As Evelyn records on 29 May 1660, the King processed in triumph through London accompanied by twenty thousand troops on horse and foot ‘brandishing their swords and shouting with unexpressible joy’. Newton also notes that there had been scenes of ‘wild jubilation’ on 8 May at Charles' arrival. The feelings of those watching were no doubt mixed but most, including the godly, were hopeful for change for the better from the political instability after Cromwell's death. This had been due more to the Army's unwillingness to support Richard Cromwell's regime than any lack of ability on his part. Nevertheless, Charles' promises of a Church settlement favourable to those seeking further Reformation would certainly have encouraged those, like Venning, who appear not to have lost hope in a godly national Church. The general atmosphere was certainly one of happy expectation.

However, only a matter of months later, by an Act of September 1660, ministers ejected under the Protectorate were restored to their previous livings and a number of congregational ministers voluntarily left their parishes. A year after his triumphant procession through London, on 22 May 1661, copies of the ‘Scotch Covenant’ were burnt by the public hangman in a number of places around the city: a clear statement by the Parliament of their ecclesiastical intentions and symbolic of their rejection of a settlement that would encompass those who held to it. By March 1661, the strength of the Presbyterians in this Convention or Cavalier Parliament had also been reduced to sixty and the loss of political power would open the way for a decade of struggle and persecution for the godly.

Circumstances also changed domestically for Venning. Now aged about forty, he married Hannah Cope, the widow of a freeman of the Cutler Company, on 14 January 1661 at St Leonard's, Eastcheap, with his parish of residence given as St Botolph Without Bishopsgate, north of the Thames. A contemporary satirist, John Birkenhead, accused him, along with a number of other puritan ministers, of anticipating their ejections and making arrangements to marry wealthy widows.