Bill of Rights, Protestant succession was assured, and liberal
toleration was extended to the various dissenting sects.

Society had passed through quite as great variations as had politics
during this half-century. The roistering Cavalier of the first Charles,
with his flowing locks and plumed hat, with his maypoles and morrice
dances, with his stage plays and bear-baitings, with his carousals and
gallantries, had given way to the Puritan Roundhead. It was a serious,
sober-minded England in which the youth Dryden found himself. If the
Puritan differed from the Cavalier in political principles, they were
even more diametrically opposed in mode of life. An Act of Parliament
closed the theaters in 1642. Amusements of all kinds were frowned upon
as frivolous, and many were suppressed by law. The old English feasts at
Michaelmas, Christmas, Twelfth Night, and Candlemas were regarded as
relics of popery and were condemned. The Puritan took his religion
seriously, so seriously that it overpowered him. The energy and fervor
of his religious life were illustrated in the work performed by
Cromwell's chaplain, John Howe, on any one of the countless fast days.
"He began with his flock at nine in the morning, prayed during a quarter
of an hour for blessing upon the day's work, then read and explained a
chapter for three-quarters of an hour, then prayed for an hour, preached
for an hour, and prayed again for a half an hour, then retired for a
quarter of an hour's refreshment--the people singing all the while--
returned to his pulpit, prayed for another hour, preached for another
hour, and finished at four P.M."

At the Restoration the pendulum swung back again. From the strained
morality of the Puritans there was a sudden leap to the most extravagant
license and the grossest immorality, with the king and the court in the
van. The theaters were thrown wide open, women for the first time went