All the purchases of Royal Lands were annulled as unlawful and the property was seized for the Crown. As the new King, once he had made his position secure, showed no desire to prevent his subjects sharing with himself the enjoyment of the parks, the step was most popular. Anthony Deane’s “porters with long staves”—presumably to trounce intruders who did not pay for entrance—were swept away, and again the public were free to pass in at their own will. On the very spot where the Parliamentary troops had been massed, and Cromwell had harangued them, enormous crowds assembled to shout a welcome to the returned monarch. That was a great day. In order that the reception should be a thoroughly imposing one, all the representatives of the City attended. Troops were poured into the Park, and there was an Order by the new Council of State to the militia of London[1] “to Rendezvous their Regiments of Trained Bands and Auxiliaries at Hide Park. Major Cox, Quarter Master General of the City, hath since by their order been to view the Ground; and hath allotted a place to be erected for the reception of the Lord Mayor, the Court of Aldermen, and the Commissioners for the Militia. The Lord Mayor intends to appear there with his Collar of Esses, and all the Aldermen in Scarlet Robes, attended with the Mace and Cap of Maintenance as usual at great Ceremonies.” So, amid tumultuous rejoicings, and surrounded by all the glamour and pageantry of the restored Court, King Charles II. came back to England from his exile on the Continent. The breach from the sterner Puritan ideals was complete. The coarse spirit of the age, so long suppressed, broke out afresh in utter abandonment of all restraint, and with Charles II. there came a period of open licentiousness which happily is unexampled in our history—though, truth to tell, the scandals to which the Merry Monarch and his voluptuous courtiers gave rise in such profusion form piquant reading for people of later days. Charles had no idea of restoring the Park to its original condition as a game preserve. Such liberties as his father had granted to the public he freely extended. The public took full advantage of them. The diaries of the day are packed with references to Hyde and St. James’s Parks, which at a bound again became the centre of all the gay and fashionable life of the town. To do him justice, Charles made no pretentions towards a love of sport. A cock-fight amused him, but rather he preferred the excitement of his flirtations, his amours, the races in the Ring, his birds, his spaniels, and his passion for gambling.