UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND.

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to favour. But great numbers who protested that they were chap.innocent of all disloyalty, and some persons who boasted thattheir loyalty had been signally displayed, obtained neitherrestitution nor compensation, and filled France and Spain withoutcries against the injustice and ingratitude of the House ofStuart.

Meantime the government had, even in England, ceased to The go-

° . . yernmenl

be popular. The Royalists had begun to quarrel with the becomescourt and with each other; and the party which had been van- lar inquished, trampled down, and, as it seemed, annihilated, but E ” gland-which had still retained a strong principle of life, again raisedits head, and renewed the interminable war.

Had the administration been faultless, the enthusiasm withwhich the return of the King and the termination of the mili-tary tyranny had been hailed could not have been permanent.

For it is the law of our nature that such fits of excitement shallalways be followed by remissions. The manner in which thecourt abused its victory made the remission speedy and com-plete. Every moderate man was shocked by the insolence,cruelty and perfidy with which the Nonconformists weretreated. The penal laws had effectually purged the oppressedparty of those insincere members whose vices had disgracedit, and had made it again an honest and pious body of men.

The Puritan, a conqueror, a ruler, a persecutor, a sequestra-tor, had been detested. The Puritan, betrayed and evil in-treated, deserted by all the time-servers who, in his prosperity,had claimed brotherhood with him, hunted from his home,forbidden under severe penalties to pray or receive the sacra-ment according to his conscience, yet still firm in his resolutionto obey God rather than man, was, in spite of some unpleasingrecollections, an object of pity and respect to well constitutedminds. These feelings became stronger when it was noisedabroad that the court was not disposed to treat Papists withthe same rigour which had been shown to Presbyterians. A