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 £150 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