Learning and discipline were never popular; long sermons, compulsory attendance at innumerable religious exercises, and catechisms in the tutors' rooms were not more so. As the sands of the Commonwealth ran out the approaching Restoration found a welcome at Oxford. It was a sign of the times that, when Richard Cromwell was proclaimed Protector, the mayor and the troopers were pelted with turnip-tops by the scholars in front of S. Mary's. Without waiting for a formal proclamation of the new order, men reverted to it by a kind of spontaneous instinct. Six weeks or more before the Restoration, a bold man read the Common Prayer in S. Mary Magdalen Church in surplice and hood, and that church was always "full of young people purposely to hear and see the novelty." At the news of the Restoration all England "went mad with joy"; at Oxford the rejoicing "lasted till the morning." And when Coronation Day came, "Conduit ran a hogshead of wine." Common Prayer was restored and surplices; Puritan preaching went out of fashion; the organs of Magdalen, New College and Christ Church sounded once more; plays were performed and the Solemn League and Covenant was burnt. Yet the prejudice against surplice and organ was deep. Many still denounced organ-music as the whining of pigs. At Magdalen men clad in surplices, with hands and faces blackened, paraded the cloisters at twilight to encourage the story that Satan himself had appeared and adopted the surplice. Filthy insults and ribald abuse were heaped upon the innocent garment. A Royal Commission visited the University to eject the intruders and restore those whom Parliament had expelled. The Presbyterians took the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy, and were allowed to hold their places unless some ejected fellow or scholar appeared to claim them. But at Lincoln, where the Independent faction was strong, several fellows were turned out, George Hitchcock among them. He defied the bedel who was sent to arrest him when he refused to go. With a drawn sword and a sported oak Hitchcock remained master of the situation until the arrival of the military who, undaunted, stormed the Independent's castle and marched him off to jail. Life at Oxford resolved itself at last to peace and quiet study. "The tumult and the shouting dies, The Captains and the Kings depart"-- and the groves and quadrangles that had echoed with the clash of arms, the loud laugh of roystering Cavaliers, or the gentle rustle of sweeping trains, or the whining of a Puritan, now resounded with the noise of the bowling-green and tennis-court, or the chamber music of such scholarly enthusiasts as Anthony Wood with his fiddle, and Edmund Gregory with his bass viol.