And then again in Falkland's remarkably gracious response to a Catholic critic:

"I am also to thank you[...]for not mixing gall with your inke; since I have ever thought that there should bee as little bitterness in a treatise of controversie, as in a love-letter, and that the contrary way was void both of Christian charity, and humane wisedome, as serving onely...to fright away the game, and make their adversarie unwilling to take instruction from him, from whom they have received injuries, and making themselves unabler to discover the truth (which Saint Au[gu]stine sayes is hard for him to find who is calme, but impossible for him that is angry)."

The Great Tew Circle was not an ephemeral anomaly. Rather, it stood self-consciously in the tradition of Christian humanism, among whose patriarchs it counted Richard Hooker, who argued in his classic apology for the Elizabethan settlement that "we must acknowledge even heretics themselves to be, though a maimed part, yet a part of the visible Church." Yes, the Circle was scattered and, in part, consumed by the Civil War: Falkland himself was killed at the battle of Newbury and his more famous confrère, William Chillingworth, died as a prisoner-of-war. Nevertheless other members of the Circle survived, not least Gilbert Sheldon, who as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1663-77 helped to make the post-Restoration Anglican church "rational in method, ecumenical in its ultimate aims [...] conciliatory, not authoritarian." Moreover, Chillingworth's work, especially The Religion of the Protestants (1638), "saw a renaissance following the Restoration,[...]became dominant following the [Glorious] Revolution [...] and marked an epochal shift in English theology from dogmatic system to a greater emphasis on the role of reason." Over two hundred years after the Restoration one eminent (Scottish) churchman judged that, while Falkland's moderate party was apparently swallowed up by the Civil War:

"The principles with which it was identified, and the succession of illustrious men who belong to it, made a far more powerful impression on the national mind than has been commonly supposed. The clear evidence of this is the virtual triumph of these principles, rather than those of either of the extreme parties [Puritan and Laudian], at the Revolution of 1688 [...] The same principles, both in Church and State, have never since ceased to influence our national thought and life. Their development constitutes one of the strongest, and — as it appears to me — one of the soundest and best strands, in the great thread of our national history."