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The English fleet came in sight of Scheveling. Montague had not waited for orders from the parliament; but had persuaded the officers of themselves to tender their duty to his majesty. The duke of York immediately went on board, and took the command of the fleet as high admiral.

When the king disembarked at Dover, he was met by the general, whom he cordially embraced. Never subject in fact, probably in his intentions, had deserved better of his king and country. In the space of a few months, without effusion of blood, by his cautious and disinterested conduct alone, he had bestowed settlement on three kingdoms, which had long been torn with the most violent convulsions; and having obstinately refused the most inviting conditions offered him by the king, as well as by every party in the kingdom, he freely restored his injured master to the vacant throne. The king entered London on the twenty-ninth of May, which was also his birthday. The fond imaginations of men interpreted as a happy omen the concurrence of two such joyful periods.

At this era, it may be proper to stop a moment, and take a general survey of the age, so far as regards manners, finances, arms, commerce, arts, and sciences. The chief use of history is, that it affords materials for disquisitions of this nature; and it seems the duty of an historian to point out the proper inferences and conclusions.

No people could undergo a change more sudden and entire in their manners, than did the English nation during this period. From tranquillity, concord, submission, sobriety, they passed in an instant to a state of faction, fanaticism, rebellion, and almost frenzy. The violence of the English parties exceeded any thing which we can now imagine: had they continued but a little longer, there was just reason to dread all the horrors of the ancient massacres and proscriptions. The military usurpers, whose authority was founded on palpable injustice, and was supported by no national party, would have been impelled by rage and despair into such sanguinary measures; and if these furious expedients had been employed on one side, revenge would naturally have pushed the other party, after a return of power, to retaliate upon their enemies. No social intercourse was maintained between the parties; no marriages or alliances contracted. The royalists, though oppressed, harassed, persecuted, disdained all affinity with their masters. The more they were reduced to subjection, the greater superiority did they affect above those usurpers, who, by violence and injustice, had acquired an ascendant over them.

The manners of the two factions were as opposite as those of the most distant nations. “Your friends, the cavaliers,” said a parliamentarian to a royalist, “are very dissolute and debauched.” “True,” replied the royalist, “they have the infirmities of men; but your friends, the roundheads, have the vices of devils—tyranny, rebellion, and spiritual pride.”[*] Riot and disorder, it is certain, notwithstanding the good example set them by Charles I., prevailed very much among his partisans. Being commonly men of birth and fortune, to whom excesses are less pernicious than to the vulgar, they were too apt to indulge themselves in all pleasures, particularly those of the table. Opposition to the rigid preciseness of their antagonists increased their inclination to good fellow-ship; and the character of a man of pleasure was affected among them, as a sure pledge of attachment to the church and monarchy. Even when ruined by confiscations and sequestrations, they endeavored to maintain the appearance of a careless and social jollity. “As much as hope is superior to fear,” said a poor and merry cavalier, “so much is our situation preferable to that of our enemies. We laugh while they tremble.”

* Sir Philip Warwick.

The gloomy enthusiasm which prevailed among the parliamentary party, is surely the most curious spectacle presented by any history; and the most instructive, as well as entertaining, to a philosophical mind. All recreations were in a manner suspended by the rigid severity of the Presbyterians and Independents. Horse-races and cock-matches were prohibited as the greatest enormities.[*]

* Killing no Murder

Even bear-baiting was esteemed heathenish and unchristian: the sport of it, not the inhumanity, gave offence. Colonel Hewson, from his pious zeal, marched with his regiment into London, and destroyed all the bears which were kept there for the diversion of the citizens. This adventure seems to have given birth to the fiction of Hudibras. Though the English nation be naturally candid and sincere, hypocrisy prevailed among them beyond any example in ancient or modern times. The religious hypocrisy, it may be remarked, is of a peculiar nature; and being generally unknown to the person himself, though more dangerous, it implies less falsehood than any other species of insincerity. The Old Testament, preferably to the New, was the favorite of all the sectaries. The Eastern poetical style of that composition made it more easily susceptible of a turn which was agreeable to them.

We have had occasion, in the course of this work, to speak of the many sects which prevailed in England: to enumerate them all would be impossible. The Quakers, however, are so considerable, at least so singular, as to merit some attention; and as they renounced by principle the use of arms, they never made such a figure in public transactions as to enter into any part of our narrative.

The religion of the Quakers, like most others, began with the lowest vulgar, and, in its progress, came at last to comprehend people of better quality and fashion. George Fox, born at Drayton, in Lancashire, in 1624, was the founder of this sect. He was the son of a weaver, and was himself bound apprentice to a shoemaker. Feeling a stronger impulse towards spiritual contemplations than towards that mechanical profession, he left his master, and went about the country clothed in a leathern doublet, a dress which he long affected, as well for its singularity as its cheapness. That he might wean himself from sublunary objects, he broke off all connections with his friends and family, and never dwelt a moment in one place; lest habit should beget new connections, and depress the sublimity of his aerial meditations. He frequently wandered into the woods, and passed whole days in hollow trees without company, or any other amusement than his Bible. Having reached that pitch of perfection as to need no other book, he soon advanced to another state of spiritual progress, and began to pay less regard even to that divine composition itself. His own breast, he imagined, was full of the same inspiration which had guided the prophets and apostles themselves; and by this inward light must every spiritual obscurity be cleared, by this living spirit must the dead letter be animated.

When he had been sufficiently consecrated in his own imagination, he felt that the fumes of self-applause soon dissipate, if not continually supplied by the admiration of others; and he began to seek proselytes. Proselytes were easily gained, at a time when all men’s affections were turned towards religion, and when the most extravagant modes of it were sure to be most popular. All the forms of ceremony, invented by pride and ostentation, Fox and his disciples, from a superior pride and ostentation, carefully rejected: even the ordinary rites of civility were shunned, as the nourishment of carnal vanity and self-conceit. They would bestow no titles, of distinction: the name of “friend” was the only salutation, with which they indiscriminately accosted every one. To no person would they make a bow, or move their hat, or give any signs of reverence. Instead of that affected adulation introduced into modern tongues, of speaking to individuals as if they were a multitude, they returned to the simplicity of ancient languages; and “thou” and “thee” were the only expressions which, on any consideration, they could be brought to employ.