Daniel had finally convinced King James II that His Majesty's claims to support all religious dissidents would seem a lot more convincing if he would take Cromwell's skull down from the stick where it had been posted all through Charles II's quarter-century-long reign, and put it back in the Christian grave with the rest of Cromwell. To Daniel and certain others, a skull on a stick was a conspicuous object and the request to take it down wholly reasonable. But His Majesty and every courtier within earshot had looked startled: they'd forgotten it was there! It was part of the London landscape, it was like the bird-shit on a windowpane you never notice. Daniel's request, James's ensuing decree, and the fetching down and re-interment of the skull had only drawn attention to it. Attention, in a modern Court, meant cruel witticisms, and so it had been a recent vogue to address wandering Puritan ministers as 'Oliver,' the joke being that many of them – being wigless, gaunt, and sparely dressed – looked like skulls on sticks. Exaltation Gather looked so much like a skull on a stick that Daniel almost had to physically restrain himself from knocking the man down and shoveling dirt on him.