Three years afterwards, when a treaty of peace was signed between England and Holland, the colony of Surinam, in Guiana, which the Dutch had captured during the war, was left in their possession as a compensation for New Netherlands. About the same time, the province of Acadia was restored by treaty to France, greatly to the vexation of the people of New England. CHAPTER XIV. THE RESTORATION. In the month of May, 1660, England was almost mad with joy because Charles II. was restored to the throne. In London, “groups of royalists,” we are told, “gathered round buckets of wine in the streets, and drank the king’s health on their knees. The bells of every steeple rang, and bonfires were so numerous that the city seemed surrounded by a halo; men shouted, women scattered flowers, and with loud thanks to Heaven, as if he had been an angel sent down from God, Charles II. was received at Whitehall, where so lately the tragedy of fallen royality had been enacted.” Republicanism was at an end; and the stern virtues of puritanism gone quite out of fashion. The season of violent reaction was come; and again the noblest blood in England, _noblest_ in the truest sense of the word, flowed from the hands of the executioner. Amongst the earliest victims was Hugh Peters, the successor of Roger Williams as minister at Salem. His arraignment, trial, and execution were scenes of wanton cruelty. Any trial indeed was a mockery, because his death was already decreed. “Go home to New England, and trust God there,” were his last words to his daughter, the wife of the younger Winthrop. At the gallows he was compelled to wait while his friend Cooke, who had just been executed, was cut down. “How do you like this?” asked the savage hangman, exultingly. “I thank God,” replied Peters, “that I am not terrified at it. You may do your worst;” and turning to his friends he said, with a smile, “Weep not for me; my heart is full of comfort.” Several of the regicides perished about the same time, with equal calmness and resignation, their faith in the principles which brought them to the scaffold no whit abated. Three of the regicide judges, however, Whalley, Goffe, and Dixwell, of whom we shall speak presently, fled to New England. Nor did the thirst of English vengeance satisfy itself with the execution of the living; it wreaked itself on the dead. The corpses of Cromwell, Bradshaw and Ireton were disinterred, dragged on hurdles to Tyburn, and hanged on three separate gallows, after which they were cut down and beheaded! The whole horrible and disgusting scene being considered one of great merriment.