e first to
repair to Mr. Knight, his majesty's surgeon, living at the Cross Guns,
in Russell Street, Covent Garden, over against the Rose tavern, for
tickets of admission. "That none might lose their labour." the same Mr.
Knight made it known to the public he would be at home on Wednesdays and
Thursdays, from two till six of the clock; and if any person of quality
should send for him he would wait upon them at their lodgings. The
disease must indeed have been rife: week after week those afflicted
continued to present themselves, and we read that, towards the end of
July, "notwithstanding all discouragements by the hot weather and the
multitude of sick and infirm people, his majesty abated not one of his
accustomed number, but touched full two hundred: an high conviction
of all such physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries that pretend
self-preservation when the languishing patient requires their
assistance." Indeed, there were some who placed boundless faith in the
king's power of healing by touch; amongst whom was one Avis Evans, whom
Aubrey, in his "Miscellanies," records "had a fungus nose, and said
it was revealed to him that the king's hand would cure him. And at the
first coming of King Charles II. into St. James's Park, he kissed the
king's hand, and rubbed his nose with it, which disturbed the king, but
cured him."

The universal joy which filled the nation at the restoration of his
majesty was accompanied, as might be expected, by bitter hatred towards
the leaders of Republicanism, especially towards such as had condemned
the late king to death. The chief objects of popular horror now,
however, lay in their graves; but the sanctity of death was neither
permitted to save their memories from vituperation nor their remains
from moltestation. Accordingly, through many days in June the effigy
of Cromwell, which had been crowned with a royal diadem, draped with
a purple mantle, in Somerset House, and afterwards borne with all
imaginable pomp to Westminster Abbey, was now exposed at one of the
windows at Whitehall with a rope fixed round its neck, by way of hinting
at the death which the original deserved. But this mark of execration
was not sufficient to satisfy the public mind, and seven months later,
on the 30th of January, 1661, the anniversary of the murder of Charles
I., the bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, and John Bradshaw
were taken from their resting places in Westminster Abbey, and drawn on
hurdles t