Great Britain -- History -- Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649-1660 -- Sources; Great Britain -- History -- Early Stuarts, 1603-1649 -- Sources
From this custom of wearing their hair, that name of roundhead became
the scornful term given to the whole parliament party, whose army
indeed marched out as if they had been only sent out till their hair
was grown. Two or three years after, any stranger that had seen them,
would have inquired the reason of that name. It was very ill applied
to Mr. Hutchinson, who, having naturally a very fine thickset head of
hair, kept it clean and handsome, so that it was a great ornament to
him; although the godly of those days, when he embraced their party,
would not allow him to be religious because his hair was not in their
cut, nor his words in their phrase, nor such little formalities
altogether fitted to their humour; who were, many of them, so weak as
to esteem such insignificant circumstances, rather than solid wisdom,
piety, and courage, which brought real aid and honour to their party.
But as Mr. Hutchinson chose not them, but the God they served,
and the truth and righteousness they defended, so did not their
weaknesses, censures, ingratitude, or discouraging behaviour, with
which he was abundantly exercised all his life, make him forsake them
in any thing wherein they adhered to just and honourable principles
or practices; but when they apostatized from these, none cast them
off with greater indignation, how shining soever the profession was
that gilt, not a temple of living grace, but a tomb, which only held
the carcase of religion.
A NATIONAL FAST (1642).
=Source.=--_Acts and Ordinances of Interregnum._ Ed. by C. H.
Firth and R. S. Rait. London: Wyman and Son, 1911. Vol. i., p. 26.
September 2.
Whereas the distressed estate of Ireland, steeped in her own blood,
and the distracted estate of England, threatened with a cloud of
blood by the civil war, call for all possible means to appease and
avert the Wrath of God, appearing in these judgments; among which
Fasting and Prayer, having been often tried to be very effectual,
having been lately and are still enjoined; and whereas public sports
do not well agree with public calamities, nor public stage plays with
the seasons of humiliation, this being an exercise of sad and pious
solemnity, and the other being spectacles of pleasure, too commonly
expressing lascivious mirth and levity: it is therefore thought fit
and ordained, by the Lords and Commons in this parliament assembled,
that while these sad causes and set times of humiliation do continue,
public Stage Plays shall cease and be forborn, instead of which are
recommended to the people of this land, the profitable and seasonable
considerations of repentance, reconciliation and peace with God,
which probably may produce outward peace and prosperity, and bring
again times of joy and gladness to these nations.
THE GOOD YEOMAN (1642).
=Source.=--_The Holy State_, by Thomas Fuller, 1642. P. 116.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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