to help the state,
    And what is more they sent him money too
    To clothe him all from head to foot anew;
    Nor did he such small favours then disdain,
    Who in his thirtieth year began his reign."[90:1]

The “small favours” grew in size year by year.

Why it was impossible for Charles to keep his word may be read in Clarendon’s Life, and in the history of the Savoy Conference, and need not be restated here.  In the opinion of the Anglican clergy, the king’s divine right stood no higher than their own.  They too had suffered in exile.  They had been “robbed” of their tithes, and turned out of their palaces, rectories and vicarages, and excluded from the churches they still called “theirs.”  Their Book of Common Prayer was no longer in common use, having been banished by the “Directory of Public Worship” since 1645.  So late as July 1, 1660, Pepys records attending a service in the Abbey, and adds “No Common Prayer yet.”  If we find ourselves wondering why the Anglican party should have been so powerful in 1660, our wonder ought not to be greater than is excited by the power of the Puritan party when Laud was put to death.  Both parties were, on each occasion, in a minority.  Though England has never been long priest-ridden, it has often been priest-led.

The Convention Parliament did all that was expected of it.  It was, however irregularly summoned, a truly representative assembly.  Its members all swore—­what will not members of Parliament swear?—­that the king was supreme in Church and State, the only rightful king of the realm and of all other his dominions, and that from their hearts they abhorred, detested, and abjured the damnable doctrine that princes, excommunicated or deprived of the Pope, might be murdered by their subjects.  They proceeded to pass a very useful Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, agreeing to let bygones be bygones, except in certain named cases.  They ordered Mr. John Milton to be taken into custody, and prosecuted (which he never was) by the Attorney-General.  Later on the poet was released from custody, and we find Mr. Marvell complaining to the House that their sergeant had extracted L150 in fees before he would let Mr. Milton go.  On which Sir Heneage Finch, afterwards Lord Chancellor, laconically observed that Milton deserved hanging.  He certainly got off easily, but, as he lived to publish Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, he may be said to have earned his freedom.  All his poetry put together never brought him in a third of the sum the sergeant got for letting him out of prison.  General Monk, the man-midwife, who so skilfully assisted at that great Birth of Time, the Restoration, was made a duke, and Cromwell’s army, so long the force behind the supreme power, was paid its arrears and (two regiments excepted) disbanded.  “Fifty thousand men,” says Macaulay, “accustomed to the profession of arms, were thrown upon the world ... in a few months there remained not a trace indicating that the most formidable army in the world had just been absorbed in the mass of the community."[92:1]