ABSTRACT
H. R. Trevor-Roper published an ironical study of "Three Foreigners and the Philosophy of the English Revolution. The more representative English mind was, presumably, exempt from what Trevor-Roper calls this kind of "peculiar metaphysics". Of two twentieth-century students of the Fifth Monarchists, one has contended: "The slow pragmatic process of change is more in accordance with the English national temperament than a sudden transformation imposed by force". No liberal optimism could touch John Rogers, no national pride or kindly gratitude. He was a young man of fits and rages, holding fast to his boyhood dreams of fire. Even in his worst moments, suffering extremely under the "inhuman tyranny", he could find dark resources of special consolation. Once Sir Philip Sidney had thought of state policy basing itself not on prophetic star-gazing but on experienced analysis of public affairs; for a John Rogers, a turn to humanist reason represented only an additional sign of the anti-Christ.
