a vicious monarch at Dover.  The chief lesson of the Restoration was this,—­that it showed by awful contrast the necessity of truth and honesty, and of a strong government of free men, for which the Puritan had stood like a rock in every hour of his rugged history.  Through fever, England came slowly back to health; through gross corruption in society and in the state England learned that her people were at heart sober, sincere, religious folk, and that their character was naturally too strong to follow after pleasure and be satisfied.  So Puritanism suddenly gained all that it had struggled for, and gained it even in the hour when all seemed lost, when Milton in his sorrow unconsciously portrayed the government of Charles and his Cabal in that tremendous scene of the council of the infernal peers in Pandemonium, plotting the ruin of the world.

Of the king and his followers it is difficult to write temperately.  Most of the dramatic literature of the time is atrocious, and we can understand it only as we remember the character of the court and society for which it was written.  Unspeakably vile in his private life, the king had no redeeming patriotism, no sense of responsibility to his country for even his public acts.  He gave high offices to blackguards, stole from the exchequer like a common thief, played off Catholics and Protestants against each other, disregarding his pledges to both alike, broke his solemn treaty with the Dutch and with his own ministers, and betrayed his country for French money to spend on his own pleasures.  It is useless to paint the dishonor of a court which followed gayly after such a leader.  The first Parliament, while it contained some noble and patriotic members, was dominated by young men who remembered the excess of Puritan zeal, but forgot the despotism and injustice which had compelled Puritanism to stand up and assert the manhood of England.  These young politicians vied with the king in passing laws for the subjugation of Church and State, and in their thirst for revenge upon all who had been connected with Cromwell’s iron government.  Once more a wretched formalism—­that perpetual danger to the English Church—­came to the front and exercised authority over the free churches.  The House of Lords was largely increased by the creation of hereditary titles and estates for ignoble men and shameless women who had flattered the king’s vanity.  Even the Bench, that last strong refuge of English justice, was corrupted by the appointment of judges, like the brutal Jeffreys, whose aim, like that of their royal master, was to get money and to exercise power without personal responsibility.  Amid all this dishonor the foreign influence and authority of Cromwell’s strong government vanished like smoke.  The valiant little Dutch navy swept the English fleet from the sea, and only the thunder of Dutch guns in the Thames, under the very windows of London, awoke the nation to the realization of how low it had fallen.