Great Britain was rent with civil war: plot and counterplot—intrigue, feud, fear and vengeance—filled the air. Men alternately prayed and cursed, then they shivered. Commerce stood still. Farmers feared to plant, for they knew that probably the work would be worse than vain: the product would go to feed their enemies and deepen their oppression. Backward and forward surged the armies, consuming, destroying and wasting. The pride and flower of England's manhood had enlisted or been drafted into the fray.
The fight was Episcopalians against Dissenters: the Church versus the People. Most of the Dissenters were Puritans, and they belonged to various denominations; and many, like Oliver Cromwell, belonged to none. The issue was freedom of conscience. Cromwell regarded religion as life and life as religion, and to him and to all men he believed that God spoke directly, if we would but listen.
If the Church won, many felt that freedom would flee, and England would be as it was in the reign of Bloody Mary.
If the Puritans won, no one knew the result—would power be safe in their hands? Men at the last were but men. In the hands of royalty, money flowed free. There had been thousands of pensioners, parasites, ladies of fashion and gentlemen of leisure, parties who worked an hour every other Thursday, and whose duties were limited largely to signing their vouchers—royalty and relatives of royalty, all feeding at the public trough. These people "spent their money like kings"—which means that they wasted their substance in riotous living. And the average mind—jumping at conclusions—reasons that liberal spenders benefit society. In the South our colored brothers are much happier when getting ten cents at a time, ten times a day, than if receiving a monthly stipend of fifty dollars. Even yet there be those who argue that rich people who spend money freely on folly benefit the race, forgetful that anything which calls for human energy is a waste to the world of human life, unless it is a producer of wealth and happiness as well as a distributor. Waste must always be paid for, and usually it is paid for in blood and tears; but beggars who live on tips never know it. A tramp who is given a quarter feels a deal more lucky than if he gets a chance to earn a dollar.
All wealth comes through labor: the people earn the money, and the parasites get a part of it; and in the Seventeenth Century, they got most of it. Then when these parasites wasted the money the people had earned, the many thought they were being blessed. The English people in the Seventeenth Century were about where the colored brother is now, and I apologize to all Afro-Americans when I say it. However, out of the mass of ignorance, innocence, brutality, bestiality, fanaticism, superstition, arose here and there at long intervals a man equal to any we can now produce. But they were fugitive stars, unsupported, and they had to supply their own atmosphere.
Cromwell was an accident, a providential accident, sent by Deity in pleasantry, to give a glimpse of what a man might really be.
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William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, was to Charles the First what Richelieu was to Louis the Thirteenth of France. Laud came so near being a Catholic that the Pope, perceiving his fitness, offered to make him a cardinal. In fact, but a few years before, all of the clergy in England were Catholics and when their monarch changed religions they changed theirs. Laud was of the opinion that vows, responses, intonings, genuflexions and ringing of bells constituted religion.
Cromwell said that religion was the dwelling of the spirit of God in the heart of man. Laud brought about much kneeling and candle- snuffing. He was Pope of the English Church, and played the part according to the traditions.
A Scotch Presbyterian clergyman by the name of Leighton declared in a sermon that bishops derived their power from men, not God. Laud showed him differently by placing him in the pillory, giving him a hundred lashes on the bare back, branding him with the letter "I," meaning infidel, cutting off one ear and slitting his nose.