and permanent understanding on all those claims which had been hitherto subjects of controversy between the two houses and the crown.  But Monk rose, and strongly objected to an inquiry which might revive the fears and jealousies, the animosities and bloodshed, of the years that were past.  Let the king return while all was peace and harmony.  He would come alone; he could bring no army with him; he would be as much at their mercy in Westminster as in Breda.  Limitations, if limitations were necessary, might be prepared in the interval, and offered to him after his arrival.  At the conclusion of this speech, the house resounded with the acclamations of the Cavaliers; and the advocates of the inquiry, awed by the authority of the general and the clamour of their opponents, deemed it prudent to desist.[2]

Charles was as eager to accept, as the houses had been to vote, the address of invitation.  From Breda he had gone to the Hague, where the States, anxious to atone for their former neglect, entertained him with

[Footnote 1:  Journals of both houses.]

[Footnote 2:  Burnet, i. 88.  Ludlow, iii. 8, 9.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1660.  May 7.]

unusual magnificence.  The fleet, under Montague,[1] had anchored in the Bay of Scheveling; and Charles, as soon as the weather permitted, set sail[a] for Dover, where Monk, at the head of the nobility and gentry from the neighbouring counties, waited to receive the new sovereign.  Every eye was fixed on their meeting;[b] and the cheerful, though dignified, condescension of the king, and the dutiful, respectful homage of the general, provoked the applause of the spectators.  Charles embraced him as his benefactor, bade him walk by his side, and took him into the royal carriage.  From Dover to the capital the king’s progress bore the appearance of a triumphal procession.  The roads were covered with crowds of people anxious to testify their loyalty, while they gratified their curiosity.  On Blackheath he was received[c] by the army in battle array, and greeted with acclamations as he passed through the ranks; in St. George’s Fields the lord mayor and aldermen invited him to partake of a splendid collation in a tent prepared for the purpose; from London Bridge to Whitehall the houses were hung with tapestry, and the streets lined by the trained bands, the regulars, and the officers who had served under Charles I. The king was preceded by troops of horsemen, to the amount of three thousand persons, in splendid dresses, attended by trumpeters and footmen; then came the lord mayor, carrying the naked sword, after him the lord-general and the duke of Buckingham, and lastly the king himself, riding between his two brothers.  The cavalcade was closed by the general’s life-guard, five regiments

[Footnote 1:  Montague had long been in correspondence with the king, and disapproved of the dissimulation of Monk, so far as to call him in private a “thick-sculled fool;” but thought it necessary to flatter him, as he could hinder the business.—­Pepys, i. 69.]