the
Ambassador, it was but gruffly. "The French ambassador visited
General Monk, whom he found no accomplished courtier or statesman,"
writes Whitlocke sarcastically under March 24; and the ambassador's
own account is that he could get nothing more from Monk, in reply to
Mazarin's polite messages and requests for confidence, than a
reiterated statement that he had no information to give. And so, a
Single Person being inevitable, and the momentary uncertainty whether
it would be "Charles, George, or Richard again" being out of the way,
the long-dammed torrent had broken loose. And what a torrent! "King
Charles! King Charles! King Charles!" was the cry that seemed to
burst out simultaneously and irresistibly over all the British
Islands. Men had been long drinking his health secretly or
half-secretly, and singing songs of the old Cavalier kind in their
own houses, or in convivial meetings with their neighbours; openly
Royalist pamphlets had been frequent since the abolition of Richard's
Protectorate; and, since the appearance of the Presbyterian
Parliament of the secluded members, there had been hardly a pretence
of suppressing any Royalist demonstrations whatever. On the evening
of the 15th of March, the day before the Parliament dissolved
itself, some bold fellows had come with a ladder to the Exchange in
the City of London, where stood the pedestal from which a statue of
Charles I. had been thrown down, and had deliberately painted out
with a brush the Republican inscription on the pedestal, "_Exit
tyrannus, Regum ultimus_," a large crowd gathering round them and
shouting "God bless Charles the Second" round an extemporized
bonfire. That had been a signal; but for still another fortnight,
though all knew what all were thinking, there had been a hesitation
to speak out. It was in the end of March or the first days of April
1660, when the elections had begun, that the hesitation suddenly
ceased everywhere, and the torrent was at its full. They were
drinking Charles's health openly in taverns; they were singing songs
about him everywhere; they were tearing down the Arms of the
Commonwealth in public buildings, and putting up the King's
instead.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 695; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, Guizot, II.
381-395; Whitlocke, IV. 405; Pepys's Diary, from beginning to April
11, 1660.]

Popular feeling having declared itself so unmistakeably for Charles,
it was but ordinary selfish prudence in all public men who