So the play was ended, and in a blaze of triumph such as England had never known the King entered London in the midst of a magnificent procession. Immediately behind him rode the lord-general beside the obtrusive Duke of Buckingham. Never before or since has a subject occupied such a position and arrogated less to himself. The ovation with which the King and his deliverer were received was deafening. Charles was perfectly dazed. He could hardly speak to his faithful Parliament as Lords and Commons met him jostling one another in a disorderly and excited mob. He recognised no one, and was so exhausted with the din that he could not attend the Thanksgiving in the Abbey. So as though the note of incapacity must be struck at the outset, he turned aside and took refuge in Whitehall. Still the glory of the conqueror was none the less, nor his satisfaction less complete. He could lay his head on his pillow that night with the happy consciousness that the burden of empire was lifted from his shoulders, that his country was at peace again, and still more, which was dearest of all to his great heart, that the triumph had been won without the cost of a single life. CHAPTER XIV THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY To follow Monk's career after the Restoration in detail would here be out of place. It adds but little to our knowledge of the man and labours under the ban of anti-climax. To the student of history and government it is full of interest, yet so unobtrusive was his work that it is now hard to trace beneath the shifting strife of politicians. When men asked what after all this dull workday soldier had done that the country should idolise him as it did, Secretary Nicholas, who knew, was wont to say that even if he had not put Charles upon his throne, he would still have deserved all the bounties the King had bestowed upon him for his services after the Restoration. It is a remark profoundly true. His finest work goes unrecorded. To suppose that the whole nation acquiesced at once in the Restoration is almost as great an error as to think that it was conquered by William at Hastings. As yet Monk had but stolen a march on the Irreconcilables. Numbers of ardent spirits belonging to the Anabaptists, the Fifth Monarchy men, and the fighting section of the Quakers, together with a large body of extreme Independents and Presbyterians, were only waiting for an opportunity to tear the arch-malignant from his throne again. They comprised all the fiery earnestness of the nation, they breathed the exaggerated spirit of all that has made us what we are; and when we see Mrs. Hutchinson at her heroic colonel's side as he lay rotting in a living grave; when we think of Harrison's wife buying his blood-stained clothes of the executioner, and, unable to believe that God had suffered her saint to die with his work unended, watching over them till he should come again,--the heart of Monk's profoundest admirer must bleed that they fell under such a hand as his.