Even those women who could not abide the insufferable weight of piety which spread over the period frequently found it politic not to antagonize that which formed the very atmosphere they had to breathe; but these women were not shameless profligates because they could not enter into the intense introspection and the outward circumspection of the Puritan dame. When the return of Charles II. brought to the front a code of manners which revealed the real morals of the people, many women who had walked "circumspectly," and were not under suspicion of playing a part, did not any longer conceal their real proclivities, but stood forth as women of pleasure. The Countess of Pembroke, Lady Crawshaw, and Mrs. Hutchinson, all ornaments of their sex during the Puritan régime, were yet alive at the Restoration, and beheld with dismay the shameless performances of their countrywomen. As marking an epoch, Puritanism is to be regarded as having destroyed the last relics of medievalism. "Under the Stuarts," says Creighton, "society became essentially modern, and many of the institutions upon which the comfort of modern life depends had their origin." CHAPTER XII THE WOMEN OF THE RESTORATION PERIOD "I stood in the Strand and beheld it and blessed God," wrote John Evelyn in his _Diary_, referring to the magnificent pageantry with which Charles II., on returning from his exile in France, was received by the London populace. With this pious ejaculation, the courtly Royalist welcomed the presence in England of that scion of the house of Stuart whose reign of profligacy was to mark his period as one of the most reprehensible in the history of the country. It is little wonder that Charles was so affected by the great demonstration in his honor that he marvelled that he should have remained away from the country so long when the people were languishing for his return. The manner with which London threw off its garb of Puritanical gray and manners grave, and donned bright attire and assumed the airs of gayety and frivolity, showed how insincere and superficial was the religious seriousness which had been worn as suited to the temper and times of the austere Protector.