ll having slipped the collar, the officers assumed
command, as they were only too ready to do, and recalled the old,
dishonoured, but pertinacious Rump Parliament, which, though mustering
at first but forty-two members, at once began to talk and keep journals
as if nothing had happened since the day ten years before, when it was
sent about its business. Old Speaker Lenthall was routed out of
obscurity, and much against his will, and despite his protests, clapped
once more into the chair. Dr. John Owen, an old parliamentary preaching
hand, was once again requisitioned to preach before the House, which he
did at enormous length one fine Sunday in May.

The Rump did not prove a popular favourite. It was worse than Old Noll
himself, who could at least thrash both Dutchman and Spaniard, and be
even more feared abroad than he was hated at home. The City of London,
then almost an Estate of the Realm, declared for a Free Parliament, and
it soon became apparent to every one that the whole country was eager to
return as soon as possible to the old mould. Nothing now stood between
Charles and his own but half a dozen fierce old soldiers and their
dubious, discontented, unpaid men.

It was once commonly supposed (it is so no longer), that the Restoration
party was exclusively composed of dispossessed Cavaliers, bishops in
hiding, ejected parsons, high-flying _jure divino_ Episcopalians,
talkative toss-pots, and the great pleasure-loving crowd, cruelly
repressed under the rule of the saints. Had it been left to these
ragged regiments, the issue would have been doubtful, and the result
very different. The Presbyterian ministers who occupied the rectories
and vicarages of the Church of England and their well-to-do flocks in
both town and country were, with but few exceptions, all for King
Charles and a restored monarchy. In this the ministers may have shown a
sound political instinct, for none of them had any more mind than the
Anglican bishops to tolerate Papists, Socinians, Quakers, and Fifth
Monarchy men, but in their management of the business of the Restoration
these divines exposed themselves to the same condemnation that Clarendon
in an often-quoted passage passed upon his own clerical allies. When
read by the light of the Act of "Uniformity," the "Corporation," the
"Five Mile," and the "Conventicle" Acts, the conduct of the
Presbyterians seems recklessness itself, whilst the ignorance their
ministers displayed of the temper o