From Restoration to Revolution. 349 



hour is the precursor of dawn, and when Lambert had escaped, 

 sounded the call to arms, and failed in his attempt to embroil 

 England once more in civil war, the crisis had passed and 

 matters began to right themselves. A new parliament was 

 convoked, and the national electorate proved what the country 

 wanted, by returning, in lieu of the Rump, an assembly packed 

 with the adherents of royalty. Nothing more was needed but 

 to ring the bells, broach casks of ale, wave flags, play music 

 and shout a hearty welcome to the returning representative of 

 royalty. The time had arrived when the king should have 

 his own again ; yet not all that he had before, for military 

 tenure and the feudal incidents of warfare were never restored 

 to him, so that the landed gentry had now no barrier of 

 grievance to stand between them and their natural instincts 

 of loyalty. The disbanded soldiers, sullen and dispirited but 

 honest and industrious, returned to the plough and wagon, and 

 the employers of agricultural labour flocked to court and 

 rallied round Charles as if he had been the best king that ever 

 sat on an English throne. Henceforth, though foreign guns 

 might be heard in the Thames, though the court had become 

 the most profligate in Europe, though rents were falling five 

 shillings in the pound, though pestilence might rage and half 

 London be burnt to the ground, though the English sovereign 

 had stooped to a position little short of vassalage to Louis of 

 France, the owners of landed property continued to form an 

 impenetrable rampart around the throne. Men who remem- 

 bered the glories of Cromwell's foreign policy, exhibited no 

 overt disgust for a king who had disgraced the name of Eng- 

 land abroad. The sectaries, who had refused to countenance 

 the High Church tendencies of the first Charles, now stomached 

 the Romish leanings of his son ; and the tax payers, who 

 had cheerfully supplied the Protector with funds for foreign 

 expeditions which always ended gloriously, ungrudgingly 

 paid their aids to warfare which now invariably ended in 

 disaster. 



The Roundhead element having been eliminated from the 

 land's possession, and estates having reverted once more to the 

 Cavaliers, their original owners, there was no indecision amidst 



