Restoration

Restoration. The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 was due more to the failure of alternative republican regimes than to the efforts of loyalists. An army junta dispersed the Rump Parliament in October 1659 but failed to rally civilian support. Dissident garrison soldiers restored the Rump and General Monck invaded England with the army of occupation in Scotland. He quickly realized that the Rump no longer possessed the consent of the nation; he therefore restored the MPs who had been excluded from the Commons in 1648, on condition that they dissolved Parliament so that new elections could be held. The resulting Convention—so called because it had not been summoned by the crown—invited Charles II to return. Suggestions that conditions should be attached came to nothing.

Restoration meant the return of legality, ending arbitrary or ‘sword’ government and changes enforced by a politicized army. Arbitrary high courts disappeared and Charles I's prerogative courts were not revived. Parliaments were again to be elected on the traditional franchises and by the old constituencies. The Lords returned. Levels of taxation fell sharply as most of the army was disbanded. An amateur militia replaced it. An Indemnity Act pardoned all except the regicides. The Convention contained a majority of former parliamentarians but old cavaliers in the 1661 Parliament tried to modify what had been done. Charles successfully resisted their attempts to exclude from office all who had fought his father and to restore estates to cavaliers who had lost them. This Parliament strengthened the crown with new treason laws, a Licensing Act establishing censorship, and a purge of urban corporations. It also enacted the Clarendon code restoring the church and it was this narrow settlement that provoked bitterness and lasting division.

J. R. Jones