de Coverley’s favourite Sunday reading), whilst that old-fashioned remnant, who still love to read history for fun, may not object to be told that they will find printed in the Report of the Leyborne-Popham Papers (Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1899, p. 204) a Narrative of the Restoration, by Mr. John Collins, the Chief Butler of the Inner Temple, proving in great and highly diverting detail how this remarkable event was really the work not so much of Monk as of the Chief Butler.

Richard Cromwell having slipped the collar, the officers assumed command, as they were only too ready to do, and recalled the old, dishonoured, but pertinacious Rump Parliament, which, though mustering at first but forty-two members, at once began to talk and keep journals as if nothing had happened since the day ten years before, when it was sent about its business.  Old Speaker Lenthall was routed out of obscurity, and much against his will, and despite his protests, clapped once more into the chair.  Dr. John Owen, an old parliamentary preaching hand, was once again requisitioned to preach before the House, which he did at enormous length one fine Sunday in May.

The Rump did not prove a popular favourite.  It was worse than Old Noll himself, who could at least thrash both Dutchman and Spaniard, and be even more feared abroad than he was hated at home.  The City of London, then almost an Estate of the Realm, declared for a Free Parliament, and it soon became apparent to every one that the whole country was eager to return as soon as possible to the old mould.  Nothing now stood between Charles and his own but half a dozen fierce old soldiers and their dubious, discontented, unpaid men.

It was once commonly supposed (it is so no longer), that the Restoration party was exclusively composed of dispossessed Cavaliers, bishops in hiding, ejected parsons, high-flying jure divino Episcopalians, talkative toss-pots, and the great pleasure-loving crowd, cruelly repressed under the rule of the saints.  Had it been left to these ragged regiments, the issue would have been doubtful, and the result very different.  The Presbyterian ministers who occupied the rectories and vicarages of the Church of England and their well-to-do flocks in both town and country were, with but few exceptions, all for King Charles and a restored monarchy.  In this the ministers may have shown a sound political instinct, for none of them had any more mind than the Anglican bishops to tolerate Papists, Socinians, Quakers, and Fifth Monarchy men, but in their management of the business of the Restoration these divines exposed themselves to the same condemnation that Clarendon in an often-quoted passage passed upon his own clerical allies.  When read by the light of the Act of “Uniformity,” the “Corporation,” the “Five Mile,” and the “Conventicle” Acts, the conduct of the Presbyterians seems recklessness itself, whilst the ignorance their ministers displayed of the temper of the people they had lived amongst all their lives, and whom they adjured to cry God save the King, but not to drink his Majesty’s health (because health-drinking was forbidden in the Old Testament), would be startling were it not so eminently characteristic.[82:1]