cowardice, his childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person,
his provincial accent, made him an object of derision. Even in
his virtues and accomplishments there was something eminently
unkingly. Throughout the whole course of his reign, all the
venerable associations by which the throng had long been fenced
were gradually losing their strength. During two hundred years
all the sovereigns who had ruled England, with the exception of
Henry the Sixth, had been strongminded, highspirited, courageous,
and of princely bearing. Almost all had possessed abilities above
the ordinary level. It was no light thing that on the very eve of
the decisive struggle between our Kings and their Parliaments,
royalty should be exhibited to the world stammering, slobbering,
shedding unmanly tears, trembling at a drawn sword, and talking
in the style alternately of a buffoon and of a pedagogue.

In the meantime the religious dissensions, by which, from the
days of Edward the Sixth, the Protestant body had been
distracted, had become more formidable than ever. The interval
which had separated the first generation of Puritans from Cranmer
and Jewel was small indeed when compared with the interval which
separated the third generation of Puritans from Laud and Hammond.
While the recollection of Mary's cruelties was still fresh, while
the powers of the Roman Catholic party still inspired
apprehension, while Spain still retained ascendency and aspired
to universal dominion, all the reformed sects knew that they had
a strong common interest and a deadly common enemy. The animosity
which they felt towards each other was languid when compared with
the animosity which they all felt towards Rome. Conformists and
Nonconformists had heartily joined in enacting penal laws of
extreme severity against the Papists. But when more than half a