ITbc Stuart lEra. 



CHAPTER XXVIL 



FKOM EESTORATIOX TO REVOLUTION. 



The time liad arrived when the men of Merrie England had 

 received a surfeit of Puritan customs. The sad-coloured dress, 

 the sour look, the straight hair and the nasal whine were 

 beginning to pall upon all classes of society. The villager 

 yearned for his wrestling matches and maypoles, the dilet- 

 tante longed for the forbidden fine arts, and the churchman felt 

 the want of his prohibited Book of Common Praj^er. The 

 national playgrounds had been long enough deserted, and the 

 national pastimes of bear-baiting, horse-racing, cock-fighting, 

 rope-dancing and bowling were beginning to be considered as 

 discarded, for insufficient reasons of morality. Ruined actors 

 were calling out for the re-opening of their playhouses, and 

 the poor were clamouring for a renewal of the old Christmas- 

 tide hospitalities.^ The great Protector was dead, his successor 

 a nonentity, and all eyes were turned with dread on such 

 rulers as Lambert, Desborough and Harrison. Part of the 

 soldiers were quarrelling among themselves at Blackheath, and 

 the rest composed the army of Scotland. It was to their leader 

 that the people now turned as a possible deliverer from the iron 

 stratocracy which was cramping their freedom. Meanwhile 

 Monk was sitting upon the fence, still uncertain as to the side 

 on which he should alight. "When at length he marched 

 south at the head of 7,U00 warriors, every one was on the 

 tiptoe of expectation, and the country gentry turned out on all 

 sides to meet him and implore his interference. The darkest 



* Macaulay, History of England, ch. ii. 



34» 



