XPost: soc.history.war.misc, soc.culture.scottish, alt.religion.   
   hristian.presbyterian   
   XPost: alt.religion.christian.baptist   
   From: walker@btinternet.com   
      
   The English Puritans were Episcopalian. Puritan means one who wants to   
   purify. The Puritans wanted to purify the Church of England of its bishops,   
   which could only be done inside the C of E. The Congregationists and Baptist   
   definitely were NOT Puritans. Please learn you English Ecclesiastic history   
   before spouting nonesense.   
   "Raktizer Omheit"  wrote in message   
   news:454ec049_1@news.iprimus.com.au...   
   > The Scottish aristocracy was so arrogant and snobbish that they refused to   
   > grant to their middling class or middle class peasantry the right to use   
   > longbows on a large scale when fighting in major battles against English   
   > longbow archers. This led to disastrous and humiliating defeats for the   
   > Scottish armies against English armies at the Battles of Dupplin Moor in   
   > 1332, Halidon Hill in 1333, St. Neville's Cross in 1346, Flodden Field in   
   > 1513, Solway Moss in 1542, and Pinkie Cleugh in 1547. The longbow had a   
   > much better rate of fire, range, accuracy, and penetrating power than the   
   > crossbow. Although the Welsh also used the longbow extensively, the   
   > Anglo-Norman Welsh Marcher or frontier counts and barons learned from the   
   > Welsh, employing Welsh mercenaries and English yeoman footsoldiers and   
   > light horsemen trained in the use of the longbow, as well as in the use of   
   > the pike, billhook, halberd, hatchet, and sword. The French aristocrats,   
   > like their Scottish counterparts, also refused to arm their peasantry with   
   > the longbow, fearing that they could turn this powerful weapon against   
   > them, as the English yeoman archers were to do on two occasions against   
   > their land lords, during the Wat Tyler Revolt of 1381, and in Jack Cade's   
   > rebellion of 1450, although both revolts were crushed by the English   
   > knights with the help of loyal yeomen archers. On their own, and without   
   > the support of knights and pikemen as a covering and counterattacking   
   > force, English yeomen archers could not win battles, even if they could   
   > exact a heavy toll on a frontal attacking cavalry, and on a frontal   
   > infantry assault.   
   >   
   > The Scottish were again defeated heavily on four occasions during the   
   > English Civil Wars of the 1640's and 1650's, that is, at the Battles of   
   > Preston in 1648, Dunbar in 1650, Inverkeithing in 1651, and Worcester in   
   > 1651. Oliver Cromwell's disciplined, well trained, well armed, well paid,   
   > and highly motivated Puritan Army known as the Roundheads and the   
   > Ironsides were more than a match for the English Anglican Royalists and   
   > their Scottish Presbyterian allies. The English Puritans were mostly   
   > Congregationalists and Baptists. The Scottish Presbyterians had originally   
   > been allied with the English Puritans when the English Civil War began in   
   > 1641, but by 1648 they turned traitor and allied with the English   
   > Royalists or Cavaliers when the Puritans refused to impose Presbyterianism   
   > on England as the official state religion, as it was in Scotland, and by   
   > Cromwell's desire to grant religious toleration for the Scottish   
   > Congregationalists and Baptists. Cromwell himself, despite his religious   
   > radicalism, was in many ways conservative and realistic in socio-economic   
   > policies, as witnessed by his refusal to give in to the Communist demands   
   > of Gerard Winstanley's "Diggers" or "True Levellers," and also by his   
   > refusal to allow the "Social Democratic" platform of John Lilburne's   
   > "Levellers" to succeed. With the dismal economic record of the late Soviet   
   > Union and Warsaw Pact as an example, Cromwell did England a favour by   
   > refusing to allow Winstanley and Lilburne to succeed, much as Napoleon   
   > Bonaparte was to later do with the French Enrages led by Nicholas   
   > Noel-Gracchus Babeuf, although Martin Luther was rather excessive and   
   > cruel in his urging the German knightly landlords in crushing the German   
   > Peasant Revolt of 1525. Cromwell did not support the dissolution of the   
   > English House of Lords, and he also maintained a high property   
   > qualification for the eligibility to vote in House of Commons elections,   
   > some 200 pounds per annum worth of property to be owned by an adult male,   
   > a high sum of money for the 1650's. Not until 1911 were the English House   
   > of Commons members paid by tax-payer funded salaries, meaning that most of   
   > its members until then were obliged to be men of wealthy status in order   
   > to sit as unpaid legislators. Cromwell was probably in the main sincere   
   > when he said that the reason why he wished to allow the Jews to legally   
   > settle in England was in order to encourage their conversion to   
   > Christianity, and he quoted St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans 10 : 14 - 15   
   > in support of this. The English Presbyterian William Prynne was opposed to   
   > this Jewish immigration policy, and Martin Luther himself had violently   
   > denounced the Jews in his 1543 published pamphlet called "On the Jews and   
   > Their Lies," after his hopes for the large-scale, voluntary conversion of   
   > the Jews to Lutheran Christianity did not happen. The Dutch Reformed   
   > Calvinist or Presbyterian theologian Franciscus Gomarus also was strongly   
   > opposed to those Jews who refused to convert to Calvinist Christianity   
   > voluntarily, although his proposals against them were somewhat less harsh   
   > than those of Martin Luther's.   
   >   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)