Excerpt from The Chief Actors in the Puritan Revolution I have made it my rule to go as much as possible to the men or women themselves about whom I was forming an opinion, - their written words, their recorded conversations. My original researches have been confined to the pamphlet ary catacombs of the British Museum. Often, by means of a few dingy pages, unread for centuries, I have found myself face to face with the people of the seventeenth century. Having - unfortunately, perhaps - neglected at the outset to retain references to the writings alluded to, and possessing neither time nor patience adequate to their recovery, I determined to sweep my pages clear of all references whatever to original documents. This is the less to be regretted for two reasons; first, be cause, when I depend much upon a forgotten pamphlet, as on Vane's Letter on the State of Affairs in 1656, or the con temporaneous narrative of the coronation of Charles II. By the Covenanters, I quote verbatim what is essential to my purpose; and, secondly, because the Puritan Revolution was not a thing done in a corner, and a just apprehension of its moving forces and cardinal incidents is, after all, to be attained rather by honest and intelligent study of docu ments, like the Great Remonstrance of 1641, embodying the views of parties, and of books, like those of Clarendon, Whitelocke, and May, and of letters and speeches, like those of Baillie and Cromwell, which are accessible to all the world, than by antiquarian research. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.