This brief survey of the police system of the early Stuart period not only shews how little progress had been made during the last five hundred years, but partly explains the rash haste with which all classes decided to appeal to the sword for the settlement of the differences that divided Crown and Commons. For some time back, in the absence of that restraining influence which an efficient police force might have afforded, people had readily run into factions; and, with arms in their hands, had supported their particular opinions by force, in defiance of all authority, and with a degree of violence that would never have been tolerated for a moment in any community where the value of peace-maintenance was duly appraised and properly insisted upon. CHAPTER VII MILITARY POLICE AND POLICE UNDER CHARLES II If the feebleness of the police was in some degree responsible for the ready appeal to arms in 1642, the lawlessness that was so widespread at the close of the century, was largely the outcome of the disorganization of the national police system, which was the natural accompaniment of the Revolution. Civil War is invariably attended by an outbreak of crime that has no connection with the main quarrel, but which arises in the day of trouble because the powerlessness of the executive is the opportunity of the criminal. No longer is any one power supreme (crimes committed in one camp being generally condoned in the other), and a mania of insubordination drives ordinarily well-disposed persons to throw off the old restraints to which they instinctively submit in times of peace. When Civil War begins, the "King's Peace" is at an end, the Law is forgotten or despised, the whole body politic is in a state of fever, and the usual functions of orderly government are suspended. If the Revolution in England produced less serious consequences than might have been expected, this result was due to the puritan zeal of the Parliamentary Army, which had no sympathy with any acts of violence that were not directed against those whom it held to be the enemies of liberty and religion, and which at least permitted no riotous licence amongst its adherents. Yet in spite of this desire of the popular party to maintain order, the whole civil machinery of the country was dislocated and out of gear as long as the war lasted; even the circuit of the Justice of Assize was discontinued; and marriages, no longer solemnised with the customary religious ceremony, were performed by Justices of the Peace, and in such a casual manner that few records were kept.