ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND. ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND. =The Church of the Restoration.= BY JOHN STOUGHTON, D.D. IN TWO VOLUMES--VOL. I. [Illustration] =London:= HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. MDCCCLXX. [Illustration: UNWIN BROTHERS, PRINTERS, BUCKLERSBURY, AND CANNON ST. E.C. ] ADVERTISEMENT. The object of my former volumes upon the Ecclesiastical History of England was to state facts and to draw conclusions, without seeking to gratify any particular party, and by such a method to promote the cause of Christian truth and charity. Acknowledgments of success to some extent, expressed by public critics, and by private friends, holding very different ecclesiastical opinions, encourage me to proceed in my arduous but agreeable task; and I now venture to lay before the public another instalment of my work. To account for its appearance so soon after its predecessor, it is but fair to my readers and myself to state, that it became the dream and desire of my life, a quarter of a century ago, to write an Ecclesiastical History of my own country; and that, ever since, my reading and my reflections have been directed very much into this channel. For many years past, I have been engaged in studying the affairs of the Church from the Commonwealth to the Revolution; and therefore, whatever may be the imperfections of these volumes, they are not, at any rate, a hasty compilation, but the result of long and laborious research. It may be well to indicate the sources from which my materials are drawn. The printed _Journals_ of the Lords and Commons,--the _Parliamentary History of England_,--_Cardwell's Synodalia_,--_Thurloe's State Papers_,--and other similar collections, which did not exist in the days of Kennet, Collier, and Neal,--supply, together with Burnet's and Baxter's contemporary accounts, the backbone of the following narrative. Journals, diaries, and biographies of the period, with newspapers and tracts, of which extraordinarily rich collections are found in the British Museum and in Dr. Williams' Library, have helped to clothe the skeleton. But the sources of illustration, upon which I rest some slight claim to originality, are found in certain unpublished MSS. which it has been my privilege to examine and employ.