In this essay on Puritanism , I have not attepted a consective history - -my object has been to show that during the Econd half of the sixteeth and the first half of the govern ment of Engand has always before it an ideal whit however badly it my nhavebeen fulfiled , was at least turer and nobler than that which superseded it with the adven of the middle classes as a result of the Civil war -pref