Excerpt from The History of English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century The Essay out of which the present work has grown obtained the Thirlwall Prize in 1897. My thanks are due to the Adjudicators for permission to recast and to expand it. The design of the following Essay is to serve both as an illustration of English History in the seventeenth century and as a contribution to the history of political ideas. English political thinking from the Reformation to the opening of the eighteenth century can be divided broadly into what may be called the Monarchical and the Democratic; for even among the more oligarchic systems of thought there is a democratic element. The former has been already adequately portrayed. An attempt is now for the first time made to relate the story of the latter. 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.