The struggle with the king and the efforts toward reorganization under Cromwell were to occupy it for another score of years, and then, by the time of the Restoration the youthful creative energy of Puritanism had spent itself.  The influence of this great movement was indeed destined to grow wider and deeper with the progress of civilization, but after 1660 its creative work began to run in new channels and assume different forms. [Sidenote:  End of the Puritan exodus]

It is curious to reflect what might have been the result, to America and to the world, had things in England gone differently between 1620 and 1660.  Had the policy of James and Charles been less formidable, the Puritan exodus might never have occurred, and the Virginian type of society, varied perhaps by a strong Dutch infusion, might have become supreme in America.  The western continent would have lost in richness and variety of life, and it is not likely that Europe would have made a corresponding gain, for the moral effect of the challenge, the struggle, and the overthrow of monarchy in England was a stimulus sorely needed by neighbouring peoples.  It is not always by avoiding the evil, it is rather by grappling with it and conquering it that character is strengthened and life enriched, and there is no better example of this than the history of England in the seventeenth century.

On the other hand, if the Stuart despotism had triumphed in England, the Puritan exodus would doubtless have been swelled to huge dimensions.  New England would have gained strength so quickly that much less irritation than she actually suffered between 1664 and 1689 would probably have goaded her into rebellion.  The war of independence might have been waged a century sooner than it was.  It is not easy to point to any especial advantage that could have come to America from this; one is rather inclined to think of the peculiarly valuable political training of the eighteenth century that would have been lost.  Such surmises are for the most part idle.  But as concerns Europe, it is plain to be seen, for reasons stated in my first chapter, that the decisive victory of Charles I. would have been a calamity of the first magnitude.  It would have been like the Greeks losing Marathon or the Saracens winning Tours, supposing the worst consequences ever imagined in those hypothetical cases to have been realized.  Or taking a more contracted view, we can see how England, robbed of her Puritan element, might still have waxed in strength, as France has done in spite of losing the Huguenots; but she could not have taken the proud position that she has come to occupy as mother of nations.  Her preeminence since Cromwell’s time has been chiefly due to her unrivalled power of planting self-supporting colonies, and that power has had its roots in English self-government.  It is the vitality of the English Idea that is making the language of Cromwell and Washington dominant in the world.