During the Commonwealth secular music flourished, but chiefly on the Royalist side, since the Puritans, in their idle moments, were largely engaged in singing hymn tunes. From this period we have the stirring song ‘When the King Enjoys His Own Again.’ With the return of the Stuarts and the reign of Charles II the influence of France, where Charles had spent his years of exile, became dominant. The dance, not the dance of the people but the stately dance of the court, asserted its sway over song, and the flesh and blood, which had throbbed so richly in Elizabethan England, all but dropped out of the later English product. The songs which are preserved from the period occurred chiefly in the masques which were performed at court, which were French to the core. The chief song writer of the time, and of that just preceding, was Henry Lawes (1595-1662), who wrote the music to Milton’s immortal masque of ‘Comus.’ Lawes was a true musician, though not a great one, and he did much for English song in making the music respect the poetry. He loosened formal bonds and introduced something of the Italian recitative style. Along with the Restoration we have semi-folk-songs of a light character, though without the freshness of preceding decades. We may mention two of the most popular, ‘Come, Lasses and Lads,’ and ‘Barbara Allen.’ Pelham Humphrey (1647-74), whom Charles II sent to France to study under Lully, brought back to England with him the French grace and refinement and helped to set the keynote for English song for the next half century. This much the returned Stuart dynasty did for English music, in bringing French traditions across the Channel, but the more stolid English disposition of the time never hospitably absorbed the new influence. And in 1688 the Stuarts were ushered out to the strains of a most remarkable tune, ‘Lilliburlero.’ Of this song it has truly been said that it ‘drove King James II out of England.’ It was not a patriotic or warlike song, however, but merely a satire. The ribald words may seem the worst of doggerel to us now, but their rough satire awakened all England when the impudence of the Stuarts had become unbearable and the energetic melody carried them in a flash from one end of the country to the other. The upheaval of 1688 was the ‘bloodless revolution.’ King James succumbed to laughter.