But that was not all.
The men who ruled England were also kings of Scotland and their Scottish subjects, when it came to religion, knew exactly what they wanted. And so thoroughly were they convinced that they themselves were right that they were firmly opposed to the idea of liberty of conscience. They thought it wicked that other denominations should be suffered to exist and to worship freely within the confines of their own Protestant land. And they insisted not only that all Catholics and Anabaptists be exiled from the British Isles but furthermore that Socinians, Arminians, Cartesians, in short all those who did not share their own views upon the existence of a living God, be hanged.
This triangle of conflicts, however, produced an unexpected result. It forced the men who were obliged to keep peace between those mutually hostile parties to be much more tolerant than they would have been otherwise.
If both the Stuarts and Cromwell at different times of their careers insisted upon equal rights for all denominations, and history tells us they did, they were most certainly not animated by a love for Presbyterians or High Churchmen, or vice versa. They were merely making the best of a very difficult bargain. The terrible things which happened in the colonies along the Bay of Massachusetts, where one sect finally became all powerful, show us what would have been the fate of England if any one of the many contending factions had been able to establish an absolute dictatorship over the entire country.
Cromwell of course reached the point where he was able to do as he liked. But the Lord Protector was a very wise man. He knew that he ruled by the grace of his iron brigade and carefully avoided such extremes of conduct or of legislation as would have forced his opponents to make common cause. Beyond that, however, his ideas concerning tolerance did not go.
As for the abominable “atheists”—the aforementioned Socinians and Arminians and Cartesians and other apostles of the divine right of the individual human being, their lives were just as difficult as before.
Of course, the English “Libertines” enjoyed one enormous advantage. They lived close to the sea. Only thirty-six hours of sickness separated them from the safe asylum of the Dutch cities. As the printing shops of these cities were turning out most of the contraband literature of southern and western Europe, a trip across the North Sea really meant a voyage to one’s publisher and gave the enterprising traveler a chance to gather in his royalties and see what were the latest additions to the literature of intellectual protest.
Among those who at one time or another availed themselves of this convenient opportunity for quiet study and peaceful reflection, no one has gained a more deserving fame than John Locke.
He was born in the same year as Spinoza. And like Spinoza (indeed like most independent thinkers) he was the product of an essentially pious household. The parents of Baruch were orthodox Jews. The parents of John were orthodox Christians. Undoubtedly they both meant well by their children when they trained them in the strict doctrines of their own respective creeds. But such an education either breaks a boy’s spirit or it turns him into a rebel. Baruch and John, not being the sort that ever surrenders, gritted their teeth, left home and struck out for themselves.
At the age of twenty Locke went to Oxford and there for the first time heard of Descartes. But among the dusty book-stalls of St. Catherine Street he found certain other volumes that were much to his taste. For example, there were the works of Thomas Hobbes.