Puritanism steadily mellowed under many influences.
Oliver was born on the 25th of April 1599, was educated under Dr Thomas Beard, a fervent puritan, at the free school at Huntingdon, and on the 23rd of April 1616 matriculated as a fellow-commoner at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, then a hotbed of puritanism, subsequently studying law in London.
Richard Hooker, again with traces of Aquinas, uses the conception as a weapon against Puritanism, with its aggressive positivism of scriptural precept.
At the time of the Commonwealth Acton was a centre of Puritanism.
Most remarkable of all, the Roman Catholic churches, in this strong, hold of exiled Puritanism where Catholics were so long under the heavy ban of law, outnumber those of any single Protestant denomination; Irish Catholics dominate the politics of the city, and Protestants and Catholics have been aligned against each other on the question of the control of the public schools.