The very words would, to Sir Peter Wentworth or Sir Edward Coke, have sounded like a contradiction in terms.

But by degrees a change took place.

The Parliament elected in 1661, during that fit of joy and fondness which followed the return of the royal family, represented, not the deliberate sense, but the momentary caprice of the nation.

Many of the members were men who, a few months earlier or a few months later, would have had no chance of obtaining seats, men of broken fortunes and of dissolute habits, men whose only claim to public confidence was the ferocious hatred which they bore to rebels and Puritans.

The people, as soon as they had become sober, saw with dismay to what an assembly they had, during their intoxication, confided the care of their property, their liberty and their religion.