He declined the offers of Hasilrig and his friends, allowing Clarges privately to inform the Council that such had been made; and, though he received 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.