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November and December passed, and Christmas was at hand. There had been great preparation for it at Riverview, for we of Virginia loved the holiday the more because the Puritans detested it, and all the smaller gentry of the county was gathered at the house, where there were feasting and dancing and much merry-making.
Doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-browed Puritans would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for his sins, that, after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk of the family tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should have borne, as its topmost bough, an idler like myself.
Among the men who listened to that kind of teaching were Eliot, Hampden, Pym, all Puritans under the spell of the Bible. But the strife grew larger than a merely Puritan one. The people themselves were strongly feeling their rights.
Had they been treated wisely, had any respect been shown to their opinions and rights, for the right of worshipping God according to individual conscience is the central and basal pillar of Protestantism, had this undoubted right of private judgment, the great emancipating idea of that age, been respected, the Puritans would have sought relief in constitutional resistance, for they were conservative and loyal, as English people ever have been, even in Canada and Australia.
Then came an inspection of the ordnance, from cannons down to drakes, through a gradation of names as uncouth to our ears, and as unknown to the artillery descended from them, as many of the Christian names of the puritans are to their descendants of the present day.
It so happened that there were some English Puritans living at that moment in Leyden. They formed an independent society by themselves, which they called a Congregational Church, and in which were some three hundred communicants. The length of their residence there was almost exactly coeval with the Twelve Years' Truce.
For cursing, for lying, for slandering, for evil-speaking, for fraud, for deceit, for drunkenness, for sabbath breaking, for gambling or any other immorality for all these offences the member, if he persisted in his sin, was summarily expelled. In some of their ideals the Brethren were like the Puritans; in others like the Quakers.
And indeed, in spite of votes and in spite of expostulations, the female descendants of the Puritans, through constantly recurring waves of fashion, have ever since been indecently wearing great obscuring hats and bonnets in public assemblies, even up to the present day.
Before the American rebellion he was rector at Boston, and he had a curate who always preached against the Roman Catholics. It tickled the Puritans, but didn't injure the Papists, for there were none there at that time. For three successive Sundays he expounded the text, 'And Peter's wife's mother lay ill of a fever. "From which he inferred priests ought to marry.
All kinds of Puritans were there, and they attended Mr. Davitt's Congregational Church. And may it be added in justice to Mr. Hopper, that he became not the least devout of the boarders.
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