Meantime the year 1659 was to be memorable to another branch of the Boyle family. On May 30, Charles Rich’s elder brother, who had so recently succeeded to the earldom, died; and Charles Rich and my Lady Molkin found themselves Earl and Countess of Warwick. Five days before, Richard Cromwell had abdicated. The months of Richard’s Protectorate had been, as all the world knows, months of dire confusion. With one man’s death, the whole fabric of a great Republic had crumbled into dust. Lady Ranelagh came back to her house in the Mall to find a very different London from the London she had left three years before. “The nation,” Evelyn has recorded in his _Diary_, “was in extreame confusion and unsettl’d, between the Armies and the Sectaries.” “Several Pretenders and Parties,” he wrote, “strive for the Government: all anarchy and confusion; Lord, have mercy on us!”[233] As long as it was possible, Lord Broghill seems to have supported Richard’s protectorate;[234] but before Richard’s abdication Broghill and Coote were back in Ireland, and Broghill in command of Munster and Coote in Connaught were both working for Charles II’s return. Early in 1660, Monk in England and Coote and Broghill in Ireland were in communication with the Royal Orphan. Broghill’s letter to Charles was carried to Breda by the sweet-spirited Frank: it is said to have been in Charles’s hands before Monk’s emissary had done his work.[235] Broghill’s proposal, however, that Charles should land in Ireland proved superfluous. Monk’s offers were eagerly accepted. Sir Edward Montagu—afterwards Earl of Sandwich—was sent to The Hague to bring back Charles II; and on May 8, 1660, “after a most bloudy and unreasonable rebellion of neere 20 years,”[236] Charles II was proclaimed in London. On May 29, he was there. Amid the blare of trumpets, 20,000 horse and foot brandished their swords and shouted aloud for joy. The pavements were strewn with flowers, the bells of the City rang out, the fountains poured out wine among the people. Ladies leaned over the windows and balconies: the Lords and Gentlemen made a brave show in their rich velvets and cloth of gold. “I stood,” says Evelyn, “in the Strand, and beheld it, and bless’d God!”[237] CHAPTER XIV THE RESTORATION AND THE ROYAL SOCIETY “Thence to Whitehall; where, in the Duke’s chamber, the King come and stayed an hour or two laughing at Sir W. Petty, who was there about his boate,[238] and at Gresham College in general; at which poor Petty was, I perceive, at some loss, but did argue discreetly, and bear the unreasonable follies of the King’s objections and other bystanders with great discretion; and offered to take oddes against the King’s best boates, but the King would not lay, but cried him down with words only. Gresham College he mightily laughed at, for spending time in weighing of ayre, and doing nothing else since they sat.”—PEPYS’S _Diary_, February 1, 1664.