He was a Puritan, and hence he was a reformer, not in church matters merely, but in all those things which are connected with civil liberty,—­for there is as close a connection between Protestantism and liberty as between Catholicism and absolutism.  The Puritans intensely hated everything which reminded them of Rome, even the holidays of the Church, organs, stained-glass, cathedrals, and the rich dresses of the clergy.  They even tried to ignore Christmas and Easter, though consecrated by the early Church.  They hated the Middle Ages, looked with disgust upon the past, and longed to try experiments, not only in religion, but in politics and social life.  The only antiquity which had authority to them was the Jewish Commonwealth, because it was a theocracy, and recognized God Almighty as the supreme ruler of the world.  Hence they adhered to the strictness of the Jewish Sabbath, and baptized their children with Hebrew names.

Now to such a people, stern, lofty, ascetic, legal, spiritual,—­conservative of whatever the Bible reveals, yet progressive and ardent for reforms,—­the rule of the Stuarts was intolerable.  It was intolerable because it seemed to lean towards Catholicism, and because it was tyrannical and averse to changes.  The King was ruled by favorites; and these favorites were either bigots in religion, like Archbishop Laud, or were tyrannical or unscrupulous in their efforts to sustain the King in despotic measures and crush popular agitations, like the Earl of Strafford, or were men of pleasure and vanity like the Duke of Buckingham.  Charles I. was detested by the Puritans even more than his father James.  They looked upon him as more than half a Papist, a despot, utterly insincere, indifferent to the welfare of the country, intent only on exalting himself and his throne at the expense of the interests of the people, whose aspirations he scorned and whose rights he trampled upon.  In his eyes they had no rights, only duties; and duties to him as an anointed sovereign, to rule as he liked, with parliaments or without parliaments; yea, to impose taxes arbitrarily, and grant odious monopolies:  for the State was his, to be managed as a man would manage a farm; and those who resisted this encroachment on the liberties of the nation were to be fined, imprisoned, executed, as pestilent disturbers of the public peace.  He would form dangerous alliances with Catholic powers, marry his children to Catholic princes, appoint Catholics to high office, and compromise the dignity of the nation as a Protestant State.  His ministers, his judges, his high officials were simply his tools, and perpetually insulted the nation by their arrogance, their venality, and their shameful disregard of the Constitution.  In short, he seemed bent on imposing a tyrannical yoke, hard to be endured, and to punish unlawfully those who resisted it, or even murmured against it.  He would shackle the press, and muzzle the members of parliament.