because of the two sets of men into which the popular 

 party was divided, that from one set of men calling themselves 

 Presbyterians, and another set Independents, therefore the 

 contest was mainly a religious dispute and not essentially a 

 struggle for political power, would betray, in my judgment, a 

 most complete ignorance of his subject. It was religious zeal 

 that inflamed the civil discontent of the English into civil 

 war under Charles the First. It was the same feeling, operating 

 still more powerfully in Scotland, that produced the first open 

 resistance to the King, and his final overthrow. With him fell 

 the Church of England, with whose cause his was inseparably 

 connected. But with her downfall commenced the disunion of 

 her adversaries ; and the Presbyterians, the first movers of the 

 civil war, found themselves in its progress as much depressed as 

 those against whom they had taken up arms. Both were com- 

 pletely trampled upon (though forming together a very large 

 majority of the nation) by an army which was wielded by the 

 Independents, and was the main instrument of Cromwell's 

 usurpation. Both, therefore, united in earnestly desiring a change 

 in their condition, and when the jealousy of the Presbyterians 

 had been quieted by the declaration from Breda, both zealously 

 co-operated in the restoration of the hereditary Monarchy under 

 which form alone it was evident there was any possibility of 

 composing these evils. In this state of things no reasonable 

 man could venture to incur the hazard of imposing previous 

 conditions on the King. The discussions of such conditions 

 must immediately have divided the two parties whose co-opera- 

 tion was necessary for the accomplishment of that great work. 

 In the mean time, the danger from the army was imminent, and 

 the interposing such a theme of discord as the imposition of new 

 constitutional limitations on the Crown, must, in all human 

 probability, have exposed the country to many years more of 

 civil bloodshed and confusion. 



