This Declaration was scarcely issued before a letter came from Charles II. conveying his assurance that he had no thoughts of revenge, and promising the City the confirmation of its Charters. He also pledged himself to grant liberty of conscience in religion, to leave questions of title to land to Parliament, and he promised the soldiers their arrears of pay.
The new Parliament met on the 25th of April. Charles’s Declaration reached the House on the 1st of May. Parliament instantly sent to the City to borrow £100,000, which was cheerfully advanced, and half of it was at once sent over to the King. On the same day the City companies raised the sum of £10,000 for Charles, and £2000 to be divided between the Dukes of York and Gloucester. Sixteen commissioners were appointed to wait on Charles at the Hague in order to take over this Royal gift.
Charles was proclaimed on May the 18th.
CHAPTER V
THE RESTORATION
The welcome with which Charles was received amounted to frenzy. Bonfires were made all over the City; up went the maypoles again; the church bells rang; the mob paraded rumps of beef, which they afterwards roasted and devoured; they made everybody drink the health of the King upon their knees; they broke the windows of leading Puritans; they made Monk’s soldiers drunk. It was not only the King who had come to his own again; it was the return of merriment, feasting, dancing, singing, mumming, sports, music, laughing, the pride of the eye, the delight of the ear, the joy of the world, the careless, reckless, headlong happiness of youth in the things that belong to youth. The kingdom of God upon the earth had been attempted. Perhaps the Puritans mistook the nature of that kingdom; perhaps they were only wrong in believing that the time was ripe for the advent of that kingdom.
MOB AT TEMPLE BAR
From the Crace Collection in British Museum
But let us begin this reign with the words of those who looked on at the Restoration:—