As much as 1660 marked a restoration, a miraculous return from the long Egyptian captivity for Edward Hyde, his master, the soon-to-be Charles II, and the exiled adherents to the royalist cause, it also marked a return to the long Israelite exile under the Stuarts and their ministers for the faithful supporters of the Good Old Cause. Indeed, the figure of the English people as the Israelites wandering their forty years in the desert nicely represents the divergent fortunes of the royalists and republicans in this moment of transition and uncertainty. In a very real sense, the Israelites of Clarendon and Milton's common allusion passed each other as ships in the night, somewhere in the English Channel, some taking Charles and his followers to their triumphant return, others sneaking the regicides and those intransigently opposed to Monck's settlement over to the Continent and the safety of the Low Countries and Swiss cantons.