ABSTRACT
In late March 1640 Henry King, Dean of Rochester, preached a laudatory sermon at St Paul's celebrating the sixteenth anniversary of the accession of King Charles and the happy condition of his country. Royalist conduct and belief took many forms over the nearly twenty years of interregnum. Both evolved in response to war, defeat and Parliament's increasingly draconian demands for support and obedience as the royalist cause waned and grew moribund. Departure was the most decisive method of avoiding the worst consequences of open or even suspected opposition to parliamentary rule, though it should be seen in the context of the long history of travel or residence abroad by Englishmen that could be undertaken for a variety of reasons. The sufferings of actual war were imposed bipartisanly. Royalists and parliamentarians alike killed, imprisoned, plundered and oppressed. One consequence of far-reaching surveillance was extreme caution in words and actions.
