Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1875-04-22
A Reign of Terror.

give the Puritans for their intolerance
ann narrOwpess, it must lie they who
donot know the agony of apprehen-
siqp in which they passed their lives.
It's the Puritan age that could be prop
erly called the reign OF terror. 1t last
ed more than a century instead of a
few months, and it vas during that
long period of dread and tribulation
that trey acquired the passionate ab-
horrence of the papal system which is
betrayed in the pictures and writings
of the time. There was a fund of terror
in their own belief, in that awful Doubt
whic hung over every soul, whether it
was or was not one of the Elect, and, in
addition to that, it seemed to them
that the chief powers of earth, and all
the powers of hell, were united to crush
the true believers.
Examine the two large caricatures,
"Rome's Monster" and "Spayne and
Rome Defeated" in the light ofa mere
catalogue Of dates. The Field of the
Cloth of Gold, which we may regard as
the splendid close of the old state of
things, occurred in 1920, thrte years af.
ter Luther nailed up his theses.
Henry VIII. defied the Pope i'm 1888;
and twenty years after, Bloody Mary,
married to Philip of Spain, was burn
ing bishops at Smithfield. Elizabeth $
reign began in 1868, which change d,
not ende.l, the religious strife i'm Eng
land. The massacre of st Bartholomew
occurred in 1872, on that 2ith Of August
which, as VOltaire used to say, all the
humane and the tolerant of our race
should observe as Il day of humilia-
tion and sorrow for evermOre. In 1879
began the long struggle between the
New and the Old, which is called the
Thirty Years War. The Prince of
Orange Vas assassina,ed in 1884, in the
midst of those great events which Mr..
Motley has male familiar to the read
ing people OF both continents. Every
intelligent Protestant in Europe felt
that the weapon which slew the Prince
WAS aimed at his own heart. The long
dread of the Queen of ScUts' machina-
tions ended only with her death i'm 1857.
Soon after, the shadow of the coming
Spanish Armada crept over Great Brit
ain, which was not dispelled till the
men of England defeated and scattered
it i'm 1888. In 1905 Guy Fawkes and
the Gunpowder Plot struck such terror
to the Protestant mind that it has not,
in this year, 1875, wholly recovered'
from it, as all may now who will con-
verse with uninstructed people i'm the
remOter counties of Great Britain. Ra-
leigh WAS beheaded in 1918. The civil
war began in 1912. In 1865 the plague
desOlated England, and the next year
occurred the great fire of London, good
Protestants not doubling that both
events were traceable 10 the fell infiu-
ence of the Beast. The accession of
James H., Roman Catholic, filled the
Puritans with new alarm in 1855, and
during the three anxious years of his
reign their brethren, the Huguenets,
were fleeing into all the Protestant
lands from the hellish persecution of
the priests who governed Louis XIV.
Upon looking back at this period of
agitation and alarm, it startles the
mind to observe it in the catalogue of
dates this one: Shakespeare died, 1916
1t shows US, what the ordinary records
do not show, that there are people who
retain their sanity and serenity in the
maddest times. The rapid succession
of the plays-an average Of nearly two
per annum-proves that there was
public for Shakespeare when all the
world seemed absorbed in subjects less
tie trace we find of all those thrilling
events in the plays! He was Il London
actor when the Armada came; and dur
ing the year ofthe Gunpowder Plot he
was probably meditsting the grandest
of all his themes, King LeU!-[ James
Parton, 10 Harper's Magazine for May.