England, ‘and finding himself within the act of indemnity’ he gave notice of his arrival to the council of state. He was accordingly summoned before the council on 7 Sept. 1653, and was strictly examined. A request to visit his dying father was refused, ‘and matters beginning to look worse and worse,’ he sought and obtained a personal interview with Cromwell ‘in the Cockpit.’ According to his own story Cromwell was conciliatory and told him ‘that rigour was not at all his inclination.’ On 31 Oct. following, the council released him from further attendance upon his ‘giving in 2,000l. security to appear when he shall be summoned so to do, and to act nothing prejudicial to the Commonwealth.’ L'Estrange's enemies subsequently stated that he owed his discharge to a distribution of bribes among the Protector's attendants, and that he discredited his old principles by associating on very friendly terms with Cromwell and with Thurloe, the secretary of the council. He replied that after his return to England he came into personal relations with Cromwell only on one other occasion than that when he begged him to procure his discharge. L'Estrange was an accomplished musician, and during the protectorate Cromwell, when paying an accidental visit at the house of John Hingston [q. v.] the organist, found L'Estrange and a few others practising music. ‘He found us playing,’ L'Estrange wrote, ‘and, as I remember, so he left us’ (Truth and Loyalty Vindicated, 1662, p. 50). L'Estrange's confession of participation in this little concert is responsible for his later nickname of ‘Oliver's fiddler.’
In the autumn of 1659 L'Estrange wrote and published with great rapidity a long series of anonymous broadsides attacking Lambert and the leaders of the army. He approved Sir George Booth's rising in Cheshire, and urged the citizens of London to agitate for a new parliament, which, he cautiously hinted, was likely to lead to a restoration of the monarchy. The titles of some of these pieces ran: ‘The Declaration of the City to the Men at Westminster;’ ‘A Free Parliament proposed by the City to the Nation, 6 Dec. 1659;’ ‘A Letter to Monck purporting to come from the Gentlemen of Devon, 28 Jan. 1659–60;’ ‘The Citizens' Declaration for a Free Parliament;’ and ‘A Word in Season to General Monck.’
As soon as the Long parliament was dissolved (16 March 1659–60), L'Estrange spoke out openly in favour of monarchy, and published his views in ‘A Necessary and Seasonable Caution concerning the Elections,’ and in ‘Treason Arraigned,’ 3 April 1660, an answer to ‘Plain English,’ a tract advocating the continuance of the republic. Finally, on 20 April appeared his ‘No Blind Guides,’ a very scurrilous and personal attack on Milton's ‘Brief Notes upon a late Sermon titled “The Fear of God and the King,” by Dr. Matthew Griffith’ (cf. Masson, Milton, v. 689–92).
L'Estrange's activity received no immediate reward from the restored king, and he openly lamented the leniency of the Act of Indemnity. A petition to the House of Lords begging permission, notwithstanding that act, to proceed in a court of law against ‘Robert Tichburne and others,’ to whom he attributed his misfortunes at Lynn, appears to have been neglected (Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. p. 96 b). He deplored this treatment in a pamphlet printed in June within a few days of Charles's return, under the title ‘L'Estrange his Apology, with a short view of some late remarkable Transactions leading to the Happy Settlement of these Nations.’ Here he reprinted all his recent anonymous broadsides. When James Howell issued in 1661 his ‘Cordial for Cavaliers,’ offering some cold comfort to the king's disappointed supporters, L'Estrange renewed his complaints in his ‘Caveat to the Cavaliers’ (2nd edit. enlarged 13 Aug. 1661); and to Howell's retort called ‘Some Sober Inspections’ L'Estrange replied in ‘A Modest Plea both for the Caveat and the Author of it,’ with some very sarcastic notes ‘upon Mr. James Howell.’ A charge preferred by Sir John Birkenhead in 1663, that L'Estrange had written a book against the king, was probably based on this outspoken pamphlet (Cal. State Papers, 1662–1663, p. 92).
With greater disinterestedness L'Estrange flung himself into the controversy respecting the settlement of the church. In a long series of pamphlets he sought to make the ‘fanatiques’ (i.e. the presbyterians) and their doctrines responsible for the civil wars and the death of the late king. His ‘Relaps'd Apostate, or Notes upon a Presbyterian Pamphlet entitled “A Petition for Peace”’ (1661), professed to prove the inconvenience of any concession. He pursued the argument in ‘State Divinity, or a Supplement to the “Relaps'd Apostate,” wherein is Presented the Discovery of a Present Design against the King, Parliament, and Public Peace, or Notes upon some late Presbyterian Pamphlets,’ London, 1661. There followed his ‘Interest mistaken, or the Holy Cheat, proving from the undeniable Practises and Positions of the Presbyterians that the Design of that Party is to enslave both King
