But the chief interest of the book, for its admirers, lay not in temporary allusions to the current politics and gossip. Furnishing these were numerous pamphlets, more or less venomous, circulating stealthily, despite all watchfulness and penalties. Next year, 1657, “Killing no Murder” would come down, as if showered from the skies; but although hundreds wished that somebody else might act on the suggestions, already urged before this seditious tract appeared, not one volunteer felt called upon to immolate himself to certain death on the instant by standing forward as the required assassin. Cautious thinkers held it better to bide their time, and await the natural progress of events, allowing all the enemies of Charles and Monarchy to quarrel and consume each other. Probably the bulk of country farmers and their labourers cared not one jot how things fell out, so long as they were left without exorbitant oppression; always excepting those who dwelt where recently the hoof of war-horse trod, and whose fields and villages bore still the trace of havoc. Otherwise, the interference with the Maypole dance, and such innocent rural sports, by the grim enemies to social revelry, was felt to be a heavier sorrow than the slaughter of their King.[3] So long as wares were sold, and profits gained, Town-traders held few sentiments of favour towards either camp. It was (owing to the parsimony of Parliament, and his continual need of supplies to be obtained without their sanction,) the frequency of his exactions, the ship-money, the forced loans, and the uncertainty of ever gaining a repayment, which had turned many hearts against King Charles I., in his long years of difficulty, before shouts arose of “Privilege.” But for the cost of wasteful revels at Court, with gifts to favourites, the expense of foreign or domestic wars, there would have been no popular complaint against tyranny. Citizens care little about questions of Divine Right and Supremacy, _pro_ or _con_, so long as they are left unfettered from growing rich, and are not called on to disgorge the wealth they swallowed ravenously, perhaps also dishonestly. Some remembrance of this fact possessed the Cavaliers, even before George Monk came to burst the city gates and chains. The Restoration confirmed the same opinion, and the later comedies spoke manifold contempt against time-serving traders; who cheated gallant men of money and land, but in requital were treated like Acteon. Although, in 1656, disquiet was general, amid contemporary records we may seek far before we meet a franker and more manly statement of the honest Englishman’s opinion, despising every phase of trickery in word, deed, or visage, than the poem found in _Choyce Drollery_, p. 85,—“The Doctor’s Touchstone.” There were, doubtless, many whose creed it stated rightly. A nation that could feel thus, would not long delay to pluck the mask from sanctimonious hypocrites, and drag “The Gang” from out their saddle.