, a Unitarian, was burned at West
Smithfield Market, London (1612), for denying the doctrine of the
trinity. He was the last English martyr. Charles I greatly
exasperated the Puritans in the English Church by his Declaration of
Sports, which recommended games in the churchyards after service on
Sunday. Clergymen who refused to read the Declaration to their
congregation were dismissed from their places.

During the period of the Civil War and the Commonwealth,
Presbyterianism was established as the national worship of England and
Scotland by the Solemn League and Covenant. A great many Episcopal
clergymen were deprived of their parishes. At the Restoration several
laws against the Scotch Covenanters and other Dissenters were
enforced, and retaliatory legislation drove two thousand clergymen
from their parishes to starve. On the other hand, the pretended
Popish Plot caused the exclusion of Roman Catholics from both houses
of Parliament, and all persons holding office were obliged to partake
of the sacrament according to the Church of England. James II's
futile attempt to restore Catholicism ended in the Revolution and the
passage of the Toleration Act, granting liberty of worship to all
Protestant Trinitarians. Stringent laws were passed against Catholics
(1700), but they were not regularly enforced. Under Anne the
Occasional Conformity Act (1711) and the Schism Act (1714) were aimed
at Dissenters. The first of these laws punished officeholders who,
during their term of office, should attend any dissenting place of
worship; the second forbade any person's keeping a public or private
school unless he was a member of the Church of England. Both laws
were repealed a few years later (1718).

III. Military Affairs

519. Armor and Arms.

Armor still continued to be worn in some degree during this period,
but it consisted chiefly of the helmet with breastplates and
backplates. Firearms of various kinds were in general use; also hand
grenades, or small bombs, and the bayonet. The chief wars of the
period were the Civil War, the wars with the Dutch, William's war with
France, which extended to America, and the War of the Spanish
Succession.

IV. Literature, Learning, and Art

520. Great Writers.

The most eminent prose writers of this period were Sir Walter Raleigh,
Lord Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, John Bunyan, Bishop Hooker, Jeremy
Taylor, John Locke, Hobbes, Dean Swift, Defoe,