Originally published in 1988

and the companion book to The Puritan Gentry, covering the period of the Civil War, the English republic and the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, this book gives an account of how the godly interest of the Puritans dissolved into faction and impotence. The fissures among the Puritan gentry stemmed, as the book shows, from a conflict between their zeal in religion and the conservative instincts which owed much to their wealth and status.