f absolute rule which played so great
a part in the next reign under Tyrconnell.

[Sidenote: The Royal Army.]

But the severance of the two kingdoms from England was in itself a gain
to the Royal authority; and Charles turned quietly to the building up of
a royal army at home. A standing army had become so hateful a thing to
the body of the nation, and above all to the Royalists whom the New
Model had trodden under foot, that it was impossible to propose its
establishment. But in the mind of both Charles and his brother James,
the Duke of York, their father's downfall had been owing to the want of
a disciplined force which would have trampled out the first efforts of
national resistance; and while disbanding the New Model Charles availed
himself of the alarm created by a mad rising of some Fifth-Monarchy men
in London under an old soldier called Venner to retain five thousand
horse and foot in his service under the name of his guards. A body of
"gentlemen of quality and veteran soldiers, excellently clad, mounted,
and ordered," was thus kept ready for service near the royal person;
and in spite of the scandal which it aroused the king persisted,
steadily but cautiously, in gradually increasing its numbers. Twenty
years later it had grown to a force of seven thousand foot and one
thousand seven hundred horse and dragoons at home, with a reserve of six
fine regiments abroad in the service of the United Provinces.

[Sidenote: Charles and English Politics.]

But it was rather on policy than on open force that Charles counted for
success. His position indeed was a strange and perplexing one. All the
outer pomp of the monarchy had returned with the restoration. Charles,
like his father, was served by the highest nobles on their knees. Nor
had the theory of his position in appearance changed. The principle
indeed of hereditary kingship had gained a new strength from the
troubles of the last twenty years. The fall of the monarchy had been
followed so closely by that of the other institutions, political and
religious, of the realm, its restoration coincided so exactly with their
revival, that the Crown had become the symbol of that national
tradition, that historical continuity, without which the practical sense
of Englishmen felt then, as Burke felt afterwards, that men were "but as
flies in a summer." How profound a disgust the violent interruption of
this continuous progress by the clean sweep of the Civil War had left
be