from having learnt; at no time, perhaps, were they further from it.  Puritanism had had its day, and had made itself generally detested.  Deeply enshrined as it was in many earnest and devout hearts, such as Bunyan’s, it was necessarily the religion not of the many, but of the few; it was the religion not of the common herd, but of a spiritual aristocracy.  Its stern condemnation of all mirth and pastime, as things in their nature sinful, of which we have so many evidences in Bunyan’s own writings; its repression of all that makes life brighter and more joyous, and the sour sanctimoniousness which frowned upon innocent relaxation, had rendered its yoke unbearable to ordinary human nature, and men took the earliest opportunity of throwing the yoke off and trampling it under foot.  They hailed with rude and boisterous rejoicings the restoration of the Monarchy which they felt, with a true instinct, involved the restoration of the old Church of England, the church of their fathers and of the older among themselves, with its larger indulgence for the instincts of humanity, its wider comprehensiveness, and its more dignified and decorous ritual.

The reaction from Puritanism pervaded all ranks.  In no class, however, was its influence more powerful than among the country gentry.  Most of them had been severe sufferers both in purse and person during the Protectorate.  Fines and sequestrations had fallen heavily upon them, and they were eager to retaliate on their oppressors.  Their turn had come; can we wonder that they were eager to use it?  As Mr. J. R. Green has said:  “The Puritan, the Presbyterian, the Commonwealthsman, all were at their feet. . .  Their whole policy appeared to be dictated by a passionate spirit of reaction. . .  The oppressors of the parson had been the oppressors of the squire.  The sequestrator who had driven the one from his parsonage had driven the other from his manor-house.  Both had been branded with the same charge of malignity.  Both had suffered together, and the new Parliament was resolved that both should triumph together.”

The feeling thus eloquently expressed goes far to explain the harshness which Bunyan experienced at the hands of the administrators of justice at the crisis of his life at which we have now arrived.  Those before whom he was successively arraigned belonged to this very class, which, having suffered most severely during the Puritan usurpation, was least likely to show consideration to a leading teacher of the Puritan body.  Nor were reasons wanting to justify their severity.  The circumstances of the times were critical.  The public mind was still in an excitable state, agitated by the wild schemes of political and religious enthusiasts plotting to destroy the whole existing framework both of Church and State, and set up their own chimerical fabric.  We cannot be surprised that, as Southey has said, after all the nation had suffered from fanatical zeal, “The