The citizens, talking over the great folk-mote of the morning, retired to their wainscoted parlours in the evening, and putting pen to paper, wrote to their friends in the country. Some deplored the election of the fanatics. Some jubilantly proclaimed the Liberal triumph. What they said, however, mattered little. The letters never reached their destination.[187] They were pilfered at the post office. In vain people in the country waited for the arrival of the post-boy in those windy March days; in vain the Londoners expected answers to their epistles. Those time-stained, yellowish-looking sheets, of all shapes and sizes, and of varied and often puzzling caligraphy, are still safe in the Public Record Office.
The object of the interception was to find out if there were anything treasonable in the correspondence; or to prevent Liberal citizens from influencing country constituences. Whether, if the letters had been delivered, they would have altered the results of the general election, may be doubted. At all events, the elections were in favour of the Royalists.[188] Government influence was employed. Corporations returning members had been purged of disaffected elements;[189] and no doubt manifold tricks were played. Nor can we believe they were confined to one side. But, independently of unconstitutional interference, there were causes which will account for the success of the Cavaliers. Many old Presbyterian and Independent politicians had become ineligible through political offences. The zeal of the nobility and of the Episcopalian clergy told powerfully in favour of old Royalists. Great in many boroughs and counties was the popularity of candidates who had fought at Edgehill, at Marston Moor, or at Naseby, under the banner of Charles I.
1661.
NEW PARLIAMENT.
Of the members returned there were four men who in the Long Parliament had appeared as leaders. John Maynard, who was a manager in the trial of Laud—who had taken the Covenant, and had been a member of the Westminster Assembly—represented Beralston;[190] but he had now become so noted for his loyalty, that, in consideration of it, as well as his legal eminence, Charles II. made him a serjeant, and conferred upon him knighthood, in the month of November, 1660. Several notices of speeches delivered by Maynard may be found in the Parliamentary History; but, except as an opponent of Popery, he does not appear to have taken any important part in ecclesiastical questions. John Glynne, who, when Recorder of London, had advocated Presbyterianism, now sat for Caernarvonshire; and, like his friend Maynard, enjoyed the honour of serjeantship, and was knighted for his loyalty at the Restoration. There remains no indication of his having taken any part in the debates of the House, from which he was removed by death in 1667.[191] William Prynne—who had suffered so much as a Puritan, had written so much as a Presbyterian, and had spoken so much as a Royalist—now took his place on the benches of St. Stephen's as a member for Bath; but no mention is made of his ever speaking, except once, when he uttered a few words relative to the impeachment of Lord Clarendon.[192] Sir Harbottle Grimston—another well-known Presbyterian, who also was Speaker of the Convention—again appeared as a member of the House of Commons, representing the town of Colchester. But in his case, as in the others, Presbyterianism now was absorbed in the return of loyalty; and no words, that we can find, fell from his lips touching Church subjects, excepting a few against Roman Catholicism.[193] These men, after all their zeal in former days, said little or nothing in Parliament on behalf of religious liberty after the Restoration. Besides these four, may be mentioned Colonel Birch, a Lancashire Presbyterian, who having in the Long Parliament and in Cromwell's Parliaments represented Leominster, was in 1661, returned for the borough of Penryn. This gentleman frequently spoke on the side of civil and spiritual freedom. Hugh Boscawen, who had been member for Cornwall and Truro, under the Protectorate, now sat for Tregony, but scarcely ever opened his lips. The same may be remarked of Griffith Bodurda, member for Beaumaris.
1661.
Presbyterianism or Independency in particular could not be said to be represented in the new House of Commons; and Puritanism in general could scarcely be regarded as finding full and decided expression within those walls, where twenty years before it had been so triumphant.
Parliament assembled on the 8th of May.[194] The Upper House presented more of its ancient appearance than recently it had done; for although the Bishops were not yet restored, more than a hundred Peers took their seats—a striking contrast to the opening of the Convention, when only five Earls, one Viscount, and four Barons mustered in the Chamber. His Majesty, crowned and wearing his regal robes, ascended the throne, attended on each side by Officers of State, including a few who had favoured Presbyterianism. The Commons took their places below the bar.
The King kept silence on Church matters, unless he may have referred to the Breda Declaration, when saying that he valued himself much upon keeping his word, and upon making good whatever he had promised to his subjects. The Lord Chancellor, after an allusion to the constitution and disorders of the State—its stomach and appetite, its humour and fevers—indignantly inquired, "What good Christian can think without horror of these ministers of the Gospel, who by their function should be the messengers of peace, and are in their practice the only trumpets of war, and incendiaries towards rebellion?" Such preaching he pronounced to be a sin against the Holy Ghost.
COMMISSION FOR CONFERENCE.
Sir Edward Turner, a thorough Royalist, was elected Speaker; and, when presented to the King, he delivered one of those tiresome speeches which were so characteristic of the age.[195]