The Restoration ushered in a period of delirious excitement,[20] such as had never been known in the history of this country. Unhappily, it was accompanied by an equally unprecedented display of license, in which the common people seemed to vie with the Court for supremacy. To account for this latter fact, one need only recall the policy pursued under the Commonwealth, that drove the whilom vagrant "musician" to take refuge in the cities, and thus materially go to swell the more turbulent portion of the population. Music was again heard in the churches, but it was not such as the people remembered. It was, at once, novel and unliked. Largely of foreign origin, foreign musicians were engaged to perform it. For such innovations, the wives of Charles I. and Charles II. were doubtless largely responsible, one being French and the other Portuguese, but the Continental wanderings of the latter King had made him familiar with such music, and, being of a much lighter kind than that of the old English church, would, naturally, be more congenial to such a character. One can easily imagine how the sight of swarthy foreigners, playing such strange sounding music on the viols and other instruments, would astonish the common people. In the diaries, Pepys is frankly condemnatory, saying that it all appeared to him to be more suitable to the theatre than to the church. It is astonishing to think how soon the national rejoicing at the re-establishment of the monarchy was to change to national dejection and disgust, caused not only by the policy, but, perhaps, still more by the personal life of the King. The former brought the country to a state of bankruptcy, both financial and political, the latter to a sense of shame and humiliation that was entirely new to it. The open and unabashed profligacy of the King and Court, and the absolutely contemptuous disregard, not only of national religious feeling, but of the merest elements of ordinary decency, were bound to bring about a tremendous re-action. It came, and with irresistible effect. Thousands who had hitherto shunned the severities of Puritan life and teaching, now fled to them for protection against infection by the wave of immorality which was flooding the country. To the people, kingship became once more not the symbol of national glory, but of national abasement. Every sense, honourable in man, was outraged, and as each year passed in the reign of this wretched monarch, so did it go to further intensify the ever-growing force of Calvinistic conviction, with all its concomitant results, not only on art, but the very character of the people in general.