ABSTRACT
In the first weeks of the Long Parliament, the policy of those who fought the battle of Protestant supremacy and political freedom underwent a change, sudden as when the wind shifts, but permanent as when the flood leaps down into lands below its former level. From the accession of the House of Stuart to the breaking of the Short ParHament the. patriots had studied no art but the legal definition of rights, and the fearless presentation of grievances. But from the meeting of the Long Parliament to the accession of the House of Hanover, through all changes of men and measures, of high and low ideals, the first thought alike of Roundhead and Whig was the manipulation of forces. Former Parliaments had spoken for the people, but never called upon the people to protect them. Hence the purity ana charm of Eliot's life and death; he registered the claims. Pym was the master of another art - to seize the power. Pym first called in clubs and broadswords to protect this Parliament from the fate to which aU its predecessors had submitted. At his word, ignorant fanaticism and mob force came to guard religion and liberty, whose cause had looked so fair when only the chivalrous gentlemen of England were its longsuffering champions. And yet the gain was great, for in this way English liberty and religiOn survived. And in this way English liberty came to include more than the narrow legalism of the Parliament men, English religion more than the stiff gentlemanly Protestantism of the earlier patriots. For the inhabitants of street, and farm, and village, called in the hour of need to acting partnership with the Puritans of the manor house, added not only to the fighting power, but to the spiritual and intellectual content of the cause. Behind the mobs who hooted the King's half-pay captains in Palace Yard and knocked down papists at the street corners, moved the humble men who were to found Quakerism, and the practical visionaries who were to inspire democracy with its best peculiar hopes and ideals.
