Surrounded by home affections, Bradshaw appears to have taken little interest in public affairs; though, as a strict Calvinist and stern moralist, he could not but have looked with disfavour on the republication of the “Book of Sports,” and the revival of the Sunday wakes and festivals, in which religion and pleasure were so strangely blended; nor, as an Englishman, could he have been an indifferent spectator of the breach which was gradually widening between the King and his people. A cloud was then gathering which presaged a great religious and political tempest. The year in which Bradshaw lost his wife was that which closed the long and brilliant reign of the last of the Tudor sovereigns. James of Scotland succeeded—a King who reigned like a woman after a woman who had reigned like a man. The Puritans in Elizabeth’s time were comparatively insignificant in numbers, but the strictness of the Queen’s ecclesiastical rule acted upon their stubborn nature, and those who were averse to Episcopacy, and impatient of uniformity in rites and ceremonies and the decorous adjuncts of a National Church, grew formidable under James, and turbulent and aggressive after the accession of Charles. The policy of Elizabeth gave a political standing ground to Puritanism, and Puritanism gave to the political war in which the nation became involved a relentless character that was all its own. In 1634 was issued the writ for the levying of Ship-money—“that word of lasting sound in the memory of this kingdom,” as Clarendon calls it—a word which lit the torch of revolution, and for a period of eleven years kept the country in almost uninterrupted strife. The occasion was eagerly availed of by the discontented; pulpits were perverted by religious fanatics, and violent appeals made to the passions of the populace, who were preached into rebellion; while more thoughtful, yet brave and strong-minded men, impressed with a stern, unflinching love of justice, and a determination to maintain those liberties they held to be their birthright, contended to the death against “imposts” and “levies” and “compositions,” and against the worse mockery of “loans” which no man was free to refuse, as well as the despotism that more than threatened their common country. It was a fatal time for England. Dignified by some high virtues, possessing many excellent endowments both of head and heart, Charles yet lacked sincerity, forethought, and decision, and the capacity required for the wise conduct of affairs. The blame for the strifes and contentions which arose does not, however, attach wholly to the sovereign, nor yet to his subjects. The absolutism of the Tudors was, in a measure, the cause of the sins of the Stuarts, and the sins of the Stuarts brought about the miseries of the Rebellion, just as in turn the despotic rule and grinding social tyranny of the Commonwealth period led to the excesses of the Restoration. Charles was born out of season, and lived