At the beginning of this period we find four religious parties in England: (1) the Roman Catholics; (2) the Episcopalians, or supporters of the National Church of England; (3) the Puritans, who wised to remain members of that Church, but who sought to "purify" it from certain Roman Catholic customs and modes of worship; (4) the Independents, who were endeavoring to establish independent congregational societies. In Scotland the Puritans established their religion in a Church governed by elders, or presbyters, instead of bishops, which on that account got the name of Presbyterians.
James I persecuted all who dissented from the Church of England; and after the Gunpowder Plot the Roman Catholics were practically deprived of the protection of the law, and subject to terrible oppression. In James's reign Bartholomew Legate, a Unitarian, was burned at West Smithfield Market, London (1612), for denying the doctrine of the trinity. He was the last English martyr. Charles I greatly exasperated the Puritans in the English Church by his Declaration of Sports, which recommended games in the churchyards after service on Sunday. Clergymen who refused to read the Declaration to their congregation were dismissed from their places.
During the period of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, Presbyterianism was established as the national worship of England and Scotland by the Solemn League and Covenant. A great many Episcopal clergymen were deprived of their parishes. At the Restoration several laws against the Scotch Covenanters and other Dissenters were enforced, and retaliatory legislation drove two thousand clergymen from their parishes to starve. On the other hand, the pretended Popish Plot caused the exclusion of Roman Catholics from both houses of Parliament, and all persons holding office were obliged to partake of the sacrament according to the Church of England. James II's futile attempt to restore Catholicism ended in the Revolution and the passage of the Toleration Act, granting liberty of worship to all Protestant Trinitarians. Stringent laws were passed against Catholics (1700), but they were not regularly enforced. Under Anne the Occasional Conformity Act (1711) and the Schism Act (1714) were aimed at Dissenters. The first of these laws punished officeholders who, during their term of office, should attend any dissenting place of worship; the second forbade any person's keeping a public or private school unless he was a member of the Church of England. Both laws were repealed a few years later (1718).
III. Military Affairs
519. Armor and Arms.
Armor still continued to be worn in some degree during this period, but it consisted chiefly of the helmet with breastplates and backplates. Firearms of various kinds were in general use; also hand grenades, or small bombs, and the bayonet. The chief wars of the period were the Civil War, the wars with the Dutch, William's war with France, which extended to America, and the War of the Spanish Succession.
IV. Literature, Learning, and Art
520. Great Writers.
The most eminent prose writers of this period were Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, John Bunyan, Bishop Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, John Locke, Hobbes, Dean Swift, Defoe, and Addison; the chief poets, Shakespeare and Jonson (mentioned under the preceding period), Milton, Dryden, Pope, Butler, and Beaumont and Fletcher, with a class of writers known as the "Comic Dramatists of the Restoration," whose works, though not lacking in genius, exhibit many of the worst features of the licentious age in which they were produced. Three other great writers were born in the latter part of this period,— Fielding, the novelist, Hume, the historian, and Butler,[1] the ablest thinker of his time in the English Church,—but their productions belong to the time of the Georges.
[1] Bishop Butler, author of "The Analogy of Religion" (1736), a work which gained for him the title of "The Bacon of Theology."