So many of the great nobles had been killed in the Wars of the Roses, that the barons had lost all that great strength and power they had gained when they made King John sign Magna Carta.  The kings got the power instead; and all through the reigns of the five Tudors, the sovereign had very little to hinder him from doing exactly as he pleased.  But, in the meantime, the country squires and the great merchants who sat in the House of Commons had been getting richer and stronger, and read and thought more.  As long as Queen Elizabeth lived they were contented, for they loved her and were proud of her, and she knew how to manage them.  She scolded them sometimes, but when she saw that she was really vexing them she always changed, and she had smiles and good words for them, so that she could really do what she pleased with them.

But James I. was a disagreeable man to have to do with; and, instead of trying to please them, he talked a great deal about his own power as king, and how they ought to obey him; so that they were angered, and began to read the laws, and wonder how much power properly belonged to him.  Now, when he died, his son Charles was a much pleasanter person; he was a gentleman in all his looks and ways, and had none of his father’s awkward, ungainly tricks and habits.  He was good and earnest, too, and there was nothing to take offence at in himself; so for some years all went on quietly, and there seemed to be a great improvement.  But several things were against him.  His friend, the Duke of Buckingham, was a proud, selfish man, who affronted almost everyone, and made a bad use of the king’s favor; and the people were also vexed that the king should marry a Roman Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria, who would not go to church with him, nor even let herself be crowned by an English archbishop.

You heard that, in Queen Elizabeth’s time, there were Puritans who would have liked to have the Prayer-book much more altered, and who fancied that every pious rule of old times must be wrong.  They did not like the cross in baptism, nor the ring in marriage; and they could not bear to see a clergyman in a surplice.  In many churches they took their own way, and did just as they pleased.  But under James and Charles matters changed.  Dr. Laud, whom Charles had made archbishop of Canterbury, had all the churches visited, and insisted on the parishioners setting them in order; and if a clergyman would not wear a surplice, not make a cross on the baptized child’s forehead, nor obey the other laws of the Prayer-book, he was punished.

The Puritans were greatly displeased.  They fancied the king and Dr. Laud wanted to make them all Roman Catholics again; and a great many so hated these Church rules, that they took ship and went off to North America to found a colony, where they might set up their own religion as they liked it.  Those who staid continued to murmur and struggle against Laud.