Scheveningen, ready for his Majesty's orders. Visitors from the Hague had been coming on board daily in great numbers, and some of the officers of the ships had, by Montague's leave, landed at the village of Scheveningen for a run thence to the Hague. One of those so favoured had been Mr. Samuel Pepys, Montague's private secretary, whose delight with the city and its fine sights, and his chance meetings with Dr. Fuller and other London friends there, and his glimpses of important Dutch personages, and especially his pleasure in being admitted to kiss the royal hands, are all duly chronicled in his Diary. Montague himself had remained on board, waiting the eventful day, while in all the ships there was carpentering, painting, and cutting out of silks and other decorations. And lo! at last, after a delay of two days on account of rough weather, there did come the complete procession of departure from the Hague to Scheveningen. His Majesty, the Duke of York, and the Duke of Gloucester, were accompanied by the ex-Queen of Bohemia, the widowed Princess of Orange, and her young son Prince William of Orange, to see them off, while an "infinity of people" who were to go with them, the Parliamentary Commissioners included, either preceded or followed. This was on Tuesday the 22nd, when a cannonade twice round all the ships of the fleet welcomed his Majesty's arrival on the shore, and Mr. Pepys, firing the first gun on board the Naseby, nearly blew out his right eye by holding it too near the touch-hole. But the cannonading was nothing to that of next day, Wednesday the 23rd, when boats from the shore brought off his Majesty and his Royal relatives, and they actually stood on the deck of the Naseby. While Montague and the rest were kissing hands there, the roar of guns in the bay was perfectly astounding. It ceased only when his Majesty, the two Dukes, the Queen of Bohemia, the Princess of Orange, and little Prince William, sat down to a state-dinner by themselves,'which was a blessed sight to see" says Pepys most gravely. After dinner there was a rather interesting ceremony. It was on board The Naseby that his Majesty had come, but that could be the name of the ship no longer. It was agreed that

she should be thenceforth The Charles; and the King and the Duke of York, with Montague assisting, went over the names of the other ships, changing The Richard into The James, The Dunbar into The Henry, The Lambert into The Henrietta, The Speaker into The Mary, &c. This ceremony over, the Queen of Bohemia, the Princess of Orange, and her son, took their leave, to return to the Hague, the Duke of York at the same time going on board the London, and the Duke of Gloucester on board the Swiftsure, in which ships they were to make the Voyage severally, while Charles himself remained in the rechristened Naseby. Anchor was weighed in the afternoon, and, “with a fresh gale and most happy weather," the squadron sailed for England 1.

All the afternoon, while the Dutch coast was yet visible, Charles was walking "here and there, up and down," about the ship, “very active and stirring" and chatting and discoursing with everybody. On the quarter-deck he got on his favourite subject of his escape after the battle of Worcester, telling the most laughable stories of his disguised wanderings and the queer straits in which he found himself, though Pepys, standing among the listeners, was sometimes "ready to weep." Evening had come when Montague, by his swiftest vessel, sent off a letter to the Speaker of the House of Lords, reporting all well so far. "May 23, 1660, about ten leagues "from Scheveling, our course west-and-by-north; seven "o'clock in the evening, Wednesday; a fresh gale at north"and-by-east," is his sailorly dating of the letter, corroborated by Pepys's farther report, "Under sail all night, and most glorious weather." Though the ship was so overcrowded that there was difficulty in finding beds for all, Pepys was in splendid company and never enjoyed himself more. Next day it was even better, for then Pepys had Mr. Holles, Dr. Earle, the King's chaplains, the King's physicians, and others, to dine with him in his own cabin, and on deck all day persons of honour were walking about, or distributed into groups,

1 Pepys, May 14-23; Letter of Montague to the Lords, of date May 23, printed in the Lords Journals of the 25th. Clarendon, by a blunder rather

strange from him in such a matter, gives the 24th as the day of setting sail (p. 910).

and among them was the inimitable Tom Killigrew, telling his funniest stories. And so that day passed, and just before night they sighted the Kentish coast 1.

On Friday the 25th there was the landing at Dover. The King and the two Dukes went ashore together about noon in one barge, the captain of Montague's ship steering, and Montague himself attending bare-headed. On the beach, "infinite the crowd of people, and the horsemen, citizens, and "noblemen of all sorts," with shouting and joy "past imagina"tion" when his Majesty set foot on the ground, and General Monk stepped forward from the rest with a profound obeisance, as if to prostrate himself, but his Majesty took him by the hand most gloriously and kissed and embraced him. Others round Monk were kissing the hem of his Majesty's garments; and one of these, who says he observed his Majesty's countenance closely on his first stepping ashore, thought he could see in it "a mixture of other passions besides joy." As there was to be no stay at Dover, a canopy had been prepared, under which his Majesty walked, attended by Monk, to a chair of state at some little distance from the water-side; and here, while he talked with Monk, the Mayor and Aldermen of Dover made their formal salutations. They presented him with "a very rich Bible," which he graciously accepted, saying "it was the thing that he loved above all things in the world." Then, in a coach which was in waiting, he and the two Dukes, with Monk, drove off through the town on their way to Canterbury, these four inside, and the Duke of Buckingham stowed in the boot. To Montague, who had never stirred from the barge, it was a relief to know that his part of the great business was thus happily over without the slightest mismanagement. He returned to his ship, thanking God; and his last order to Pepys that night was that a mark at the head of the chief cabin, which his Majesty had made with his own hands that morning, in record of his exact height, should be carefully gilded, and a crown and the letters C. R. placed in gold beside it. All future visitors to

1 Pepys, May 23-24; Lords Journals, May 25.

the ship were to be shown that mark, and to know that it was in this ship that Charles had come over 1.

At Canterbury the Royal party made a halt of nearly three days, with a fresh influx of people of rank to welcome his Majesty, and with more and more of conversation between his Majesty and Monk. Here it was too that his Majesty conferred the great honour of the Knighthood of the Garter on Monk and on the Earl of Southampton, with more ordinary knighthoods on a number of others. Among these was Mr. William Morrice, now specially introduced by Monk as his intimate friend and wisest adviser, and on that ground at the same time admitted of his Majesty's Privy Council and made one of his Secretaries of State. Monk himself and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper were also sworn of the Privy Council. More important than these formalities perhaps was the fact that Hyde, the King's real chief minister all through his exile, first under his old title of Chancellor of the Exchequer, dating from 1642, but since 1658 under the higher title of Lord Chancellor of England, had now an opportunity of taking his private measure both of Monk and of Mr. Secretary Morrice. Hyde had been making his observations, and communicating to the King his doubts whether "Old George" was altogether the Solomon he looked, when, on Monday the 28th, there was a move from Canterbury Londonwards, by Rochester. One reason for the delay at Canterbury had been that his Majesty wished to enter London on his birthday, Tuesday the 29th, when he would be thirty years old.

So it was arranged, and so it happened. Of that extraordinary royal progress of King Charles from Rochester to Whitehall on the 29th of May, 1660, there was to be a remembrance to all generations. Who can describe it? The long highway of more than five-and-twenty miles from Rochester was lined on both sides with acclaiming multitudes, so that it seemed "one continued street wonderfully inhabited." On Blackheath there was the passage of review

1 Pepys, May 25; Phillips, 711; Parl. Hist. IV. 58-59.

through the bannered army of horse and foot, fifty thousand strong, drawn up to salute his Majesty, with the address of loyalty presented by the commanding officer, and all the other picturesque incidents, as imagined by Scott for the last scene of his Woodstock. At the skirts of London itself there were the kneeling Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, with a rest for civic ceremonial, and for the collation which had been provided; and thence through the City, the trainedbands and City Companies keeping order in the streets, and the windows all hung with tapestry, there was the procession as far as to Fleet Street and Temple Bar. After it had passed Temple Bar one could see how it was finally marshalled. Major General Browne led the whole, with a troop of three hundred in cloth of silver; next came a marching mass in purple velvet; next, a troop in buff, with silver sleeves and green scarfs; then smaller troops, in blue and silver, grey and silver, and pure grey, all with trumpeters before them, as finely apparelled as those of the former troops; then three troops more in rich habits, but of colours not reported; then the Sheriff's-men, in red cloaks and with pikes in their hands, to the number of four-score, and six hundred picked men of the City-companies, in black velvet suits with chains of gold; then kettledrums, trumpets, and streamers; then twelve London ministers; then the Knights of the Bath and their Esquires; then more kettledrums and trumpets, preceding his Majesty's life-guard of horse; then, in a blaze of various colours, the City-marshal, the City-waits, and all other City-officers, concluding with the two Sheriffs, the Aldermen, the Heralds and Macers, and the Lord Mayor carrying the sword; then Lord General Monk and the Duke of Buckingham; then, O then, HIS MAJESTY himself, between the Dukes of York and Gloucester; then a number of the King's servants; and, last of all, a troop of horse with white colours, and the Lord General's life-guard, and five regiments more of horse, and two troops of mounted noblemen and gentlemen. It was about half-past seven in the evening when his Majesty thus arrived at Whitehall, where meanwhile the two Houses of Parliament were assembled in the Banqueting