HISTORY OF ENGLAND,

■ pale of Christian charity. But the clergy of the fallen AnglicanChurch were suffered to celebrate their worship on conditionthat they would abstain from preaching about politics. Eventhe Jews, whose public worship had, ever since the thirteenthcentury, been interdicted, were, in spite of the strong op-position of jealous traders and fanatical theologians, per-mitted to build a synagogue in London.

The Protector’s foreign policy at the same time extortedthe ungracious approbation of those who most detested him.The Cavaliers could scarcely refrain from wishing that onewho had done so much to raise the fame of the nation had beena legitimate King; and the Republicans were forced to ownthat the tyrant suffered none but himself to wrong his country,and that, if he had robbed her of liberty, he had at least givenher glory in exchange. After half a century during whichEngland had been of scarcely more weight in European poli-tics than Venice or Saxony, she at once became the mostformidable power in the world, dictated terms of peace to theUnited Provinces, avenged the common injuries of Christen-dom on the pirates of Barbary, vanquished the Spaniards byland and sea, seized one of the finest West Indian islands,and acquired on the Flemish coast a fortress which consoledthe national pride for the loss of Calais. She was supreme onthe ocean. She was the head of the Protestant interest. Allthe reformed Churches scattered over Roman Catholic king-doms acknowledged Cromwell as their guardian. The Hu-guenots of Languedoc, the shepherds who, in the hamlets ofthe Alps, professed a Protestantism older than that of Augs-burg, were secured from oppression by the mere terror of hisgreat name. The Pope himself was forced to preach humanityand moderation to Popish princes. For a voice which seldomthreatened in vain had declared that, unless favour wereshown to the people of God, the English guns should be heardin the Castle of Saint Angelo. In truth, there was nothing