Much pains were taken, before his majesty’s arrival, to represent his character in the most favourable and respectable light. Though the first born of profligacy and scoundrelism, he was reported, by his faithful and thorough-paced agents, as the very mirror of wisdom, of virtue, and of piety. These reports were not more industriously or artfully circulated than they were readily and generally believed, so that we need not wonder if the country in general looked upon the arrival of Charles as the commencement of the golden age, or of the reign of a heaven-born prince. Such seems to have been actually the case. The confidence the people had in the king, says Kimber, from the extraordinary good opinion they had been prepossessed with in his favour, and their transports of joy at being delivered from the late confusions and distractions, by means of his restoration, will account for the excessive complaisance that was shewn to the court at the beginning of this great event, so that the parliament could scarce deny the king any thing. To the ill use made of this confidence is to be imputed the opposition which the court met with afterwards. Our ecclesiastical historian _Neal_, speaking of the restoration, says, “Here was an end of those distracted times which our historians have loaded with all the infamy and reproach that the wit of man could invent. The puritan ministers have been decried, as ignorant mechanicks, canting preachers, enemies to learning, and no better than public robbers. The universities were said to be reduced to a meer Munster, and that if the _Goths_ and _Vandals_, and even the _Turks_, had overrun the nation they could not have done more to introduce barbarism, disloyalty, and ignorance. Yet in these times, and by the men who then filled the university chairs, were educated the most learned divines and eloquent preachers, such as the _Stillingfleets_, _Tillotsons_, _Bulls_, _Barrows_, _Whitbys_, and others, who retained a high veneration for their learned tutors after they were ejected and displaced. The religious part of the common people have been stigmatized with the character of _hypocrites_, their looks, their dress and behaviour, have been represented in the most odious colours; and yet one may venture to challenge these declaimers to produce any period of time since the reformation, wherein there was less open profaneness and impiety, and more of the spirit as well as the appearance of religion. Perhaps there was too much rigour and preciseness in indifferent matters; but the lusts of men were laid under a visible restraint; and though the legal constitution was unhappily broken, and men were governed by false politicks, yet better laws were never made against vice, or more rigorously executed. The dress and conversation of people was sober and virtuous, and their manner of living remarkably frugal. There