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Religions are founded on antipathies.

Patriotism, which Doctor Johnson, beefeater-in-ordinary, said is the last refuge of a rogue, is usually nothing but hatred of other countries, very much as we are told that the shibboleth of Harvard is, “To hell with Yale.”

Puritanism is a reactionary move, a swinging out of the pendulum away from idleness, gluttony, sham, pretense and hypocrisy.

Charles the First was king. He was a year younger than Oliver, but as Fate would have it, he was to die first. So sat Oliver Cromwell, grim, silent–thinking. And then back he lumbered by the stagecoach to his country house.

His finances not prospering, he had moved to the little village of Saint Ives, famous because of the fact that there was born the only lawyer ever elected to a saintship. Once a year there is a village festival at Saint Ives in honor of the attorney, when all the children sing, “Advocatus et non latro, res miranda populo.”

The land owned by Cromwell was boggy, willow-grown, marshy, fit only for grazing. Oliver was a justice of the peace, now devoting his days to improving his herds, draining the marsh-lands, praying, occasionally fasting, exhorting at the village crossroads, and once collaring the loafers at a country tavern and making them join in a hymn. This exploit, together with that of quelling a small disturbance among some student factions at the neighboring town of Cambridge, had attracted a little attention to him, and Cambridge Puritans, not knowing whom else to send to Parliament, chose Cromwell, the dark horse.

With his big family he was very gentle, yet obedience was demanded, and given, without question or dispute, and a glance at the portrait of the man makes the matter plain. It was easier to agree with him than successfully to oppose him.

So slipped the years away, broken only by an echo from cousin John Hampden, who refused to pay “ship-money.” This ship-money meant that if you didn’t pay so much–twenty shillings or ten pounds, according to the needs of the exchequer–you could be drafted into His Majesty’s service and sent to sea. The money you paid was nominally to hire a substitute, but no one but King Charles and Attorney-General Noy, who fished out the precious precedent from the rag-bag of the past, knew what became of the money.

Noy was a close-running mate of Archbishop Laud, who hunted heretics and cropped the ears of a thousand Puritans. Noy is described for us as a law-pedant, finding legal precedent for anything that royalty wished to do. Noy devised the ship-money scheme, and then died before his law went into effect: killed by the hand of Providence, the Puritans said, who uttered prayers of thankfulness for his taking off, all of which was quite absurd, since the law lives, no matter who devised it. Rulers who wish to tax their subjects heavily should do it by indirection–say by means of the tariff.

The affection in which Noy was held is shown in that he was known as Monster to the King, the domdaniel of attorneys. When he died the result of the autopsy was that “his brains were found to be two handfuls of dry dust, his heart a bundle of sheepskin writs, and his belly a barrel of soft soap.” He wasn’t a man at all.

John Hampden was tried for refusal to pay ship-money. The trial lasted three weeks and three days.

The best legal talent in England had a hand in it, and one man made a speech eleven hours long, without sipping water. The verdict went against Hampden–he must pay the twenty shillings. I believe, however, he did not; neither did John Milton, who wrote a pamphlet on the subject; neither did Oliver Cromwell.

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There is a tale in that good old classic, McGuffy’s Third Reader, to the effect that a man once punished one of his children, and a minute after had his own ears violently boxed by his mother, with the admonition, “You box the ears of your child, and I’ll box the ears of mine!” This story, which once much delighted the rosy children of honest farmers, was told by Charles Dickens, with Oliver Cromwell in the title role.