The "Roundheads," who had trampled upon the "Cavaliers," were now
trampled upon in return. But even at such a time as this the liberties
of the people were expanding. The Act of "Habeas Corpus" forever
prevented imprisonment, without showing in Court just cause for the
detention of the prisoner.

[Sidenote: Death of Charles II., 1685.]
The House of Stuart, those children of the Guises, was always Catholic
at heart, and Charles was at no pains to conceal his preferences. A
wave of Catholicism alarmed the people, who tried to divert the
succession from James, the brother of the King, who was extreme and
fanatical in his devotion to the Church of Rome. But in 1685, the
Masks and routs and revels were interrupted. The pleasure-loving
Charles, who "had never said a foolish thing, and never done a wise
one," lay dead in his palace at Whitehall, and James II. was King of
England.

[Sidenote: Milton and Bunyan.]

Three names have illumined this reign, in other respects so inglorious.
In 1666 Newton discovered the law of gravitation and created a new
theory of the Universe. In 1667 Milton published "Paradise Lost," and
in 1672 Bunyan gave to the world his allegory, "Pilgrim's Progress."
There was no inspiration to genius in the cause of King and Cavaliers.
But the stern problems of Puritanism touched two souls with the divine
afflatus. The sacred Epic of Milton, sublime in treatment as in
conception, must ever stand unique and solitary in literature; while
"Pilgrim's Progress," in plain homely dish served the same heavenly
food. The theme of both was the problem of sin and redemption with
which the Puritan soul was gloomily struggling.