It cannot have been with unmixed joy that he once more trod another path than that wonted one on the leads of the Tower. True, the King was coming home in peace to a people longing to receive him. This return was a promise of deliverance for the Church, and an end to that difficulty of preserving the Apostolical Succession which had so nearly proved a fatal one. And yet, the flood, which in those eighteen years had passed over the land, had swept away many whom the Bishop loved well. The King might return in triumph, but he was not the sovereign whom, from his youth, Bishop Wren had loved and served. The primate with whom he had worked, had been cruelly murdered; and none could restore the wife and children who had pined and died during the long years of his imprisonment. The Church, however, remained, and for her Bishop Wren would work while life lasted. Part of his employment in the Tower had been the writing of treatises and sermons, one of which on the Scotch Covenant, from the text 'Neither behave thyself frowardly in the covenant,' he dispersed over the dioceses of Norwich and Ely, lodging the while where he could in London, as he was not yet allowed to go back either to Downham in Suffolk or to Ely House in Holborn. It appeared, as was truly said, as if he had not been 'so much released as thrust out of prison.' Homeless and penniless as he then seemed, Bishop Wren's spirit was in no respect daunted; when he left in safety the Tower where he had once thought to lay his head on the block, he planned the thank-offering which he would make to God. His children, from whom he had been so long separated, who were scattered everywhere and had been reduced to the greatest straits, he with much difficulty gathered together again, and they awaited the event of Monk's decision. [_THE RESTORATION._] At length came that 29th of May so often described in history and fiction. Evelyn's[76] account of it is interesting, as that of an eyewitness:-- 'This day his majestie Charles II. came to London, after a sad and long exile and calamitous suffering both of the king and church, being seventeen yeares. This was also his birthday; and with a triumph of above 20,000 horse and foote, brandishing their swords and shouting with inexpressible joy; the wayes strewed with flowers, the bells ringing, the streetes hung with tapestry, fountaines running with wine; the maior, aldermen, and all the companies in their liveries, chaines of gold, and banners; lords and nobles clad in cloth of silver, gold, and velvet; the windowes and balconies well set with ladies: trumpets, music, and myriads of people flocking even so far as from Rochester, so as they were seven houres in passing the citty, even from two in afternoone till nine at night. I stood in the Strand and beheld it, and blessed God. All this was don without one drop of bloudshed, and by that very army which rebelled against him.'