stern fanatics began to centre the general opposition to the King.

At length the Scotch Protestants broke into open revolt, and the King
found he must have help, must summon a parliament at last. That was the
beginning of the end. The Englishmen who gathered at his call were in no
pleasant mood. They at once took steps to secure other parliaments to
follow immediately on their own. All Charles' encroachments on the law
were overturned; his courts, Star-Chamber and others, were abolished;
his chief minister was declared a traitor and beheaded.[13] The King,
helpless, infuriated, raised the standard of civil war (1642).

The strife was thus in its inception political; but it soon became
religious as well. Since the King was the head of the English Church,
most of its members rallied round him. The Puritans in Parliament
secured the calling of a convention to settle the various religious
questions before the nation. This "Westminster Assembly" established the
Presbyterian Church.[14]

The less extreme members of the opposition to the King grew doubtful;
they saw whither the Puritans would lead them. The war became one of
stern religious fanaticism against gallant reckless Cavalier loyalty--of
the middle classes against the aristocracy and their servitors. Cromwell
rose as the type and model of the Puritans. Under his lead they defeated
the Cavaliers and executed their King. Charles perished on the scaffold,
and England, following Holland's lead, was declared a republic. This was
in 1649, the year after the Peace of Westphalia.[15]

Cromwell remained practically the ruler of England. He defeated the
Scotch, and compelled them to submit to England's sway. He went over to
Ireland and stamped out revolt there, terrorized the land as no
Englishman had ever done before, establishing English colonists,
Protestants, over a considerable portion of its soil.[16] Secure of
power at home, the mighty leader began next to take a part in European
affairs, raising England to higher consideration than she had held even
in Elizabeth's time. Yet toward the end he must have realized that he
had failed in his life's dream, that England was unfitted to be the
united religious republic he had hoped to make her. Even before his
death the land was broken into endless factions, the majority
dissatisfied with the strictness of Puritan rule, a small minority eager
to go much further with its severity. Cromwell found himself compelled
to dissolv