there was a buoyant note in English thought in regard to
everything upon the Continent. The defeat of the Spanish
Armada had marked the national outlook with a permanent
self-confidence. The Anglican tradition was profoundly insular,
and this insularity is linked with that especial freshness which
marks the early Caroline divines. This latter quality is seen
in its different forms in those who belonged to that generation
which began with George Herbert and ended with Jeremy
Taylor; it was a freshness which the Restoration churchmen
did not recover. Chillingworth's ideas also belong essentially
to this period, in which an atmosphere of relative tolerance
made it possible to adumbrate those Latitudinarian concep-
tions which are, in an especial sense, a heritage of one wing of
the Church of England.

On the other hand, these years revealed the sharpest antag-
onism to which the Anglican episcopate would be subjected.
It was, perhaps, Laud's doctrine of the independence of the
episcopate which aroused those laymen who remembered with
contentment the Erastian bench of the old Queen's time,
when a prelate of talent had been proud to regard himself as
the Queen's servant. The fact that Bishop Williams of Lincoln
never awakened this acute hostility is partly due to the fact that,
belonging in spirit to an earlier generation, he perpetuated the
idea of service. Laud's downfall was linked with his belief in
a self-subsistent ecclesiasticism.

The view of the Continent, taken in England, enters largely
into this study. It is worth setting down the reasons which had
led to increased contact with the neighbouring European
states during these years. The development of normal relations
depended upon a period of internal and external peace. The
real barrier to travel in the Iberian Peninsula or in Italy was
war with Spain, and travel in general was hampered whenever
England was at war with France. The reciprocal influence
between England and the Continent was therefore naturally
greatest during a period of peace with both these nations. In
the seventeenth century the growth of this influence was most
marked during two periods--the years following the Treaty of
Susa, in 1629, and those following the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle,
in 1668. In Elizabethan times, and even to some extent under
James I, visits to the Continent were regarded with a suspicion
which was now allayed. The idea of the Grand Tour was

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