s conveyed of this
happy measure embraced by the general. The prospect of peace, concord,
liberty, justice, broke forth at once from amidst the deepest darkness
in which the nation had ever been involved. The view of past calamities
no longer presented dismal prognostics of the future: it tended only
to enhance the general exultation for those scenes of happiness and
tranquillity which all men now confidently promised themselves. The
royalists, the Presbyterians, forgetting all animosities, mingled in
common joy and transport, and vowed never more to gratify the ambition
of false and factious tyrants by their calamitous divisions. The
populace more outrageous in their festivity, made the air resound with
acclamations, and illuminated every street with signals of jollity and
triumph. Applauses of the general were every where intermingled with
detestation against the parliament The most ridiculous inventions were
adopted, in order to express this latter passion. At every bonfire rumps
were roasted; and where these could no longer be found, pieces of
flesh were cut into that shape; and the funeral of the parliament
(the populace exclaimed) was celebrated by these symbols of hatred and
derision.

The parliament, though in the agonies of despair, made still one effort
for the recovery of their dominion. They sent a committee with offers
to gain the general. He refused to hear them, except in the presence
of some of the secluded members. Though several persons, desperate from
guilt and fanaticism, promised to invest him with the dignity of supreme
magistrate, and to support his government, he would not hearken to such
wild proposals. Having fixed a close correspondence with the city, and
established its militia in hands whose fidelity could be relied on, he
returned with his army to Westminster, and pursued every proper measure
for the settlement of the nation. While he still pretended to
maintain republican principles, he was taking large steps towards the
reestablishment of the ancient monarchy.

The secluded members, upon the general's invitation, went to the house,
and finding no longer any obstruction, they entered, and immediately
appeared to be the majority: most of the Independents left the place.
The restored members first repealed all the ordinances by which they had
been excluded: they gave Sir George Booth and his party their liberty
and estates: they renewed the general's commission, and enlarged his
powers: th