e stables. Nor was this all. The same
tyranny which pressed on their social and political life had pressed on
their religious life too. The solemn petitions of the Book of Common
Prayer, the words which had rung like sweet chimes in their ears from
their first childhood, had been banned from every village church as
accursed things. It had been only by stealth and at home that the cross
could be signed on the brow of the babe whom the squire brought to be
christened. Hardly by stealth had it been possible to bury their dead
with the words of pathetic hope which have so often brought comfort to
the ears of mourners.

[Sidenote: The Parliament and the Church.]

And now the young squires felt that their time had come. The Puritan,
the Presbyterian, the Commonwealthman, all were at their feet. Their
very bearing was that of wild revolt against the Puritan past. To a
staid observer, Roger Pepys, they seemed a following of "the most
profane, swearing fellows that ever I heard in my life." Their whole
policy appeared to be dictated by a passionate spirit of reaction. They
would drive the Presbyterians from the bench and the polling-booth as
the Presbyterians had driven them. They would make belief in a
Commonwealth as much a sign of "malignity" as their enemies had made
belief in a king. They would have no military rule: they hated indeed
the very name of a standing army. They were hot Royalists and they were
hot churchmen. The old tyranny of the bishops was forgotten, the old
jealousy of the clergy set aside in the memory of a common suffering.
The oppressors of the parson had been the oppressors of the squire. The
sequestrator who had driven the one from his parsonage had driven the
other from his manor-house. Both had been branded with the same charge
of malignity. Both had been robbed alike of the same privileges of
citizenship. Both had suffered together, and the new Parliament was
resolved that both should triumph together. For the first time since
the Reformation the English gentry were ardent not for king only but
for Church and King.

The zeal of the Parliament at its outset therefore far outran that of
Charles or his ministers. Though it confirmed the other acts of its
predecessor, the Convention, it could with difficulty be brought to
confirm the Act of Indemnity. The Commons pressed for the prosecution of
Vane. Vane was protected alike by the spirit of the law and by the
king's pledge to the Convention that, even