Will Bowyer came to tell us that he would bear my wife company in the
coach to-morrow. Then to Westminster Hall, 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. To-night I am told, that yesterday, about five o'clock in the
afternoon, one came with a ladder to the Great Exchange, and wiped with a
brush the inscription that was upon King Charles, and that there was a
great bonfire made in the Exchange, and people called out "God bless.
King Charles the Second!"

["Then the writing in golden letters, that was engraven under the
statue of Charles I, in the Royal Exchange ('Exit tyrannus, Regum
ultimus, anno libertatis Angliae, anno Domini 1648, Januarie xxx.)
was washed out by a painter, who in the day time raised a ladder,
and with a pot and brush washed the writing quite out, threw down
his pot and brush and said it should never do him any more service,
in regard that it had the honour to put out rebels' hand-writing.
He then came down, took away his ladder, not a misword said to him,
and by whose order it was done was not then known. The merchants
were glad and joyful, many people were gathered together, and
against the Exchange made a bonfire. "Rugge's Diurnal." In the
Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts at the British Museum is a
pamphlet which is dated in MS. March 21st, 1659-60, where this act
is said to be by order of Monk: "The Loyal Subjects Teares for the
Sufferings and Absence of their Sovereign Charles II., King of
England, Scotland, and Ireland; with an Observation upon the
expunging of 'Exit Tyrannus, Regum ultimus', by order of General
Monk, and some Advice to the Independents, Anabaptists, Phanatiques,
&c. London, 1660."]