Free Winsor, Kathleen by Forever Amber

terror,
remembering the chaotic years of the Civil Wars when bands of roving soldiers
had pillaged through all the length and breadth of England, plundering the
farms, breaking into and robbing houses, driving off the sheep and cattle,
killing those who dared to resist. They did not want Cromwell to live, but they
were afraid to have him die.
    As
night closed in, a great storm rose, gathering fury until the houses rocked on
their foundations, trees were uprooted, and turrets and steeples crashed to the
ground. Such a storm could have for them only one meaning. The Devil was coming
to claim the soul of Oliver Cromwell. And Cromwell himself cried out in terror:
"It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!"
    The
storm swept all of Europe, raging through the night and on into the next day,
and when Cromwell died at three o'clock in the afternoon it was still
desolating the island. His body was immediately embalmed and buried with haste.
But his followers clothed a waxen image of him in robes-of-state and set it up
in Somerset House, as though he had been a king. In derision the people flung
refuse at his funeral escutcheon.
    But
there was no one to take his place, and almost two years of semi-anarchy
followed. His son, whom the Protector had designated to succeed him, had none
of his father's ability, and at last the military autocrats got rid of him—much
to his own relief. Immediately skirmishes began between the cavalry and the
infantry, between veterans and new recruits, and another civil war between the
army and the people seemed inevitable. Despair flooded the land. To go through
with it all again —when nothing had been gained the first time. They began to
think of a restored monarchy with longing, as their only salvation
    General
Monk, who had served Charles I but who had finally gone into service for
Cromwell when the King was dead, marched from Scotland and occupied the capital
with his troops. Monk, though a soldier, believed that the military must be
subordinate to the civil power, and it was his scope to liberate the country
from its slavery to the army. He waited cautiously to determine the temper of
the country and then at last, convinced that the royalist fervour which swept
through all classes was an irresistible tide, he declared for Charles Stuart. A
free Parliament was summoned, the King wrote them a letter from Breda declaring
his good intentions, and England was to be, once more, a monarchy—as she
preferred.
    London
was packed to overflowing with Royalists and their wives and families, and if a
man existed in all the city who did not wholeheartedly long for his Majesty's
return he was silent, or hidden. And the gradual return to laughter and
pleasure which had been apparent since the end of the wars took a sudden
violent spurt. Restraint was thrown off. A sober garment, a pious look were
regarded as sure signs of a Puritan sympathy and were shunned by whoever would
show his loyalty to the King. The world did a somersault and everything which
had been vice was now, all at once, virtue.
    But
it was not merely a wish to appear loyal, a temporary exuberance at the
returning monarchy, the joyousness of sudden relief from oppression. It was
something which struck deeper, and which would be more permanent. The long
years of war had broken families, undermined old social traditions, destroyed
the barriers of convention. A new social pattern was in the making—a pattern
brilliant but also gaudy, gay but also wanton, elegant but also vulgar.

    On
the 29th of May, 1660—his thirtieth birthday—Charles II rode into London.
    It
was for him the end of fifteen years of exile, of trailing over Europe from one
country to another, unwanted anywhere because his presence was embarrassing to
politicians trying to do business with his father's murderer. It was the end of
poverty, of going always threadbare, of having to wheedle another day's food
from some distrustful innkeeper. It was the end of the