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proper stipend for the support of the fleet and army; and having passed these votes for the composure of the kingdom, they dissolved themselves, and gave orders for the immediate assembling a new parliament. Meanwhile Monk new-modelled his army to the purposes he had in view. Some officers, by his direction, presented him with an address, in which they promised to obey implicitly the orders of the ensuing parliament. He approved of this engagement, which he ordered to be signed by all the regiments; and this furnished him with a pretence for dismissing all the officers by whom it was rejected.

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In the midst of these transactions, his endeavours were very near being defeated by an accident as dangerous as unexpected. Lambert had escaped from the Tower, and began to assemble forces; and, as his activity and principles were sufficiently known, Monk took the earliest precautions to oppose his measures. dispatched colonel Ingoldsby with his own regiment against Lambert, before he should have time to assemble his dependents. That officer had taken possession of Daventry, with four troops of horse; but the greater part of them joined Ingoldsby, to whom he himself surrendered, not without exhibiting marks of pusillanimity that ill agreed with his former reputation.

The new parliament was not yet assembled, and no person had hitherto dived into the designs of the general. He still persevered in his reserve; and, although the calling a new parliament was but, in other words, to restore the king, yet his expressions never once betrayed the secret of his bosom. Nothing but a security of confidence at last extorted the confession from him. He had been intimate with one Morrice, a gentleman of Devonshire, of a sedentary, studious disposition, and with him alone did he deliberate upon the great and

-dangerous enterprise of the restoration. Sir John Granville, who had a commission from the king, applied for access to the general; but he was desired to communicate his business to Morrice. Granville refused, though twice urged, to deliver his message to any but the general himself; so that Monk, now finding he could depend upon this minister's secrecy, freely opened to him his whole intentions; but, with his usual caution, still scrupled to commit any thing to paper. In consequence of this communication, the king left the Spanish territories, where he very narrowly escaped being detained at Breda by the governor, under pretence of treating him with proper respect and formality. Thence he retired into Holland, where he resolved to wait for farther advice.

In the mean time the elections in parliament went every where in favour of the king's party. The presbyterians had long been so harassed by the falsehood, the folly, and the tyranny of their independent coadjutors, that they longed for nothing so ardently as the king's restoration. These, therefore, joined to the royalists, formed a decisive majority on every contest; and, without noise, but with steady resolution, determined to call back the king. Though the former parliament had voted that no one should be elected, who had himself or whose father had borne arms for the late king, yet very little regard was any where paid to this ordinance; and in many places the former sufferings of the candidate were his best recommendation.

At length the long expected day for the sitting of a free parliament arrived, and they chose sir Harbottle Grimstone for their speaker; a man who, though at first attached to the opposite party, was yet a royalist in his heart. The affections of all were turned towards the king; yet such were their fears, and such dangers at

tended a freedom of speech, that no one dared for some days to make any mention of his name. They were terrified with former examples of cruelty; and they only showed their loyalty in their bitter invectives against the late usurper, and in execrations against the murderers of their king. All this time, Monk, with his usual reserve, tried their tempers, and examined the ardour of their wishes; at length he gave directions to Annesley, president of the council, to inform them that one sir John Granville, a servant of the king, had been sent over by his majesty, and was now at the door with a letter to the commons.

Nothing could exceed the joy and transport with which this message was received. The members for a moment forgot the dignity of their situations, and indulged in a loud exclamation of applause. Granville was called in, and the letter eagerly read. A moment's pause was scarcely allowed: all at once the house burst out into an universal assent to the king's proposals; and, to diffuse the joy more widely, it was voted that the letter and declaration should immediately be published.

The king's declaration was highly relished by every order of the state. It offered a general amnesty to all persons whatsoever, without any exceptions but such as should be made by parliament. It promised to indulge scrupulous consciences with liberty in matters of religion; to leave to the examination of parliament the claims of all such as possessed lands with contested titles; to confirm all these concessions by act of parliament; to satisfy the army under general Monk with respect to their arrears, and to give the same rank to his officers, when they should be received into the king's service.

This declaration was not less pleasing to the lords

than to the people. After voting the restitution of the ancient form of government, it was resolved to send the king fifty thousand pounds, the duke of York his brother ten thousand, and the duke of Gloucester half that sum. Then both houses erased from their records all acts that had passed to the prejudice of royalty. The army, the navy, the city of London, were eager in preparing their addresses to be presented to his majesty ; and he was soon after proclaimed with great solemnity at Whitehall, and at Temple Bar. The people, now freed from all restraint, let loose their transports without bounds. Thousands were seen running about frantic with pleasure; and, as lord Clarendon says, such were the numbers of the loyalists that pressed forward on this occasion, that one could not but wonder where those people dwelt who had lately done so much mischief.

Charles took care to confirm the substance of his declarations to the English commissioners, who were dispatched to attend him into his native dominions. Montague, the English admiral, waited upon his majesty to inform him that the fleet expected his orders at Scheveling. The duke of York immediately went on board, and took the command as lord high-admiral. The king went on board, and, landing at Dover, was received by the general, whom he tenderly embraced. Very differ ent was his present triumphant return from the forlorn state in which he left the coast of Sussex. He now saw the same people, that had ardently sought his life, as warmly expressing their pleasure at his safety, and repentance for their past delusions. He entered London on the twenty-ninth of May, which was his birth-day. An innumerable concourse of people lined the way wherever he passed, and rent the air with their acclamations. They had been so long distracted by unrelent

ing factions, oppressed and alarmed by a succession of tyrannies, that they could no longer suppress these emotions of delight to behold their constitution restored, or rather, like a phoenix, appearing more beautiful and vigorous from the ruins of its former conflagration.

Fanaticism, with its long train of gloomy terrors, fled at the approach of freedom; the arts of society and peace began to return: and it had been happy for the people if the arts of luxury had not entered in their train.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHARLES II.

A. D. 1660-1677.

THIS is one of the most extraordinary epochas in English history, in which we see the people tossed into opposite factions, and, as the sea after a storm, still continuing those violent motions by which they were first impelled. We see them at one period of the following reign, with unbounded adulation, soliciting the shackles of arbitrary power; at another, with equal animosity, banishing all the emissaries of unbounded power from the throne; now courting the monarch, and then threatening those on whom he most depended. There seems a clue that can unravel all these inconsistencies. While the people thought the king a protestant, they were willing to intrust him with their lives and fortunes; but when they supposed that he was more inclined to popery, all their confidence vanished, and they were even willing to punish papists, as the most proper method of showing their resentment against himself.

When Charles came to the throne he was thirty years

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