Signs of the Restoration.—­Samuel Pepys in his Glory.—­A Royal
      Company.—­Pepys ’ready to Weep.’—­The Playmate of Charles
      II.—­George Villiers’s Inheritance.—­Two Gallant Young
      Noblemen.—­The Brave Francis Villiers.—­After the Battle of
      Worcester.—­Disguising the King.—­Villiers in Hiding.—­He
      appears as a Mountebank.—­Buckingham’s Habits.—­A Daring
      Adventure.—­Cromwell’s Saintly Daughter.—­Villiers and the
      Rabbi.—­The Buckingham Pictures and Estates.—­York
      House.—­Villiers returns to England.—­Poor Mary
      Fairfax.—­Villiers in the Tower.—­Abraham Cowley, the
      Poet.—­The Greatest Ornament of Whitehall.—­Buckingham’s Wit
      and Beauty.—­Flecknoe’s Opinion of Him.—­His Duel with the Earl
      of Shrewsbury.—­Villiers as a Poet.—­As a Dramatist.—­A Fearful
      Censure!—­Villiers’s Influence in Parliament.—­A Scene in the
      Lords.—­The Duke of Ormond in Danger.—­Colonel Blood’s
      Outrages.—­Wallingford House and Ham House.—­’Madame
      Ellen.’—­The Cabal.—­Villiers again in the Tower.—­A
      Change.—­The Duke of York’s Theatre.—­Buckingham and the
      Princess of Orange.—­His last Hours.—­His Religion.—­Death of
      Villiers.—­The Duchess of Buckingham.

Samuel Pepys, the weather-glass of his time, hails the first glimpse of the Restoration of Charles II. in his usual quaint terms and vulgar sycophancy.

‘To Westminster Hall,’ says he; ’where I heard how the Parliament had this day dissolved themselves, and did pass very cheerfully through the Hall, and the Speaker without his mace.  The whole Hall was joyful thereat, as well as themselves; and now they begin to talk loud of the king.’  And the evening was closed, he further tells us, with a large bonfire in the Exchange, and people called out, ’God bless King Charles!’

This was in March 1660; and during that spring Pepys was noting down how he did not think it possible that my ‘Lord Protector,’ Richard Cromwell, should come into power again; how there were great hopes of the king’s arrival; how Monk, the Restorer, was feasted at Mercers’ Hall (Pepys’s own especial); how it was resolved that a treaty be offered to the king, privately; how he resolved to go to sea with ‘my lord:’  and how, while they lay at Gravesend, the great affair which brought back Charles Stuart was virtually accomplished.  Then, with various parentheses, inimitable in their way, Pepys carries on his narrative.  He has left his father’s ‘cutting-room’ to take care of itself; and finds his cabin little, though his bed is convenient, but is certain, as he rides at anchor with ‘my lord,’ in the ship, that the king ’must of necessity come in,’ and the vessel sails round and anchors in Lee Roads.  ‘To the castles about Deal, where our fleet’ (our fleet, the saucy son of a tailor!) ’lay and anchored; great was the shoot of guns from the castles, and ships, and our answers.’  Glorious Samuel! in his element, to be sure.