As we are now getting near the attempted suppression of Christmas under the Puritan _regime_, it may be as well to notice the extreme licence to which the season's holiday and festivities had reached--and perhaps a more flagrant case than the following can scarcely be given. On 13th January 1626 the Commissioners of the Navy write to the Duke of Buckingham that they have received information from persons who have been on board the _Happy Entrance_ in the Downs, and the _Nonsuch_ and _Garland_ at Gore-end, that for these Christmas holidays, the captains, masters, boatswains, gunners, and carpenters, were not aboard their ships, nor gave any attendance to the service, leaving the ships a prey to any who might have assaulted them. The Commissioners sent down clothes for the sailors, and there were no officers to take charge of them, and the pressed men ran away as fast as the Commissioners sent them down. If they had beaten up and down, they might have prevented the loss of two English ships taken by the Dunkirkers off Yarmouth. This, naturally, was a state of things which could not be allowed, and on January 15 the Duke of Buckingham wrote to Sir Henry Palmer as to the officers and men quitting their ships at Christmas time, and called upon him "presently to repair on board his own ship, and to charge the officers of all the ships composing his fleet, not to depart from their ships without order." CHAPTER IV Attempts of Puritans to put down Christ-tide--Attitude of the people--Preaching before Parliament--"The Arraignment, etc., of Christmas." As soon as the Puritans became at all powerful, their iconoclastic zeal naturally attacked Christmas, and the Scotchmen, such as Baillie, Rutherford, Gillespie, and Henderson, in the Westminster Assembly of Divines, tried in 1643 to get the English observance of Christmas abolished--but they only succeeded so far as coming to a resolution that whilst preaching on that day, "withal to cry down the superstition of that day." Next year they were happier in their efforts, as is shortly told in _Parliamentary History_, December 19, 1644. "The lords and commons having long since appointed a day for a Fast and Humiliation, which was to be on the last Wednesday in every Month, it happening to fall on Christmas day this month, the Assembly of Divine sent to acquaint the lords with it: and, to avoid any inconveniences that might be by some people keeping it as a Feast, and others as a Fast, they desired that the Parliament would publish a Declaration the next Lord's day in the Churches of London and Westminster; that that day might be kept as it ought to be, that the whole kingdom might have comfort thereby. The houses agreed to this proposal, and directed the following Ordinance to be published; which bore this title-- "AN ORDINANCE FOR THE BETTER OBSERVATION OF THE FEAST OF THE NATIVITY OF CHRIST.