Socially and morally, pecuniarily and theologically, it was peculiar. “The pay of the private soldier was much above the wages earned by the great body of the people,[14] and if he distinguished himself by intelligence and courage, he might hope to attain high commands. The ranks were accordingly composed of persons superior in station and education to the multitude. These persons, sober, moral, diligent, and accustomed to reflect, had been induced to take up arms, not by the pressure of want, not by the love of novelty and licence, not by the arts of recruiting officers, but by religious and political zeal, mingled with the desire of distinction and promotion. The boast of the soldiers, as we find it recorded in their solemn resolutions, was, that they had not been forced into the service, nor had enlisted chiefly for the sake of lucre, that they were no janissaries, but free-born Englishmen, who had, of their own accord, put their lives in jeopardy for the liberties and religion of England, and whose right and duty it was to watch over the welfare of the nation which they had saved.”[15] Such a body was none the less a distinct menace to the State it had armed itself to protect. So strong an engine for defence against the tyranny of monarchy was equally a possible engine of oppression to the rest of the body politic in the hands of an autocratic or incapable ruler. It had compelled Richard Cromwell to dissolve Parliament, and by “this act left the people at the mercy of an irresponsible authority, and without representation or means of appeal.” It is curious to see, therefore, how the first voluntary national army, long embodied, produced an antagonism, among the mass of the people, to standing armies altogether, a feeling which lasts even until now in theory, if not in fact. When Charles II. entered London in triumph, the sombre Ironside soldiery must have felt their reign was over. If _they_ did not, the people did. For with the “Happy Restoration” of the monarchy, the dread of a military supremacy, whether of king or dictator, was strong enough to decree that the army of the Commonwealth should be totally disbanded. So, for a short time at least, the army ceased to be. Its men soberly disappeared as a mass into private life; but so good was its warlike material, that “the Royalists themselves confessed that in every department of honest industry, the discarded warriors prospered beyond other men, that none was charged with any theft or robbery, that none was heard to ask an alms, and that if a baker, a mason, or a waggoner attracted notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all probability one of Oliver’s old soldiers.”[15]