Popery lifted up its head in London on the restoration of Charles II. Many professors of it accompanied the king on his accession to the throne, and crowded round the court, being treated with conspicuous favor. The queen-mother came from France, and took up her abode at Somerset House, where she gathered round her a number of Roman Catholic priests. The foreign ambassadors' chapels were used by English papists, who thus obtained liberty of worship, while the London Protestant nonconformists were shamefully persecuted. Jesuit schools and seminaries were established, under royal patronage, and popish bishops were consecrated in the royal chapel of St. James's. At Whitehall, the ecclesiastics appeared in their canonical habits, and were encouraged in their attempts to proselyte the people to the unreformed faith. A diarist of the times, under date January 23, 1667, records a visit he paid to the popish establishment in St. James's Palace, composed of the chaplains and priests connected with Catharine of Braganza, Charles II.'s queen: "I saw the dormitory and the cells of the priests, and we went into one--a very pretty little room, very clean, hung with pictures, and set with books. The priest was in his cell, with his hair-clothes to his skin, barelegged, with a sandal only on, and his little bed without sheets, and no feather bed, but yet I thought soft enough, his cord about his middle; but in so good company, living with ease, I thought it a very good life. A pretty library they have: and I was in the refectory where every man had his napkin, knife, cup of earth, and basin of the same; and a place for one to sit and read while the rest are at meals. And into the kitchen I went, where a good neck of mutton at the fire, and other victuals boiling--I do not think they fared very hard. Their windows all looking into a fine garden and the park, and mighty pretty rooms all. I wished myself one of the Capuchins."