Palamon and Arcite | Page 2

by his
son Richard; but the father's strong instinct for government had not
been inherited by the son. The nation, homesick for monarchy, was
tiring 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