[Sidenote: REACTION AGAINST PURITANISM.] Other ceremonies besides those immediately connected with Christmas time appeared that winter. Newspaper letters from Exeter, dated the 29th of December, 1660, announced the joyful welcome of Dr. Gauden, the new Bishop of the diocese, who had been met by most of the gentry, to the number of one hundred and twenty, and escorted by the High Sheriff, with nearly five times as many horse; the Mayor and Aldermen in scarlet and fur, waiting on His Lordship, amidst the ringing of bells. A week later, Londoners saw, in the public prints, a glowing account of a public Episcopalian christening at Dover--a most significant service in a town where Anabaptists were numerous. So great a concourse, it is reported, had seldom been seen, the Mayor being obliged to make way that the children might reach the font, which had not been used for nearly twenty years, and had now, by the care and prudence of the Churchwardens, been set up for this solemnity. [Sidenote: 1660.] The reaction against the Puritanism of the Commonwealth, visible in so many ways, received a fresh impulse from the insurrection of Venner and his associates. This fanatical wine-cooper had been before laying plots: in the month of April, 1657, he and his confederates, after conferring at a Meeting House in Swan Alley, had assembled on Mile End Green, when Cromwell sent a troop of horse, and seized him, with twenty other ringleaders. The cause of Fifth Monarchism, during the season of confusion consequent upon the resignation of the Protector Richard, reappeared, and made itself heard through its irrepressibly loquacious advocates, Rogers and Feake. The revival of their tenets, in connection with a renewal of pure Republicanism under Sir Henry Vane and his party, was of short duration; and there is nothing noticeable, in connection with this form of religious sentiment, until Venner's second outbreak. Instead of narrating that incident in words of my own, I shall simply use a letter, written respecting it in the midst of the excitement. The circumstances mentioned at the close, although below the dignity of history, are too amusing to be omitted. [Sidenote: VENNER'S INSURRECTION.] [Sidenote: 1661.]