While Germany boasts her Reformation and France her Revolution, England can point to her dealings with the House of Stuart. Our Tudor Reformation, although it affected greater changes in the structure of English society and the evolution of English intellect, was but one part of a movement general throughout Europe. But the transference of sovereignty from Crown to Parliament was effected in direct antagonism to all continental tendencies. During the seventeenth century a despotic scheme of society and government was so firmly established in Europe, that but for the course of events in England it would have been the sole successor of the mediaeval system… But at this moment the English, unaware of their destiny and of their service, tenacious only of their rights, their religion, and their interests, evolved a system of government which differed as completely from the new continental model as it did from the chartered anarchy of the Middle Ages.