of the Council on the preceding Saturday.  The scene will be best imagined from the record in the Journals of the House:—­“Tuesday, May the 1st, 1660.  PRAYERS.  Mr. Annesley reports from the Council of State a Letter from the King, unopened, directed ’To our trusty and well-beloved General Monk, to be communicated to the President and Council of State, and to the Officers of the Armies under his command,’ being received from the hands of Sir John Greenville.  The House, being informed that Sir John Greenville, a messenger from the King, was at the door, Resolved, &c.  That Sir John Greenville, a messenger from the King, be called in.  He was called in accordingly, and, being at the bar, after obeisance made, said:  ’Mr. Speaker, I am commanded by the King, my master, to deliver this Letter to You, and he desires that You will communicate it to the House.’  The Letter was directed ’To Our trusty and well-beloved the Speaker of the House of Commons’; which, after the messenger was withdrawn, was read to the House by the Speaker.”  The bold Sir John had now got rid of three of his six documents.  Nay, he had got rid of four; for in each of the three there had been enclosed a copy of his Majesty’s general Declaration, or Letter to “all Our Loving Subjects of what degree or quality soever.”  It was for the Parliament to determine what should be done with this Declaration, as well as with the other two remaining Letters, one of them addressed to Generals Monk and Montague for communication to the Fleet, and the other to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of London.  The train had been sufficiently fired already by the delivery of four of the Breda documents.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Lords and Commons Journals of dates; Parl.  Hist.  IV. 10-25; Phillips (continuation of Baker), 701-705; Skinner’s Life of Monk, 297-302; Whitlocke, IV. 409-411.]

The explosion was over and the air cleared, and all pretence was at an end at last.  In the Commons, a few minutes after Sir John Greenville had left the House, it was “RESOLVED, nemine contradicente, That an answer be prepared to his Majesty’s Letter, expressing the great and joyful sense of this House of His gracious offers, and their humble and hearty thanks to his Majesty for the same, and with professions of their loyalty and duty to his Majesty.”  The Lords had already passed an equivalent resolution, and had recalled Sir John Greenville to receive their hearty thanks for his care in the discharge of his duty.  The rest of that day was spent in a conference between the two Houses, and in farther resolutions and arrangements in each, subsidiary to those two resolutions of the forenoon which had virtually decreed the Restoration.  Thus, in the Commons, still in the forenoon, “RESOLVED, nemine contradicente, that the sum of L50,000 be presented to the King’s Majesty from this House,” and “RESOLVED, nemine contradicente, that the Letters from His Majesty, both that to the