We are now, it is to be seen, in the mid-stream of those final forty days which intervened between the self-dissolution of the last fag-end of the Long Parliament and the meeting of the Full and Free Parliament called for the conclusive settlement (March 16, 1659-60-April 25, 1660).  Monk was Dictator; the Council of State, with Annesley for President, was the body in charge, along with Monk, keeping the peace; but all eyes were directed towards the coming Parliament, the elections for which were going on.  It was precisely in the beginning of April that the popular current towards a restoration of Charles Stuart and nothing else had acquired full force and become a roaring and foaming torrent.  They were shouting for him, singing for him, treating his restoration as already certain, though the precise manner and date of it must be left to the Parliament.  Only the chiefs, Monk, Annesley, Montague, and the other Councillors, kept up an appearance as if the issue must not be anticipated till the Parliament should have actually met.  With letters to and from Charles in their pockets, and each knowing or guessing that the others had such letters, they were trying to look as unpledged and as merely cogitative as they could.  It was for the multitude to roar and shout for Charles, and they had now full permission.  It was for the chiefs to be silent themselves, only managing and manipulating, and watchful especially against any outbreak of Republican fanaticism even yet that might interfere with the plain course of things and baulk or delay the popular expectation.  Wherever they could perceive a likelihood of disturbance, by act or by speech, there they were bound to curb or suppress.

At least in one instance they found it necessary to curb a too hasty and impetuous Royalist.  This was Dr. Matthew Griffith, a clergyman over sixty years of age, once a protege of the poet Donne.  Sequestered in the early days of the Long Parliament from his rectory of St. Mary Magdalen, London, he had taken refuge with the King through the civil wars, and had been made D.D. at Oxford, and one of the King’s chaplains.  Afterwards, returning to London, he had lived there through the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, one of those that continued the use of the liturgy and other Anglican church-forms by stealth to small gatherings of cavaliers, and that found themselves often in trouble on that account.  He had suffered, it is said, four imprisonments.  The near prospect of the return of Charles II. at last had naturally excited the old gentleman; and, chancing to preach in the Mercers’ Chapel on Sunday the 25th of March, 1660, he had chosen for his text Prov. XXIV. 21, which he translated thus:  “My son, fear God and the King, and meddle not with them that be seditious or desirous of change.”  On this text he had preached a very Royalist sermon.  There would have been nothing peculiar in that, as many clergymen were doing the like.  But, not content