A violent and sudden revulsion of feeling, both in the House and out of it, was the effect of the late proceedings of the King.  The Opposition regained in a few hours all the ascendency which it had lost.  The constitutional royalists were filled with shame and sorrow.  They saw that they had been cruelly deceived by Charles.  They saw that they were, unjustly, but not unreasonably, suspected by the nation.  Clarendon distinctly says that they perfectly detested the counsels by which the King had been guided, and were so much displeased and dejected at the unfair manner in which he had treated them that they were inclined to retire from his service.  During the debates on the breach of privilege, they preserved a melancholy silence.  To this day, the advocates of Charles take care to say as little as they can about his visit to the House of Commons, and, when they cannot avoid mention of it, attribute to infatuation an act which, on any other supposition, they must admit to have been a frightful crime.

The Commons, in a few days, openly defied the King, and ordered the accused members to attend in their places at Westminster and to resume their parliamentary duties.  The citizens resolved to bring back the champions of liberty in triumph before the windows of Whitehall.  Vast preparations were made both by land and water for this great festival.

The King had remained in his palace, humbled, dismayed, and bewildered, “feeling,” says Clarendon, “the trouble and agony which usually attend generous and magnanimous minds upon their having committed errors”; feeling, we should say, the despicable repentance which attends the man who, having attempted to commit a crime, finds that he has only committed a folly.  The populace hooted and shouted all day before the gates of the royal residence.  The tyrant could not bear to see the triumph of those whom he had destined to the gallows and the quartering-block.  On the day preceding that which was fixed for their return, he fled, with a few attendants, from that palace which he was never to see again till he was led through it to the scaffold.

On the eleventh of January, the Thames was covered with boats, and its shores with the gazing multitude.  Armed vessels decorated with streamers, were ranged in two lines from London Bridge to Westminster Hall.  The members returned upon the river in a ship manned by sailors who had volunteered their services.  The trainbands of the city, under the command of the sheriffs, marched along the Strand, attended by a vast crowd of spectators, to guard the avenues to the House of Commons; and thus, with shouts, and loud discharges of ordnance, the accused patriots were brought back by the people whom they had served, and for whom they had suffered.  The restored members, as soon as they had entered the House, expressed, in the warmest terms, their gratitude to the citizens of London.  The sheriffs were warmly thanked by the Speaker in the name of the Commons; and orders were given that a guard selected from the trainbands of the city, should attend daily to watch over the safety of the Parliament.