World history; World history -- Juvenile literature
The period which followed the death of Charles is usually called after
Oliver Cromwell. At first the unofficial Dictator of England, he was
officially made Lord Protector in the year 1653. He ruled five years. He
used this period to continue the policies of Elizabeth. Spain once more
became the arch enemy of England and war upon the Spaniard was made a
national and sacred issue.
The commerce of England and the interests of the traders were placed
before everything else, and the Protestant creed of the strictest nature
was rigourously maintained. In maintaining England's position abroad,
Cromwell was successful. As a social reformer, however, he failed very
badly. The world is made up of a number of people and they rarely think
alike. In the long run, this seems a very wise provision. A government
of and by and for one single part of the entire community cannot
possibly survive. The Puritans had been a great force for good when they
tried to correct the abuse of the royal power. As the absolute Rulers of
England they became intolerable.
When Cromwell died in 1658, it was an easy matter for the Stuarts to
return to their old kingdom. Indeed, they were welcomed as "deliverers"
by the people who had found the yoke of the meek Puritans quite as hard
to bear as that of autocratic King Charles. Provided the Stuarts were
willing to forget about the Divine Right of their late and lamented
father and were willing to recognise the superiority of Parliament, the
people promised that they would be loyal and faithful subjects.
Two generations tried to make a success of this new arrangement. But the
Stuarts apparently had not learned their lesson and were unable to drop
their bad habits. Charles II, who came back in the year 1660, was an
amiable but worthless person. His indolence and his constitutional
insistence upon following the easiest course, together with his
conspicuous success as a liar, prevented an open outbreak between
himself and his people. By the act of Uniformity in 1662 he broke the
power of the Puritan clergy by banishing all dissenting clergymen from
their parishes. By the so-called Conventicle Act of 1664 he tried to
prevent the Dissenters from attending religious meetings by a threat of
deportation to the West Indies. This looked too much like the good old
days of Divine Right. People began to show the old and well-known
signs of impatience, and Parliament suddenly experienced difficulty in
providing the King with funds.
Since he could not get money from an unwilling Parliament, Charles
borrowed it secretly from his neighbour and cousin King Louis of France.
He betrayed his Protestant allies in return for 200,000 pounds per year,
and laughed at the poor simpletons of Parliament.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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