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4 THE RESTORA TION IN ENGLAND. 1660
CHAP, boisterously enthusiastic. 1 But no one was more conscious
than the king that his difficulties began rather than ended
with his return. To solve the knotty problems and to compose
the deep-seated enmities which had arisen during seven
years of civil war and eleven years of revolutionary government
would have taxed the wisdom of the ablest statesman.
All the thorny constitutional questions which had been
raised in the first two sessions of the Long Parliament were
open to reconsideration. Exultant cavaliers were eager to
regain their lost estates, equally eager for revengeful measures
against all who had profited by their disasters, and supremely
confident that their proved loyalty gave them an unanswerable
claim to immediate and complete redress of all grievances.
On the other hand were numerous opponents of the late king
who had established a strong claim to consideration by a tardy
but opportune return to their allegiance. It was they, and not
the cavaliers, who had actually effected the Restoration. These
men could appeal to the assurances of the declaration of Breda,
and any deliberate or wanton breach of faith might drive them
into renewed disloyalty or even rebellion. The army, so long
the dominant power, had sulkily yielded to the wishes of the
people, but might at any moment be tempted to reassert its
right to decide the fate of the nation.
Underlying all other difficulties were the ecclesiastical
disputes which had occasioned and prolonged the civil war.
The puritans had been strong enough to overthrow the established
Church, but they could not agree as to what should
take its place, and their quarrels had ultimately driven the
presbyterians into an alliance with *the royalists. But the
alliance rested only upon a temporary community of interests,
and its speedy rupture was inevitable unless the cavalier
churchmen were prepared to abandon the principles for which
they had fought and suffered. And besides the puritans there
were the Roman catholics. They were regarded with mingled
fear and loathing by the mass of the people, but they had
strong claims upon the king. In spite of past oppression,
they had shown conspicuous loyalty, and they had suffered
1 " So great were the acclamations and numbers of the people that it reached
like one street from Dover to Whitehall," Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe (London,
1907), P. 95.