Palamon and Arcite | Page 2

of dissension and bickering, and by the Restoration of 1660 the son of Charles I became Charles II of England.
Scarcely had the demonstrations of joy at the Restoration subsided when London was visited by the devouring plague of 1665. All who could fled from the stricken city where thousands died in a day. In 1666 came the great fire which swept from the Tower to the Temple; but, while it destroyed a vast deal of property, it prevented by its violent purification a recurrence of the plague, and made possible the rebuilding of the city with great sanitary and architectural improvements.
Charles possessed some of the virtues of the Stuarts and most of their faults. His arbitrary irresponsibility shook the confidence of the nation in his sincerity. Two parties, the Whigs and the Tories, came into being, and party spirit and party strife ran high. The question at issue was chiefly one of religion. The rank and file of Protestant England was determined against the revival of Romanism, which a continuation of the Stuart line seemed to threaten. Charles was a Protestant only from expediency, and on his deathbed accepted the Roman Catholic faith; his brother James, Duke of York, the heir apparent, was a professed Romanist.
Such an outlook incited the Whigs, under the leadership of Shaftesbury, to support the claims of Charles' eldest illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, who, on the death of his father in 1685, landed in England; but the promised uprising was scarcely more than a rabble of peasantry, and was easily suppressed. Then came the vengeance of James, as foolish as it was tyrannical. Judge Jeffries and his bloody assizes sent scores of Protestants to the block or to the gallows, till England would endure no more. William, Prince of Orange, who had married Mary, the eldest daughter of James, was invited to accept the English crown. He landed at Torbay, was joined by Churchill, the commander of the king's forces, and, on the precipitate flight of James, mounted the throne of England. This event stands in history as the Protestant Revolution of 1688.
During William's reign, which terminated in 1702, Stuart uprisings were successfully suppressed, English liberties were guaranteed by the famous Bill of Rights, Protestant succession was assured, and liberal toleration was extended to the various dissenting sects.
Society had passed through quite as great variations as had politics during this half-century. The roistering Cavalier of the first Charles, with his flowing locks and plumed hat, with his maypoles and morrice dances, with his stage plays and bear-baitings, with his carousals and gallantries, had given way to the Puritan Roundhead. It was a serious, sober-minded England in which the youth Dryden found himself. If the Puritan differed from the Cavalier in political principles, they were even more diametrically opposed in mode of life. An Act of Parliament closed the theaters in 1642. Amusements of all kinds were frowned upon as frivolous, and many were suppressed by law. The old English feasts at Michaelmas, Christmas, Twelfth Night, and Candlemas were regarded as relics of popery and were condemned. The Puritan took his religion seriously, so seriously that it overpowered him. The energy and fervor of his religious life were illustrated in the work performed by Cromwell's chaplain, John Howe, on any one of the countless fast days. "He began with his flock at nine in the morning, prayed during a quarter of an hour for blessing upon the day's work, then read and explained a chapter for three-quarters of an hour, then prayed for an hour, preached for an hour, and prayed again for a half an hour, then retired for a quarter of an hour's refreshment--the people singing all the while-- returned to his pulpit, prayed for another hour, preached for another hour, and finished at four P.M."
At the Restoration the pendulum swung back again. From the strained morality of the Puritans there was a sudden leap to the most extravagant license and the grossest immorality, with the king and the court in the van. The theaters were thrown wide open, women for the first time went upon the stage, and they acted in plays whose moral tone is so low that they cannot now be presented on the stage or read in the drawing-room. Of course they voiced the social conditions of the time. Marriage ties were lightly regarded; no gallant but boasted his amours. Revelry ran riot; drunkenness became a habit and gambling a craze. The court scintillated with brilliant wits, conscienceless libertines, and scoffing atheists. It was an age of debauchery and disbelief.
The splendor of this life sometimes dazzles, the lack of conveniences appalls. The post left London once a week. A journey to the country must be made in your own lumbering carriage, or on the snail-slow stagecoach over miserable roads,