dependent party, upon whom all the mischief is charged by their presbyterian brethren, he may please to observe, that during the whole usurpation, they contended by degrees with their parent sect, and as I have already said, shared in employments, and gradually, after the restoration, mingled with the mass of presbyterians; lying ever since undistinguished in the herd of dissenters.
The presbyterian merit is of as little weight, when they allege themselves instrumental toward the king's restoration. The kingdom grew tired with those ridiculous models of government: first, by a house of lords and commons without a king; then, without bishops; afterward, by a rump[1] and lords temporal; then, by a rump alone; next, by a single person for life, in conjunction with a council; by agitators; by major-generals; by a new kind of representatives from the three kingdoms; by the keepers of the liberties of England; with other schemes that have slipped out of my memory. Cromwell was dead; his son Richard, a weak ignorant wretch, who gave up his monarchy much in the same manner with the two usurping kings of Brentford[2]; the people harassed with taxes, and other oppressions. The king's party, then called the cavaliers, began to recover their spirits. The few nobility scattered through the kingdom, who lived in a most retired manner, observing the confusion of things, could no longer endure to be ridden by bakers, coblers, brewers, and the like, at the head
- ↑ This name was given to that part of the house of commons, which remained after the moderate men had been expelled by military force.
- ↑ In the Rehearsal.
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