it best be maintained on the other? There can be little doubt that the mass of the people were satisfied with the Prayer-book. But there was a minority who favoured a more radical change. This minority was at first not so much strong in numbers as in resoluteness. It did not represent popular feeling, but consisted of earnest men, many of whom had been in exile, men who took orders in the Church, and claimed to work for the public good according to their own convictions. This body found a home in the desolate universities, where they influenced the minds of the young and built up adherents. To them the Prayer-book was merely a temporary makeshift—a half-way house between the Romanism which they detested and the Calvinism which they soon hoped to establish.
For an understanding of the course of events it is necessary to remember two things which are generally overlooked or misrepresented. First of all, the Puritan party were not struggling for toleration, but for mastery. They did not ask for wider option within the system of the Church, but they wished to substitute another system for it. Every point of concession gained was but a step towards a new demand. Objections were made first to the use of the surplice, then to the Liturgy, then to episcopacy. The aim of the objectors was gradually to introduce the presbyterian system. The minister was to be approved by the classis; ceremonies were to be gradually dropped; churchwardens and overseers were to be turned into elders; the Church was to be administered by classical, provincial, and general
