After the Civil Wars by John Miller

Author:John Miller [Miller, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Europe, Great Britain, Modern, 17th Century
ISBN: 9781317885535
Google: z2vXAwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-06-17T03:37:21+00:00

Chapter nine

The frustrations of the Cavaliers, 1660–64

The liquidation of the past

In many ways the Restoration was remarkably bloodless. Charles II was brought back by his own people, rather than by force of arms. Although there were official reprisals against his father’s enemies, few were executed. And although there was some local paying off of scores, it was far from amounting to a ‘white terror’. If the Restoration settlement left a legacy of bitterness, this was not because Parliamentarians thought it had been too severe but because Royalists thought it had not been severe enough. This chapter will examine the settlement and will try to explain why Charles failed to satisfy ‘his own party’.1 The aim is not to give a comprehensive account of the politics of the period, which can be found elsewhere,2 but rather to examine those aspects which created political divisions.

The problems faced by the king in April 1660 were addressed in his Declaration of Breda. He was very conscious that the improvement in his prospects owed far less to his own efforts than to the surge of feeling in his favour since the collapse of military rule in December 1659. This had brought about the readmission in February of the MPs excluded in Pride’s Purge and the dissolution of the Long Parliament on 16 March. It had also persuaded General Monk that the return of the monarchy was not only feasible but quite possibly unavoidable; he gradually purged the army of those officers most likely to oppose it. It was, however, far from certain that the king would return without preconditions. The Presbyterians who dominated the restored Long Parliament hoped to impose on him restrictions similar to those proposed in 1648, with Parliament gaining considerable influence over his choice of ministers and control of the armed forces and the king having to accept some form of presbyterianism in the Church. Monk appears to have favoured a settlement of this type; as the only man who could prevent the army from opposing the king’s return he possessed great bargaining power, which he also used to demand favours for himself and his numerous friends and relations. The Declaration of Breda was designed to calm the fears of the army in particular and former Parliamentarians in general. Legally those who had fought against Charles I could be charged with treason; those who had purchased crown or church lands feared that they might be taken back without compensation; and both presbyterians and sectaries feared the reestablishment of a narrow, persecuting episcopal church.

The Declaration addressed each of these issues. The king promised to assent to a general pardon, ‘excepting only such persons as shall hereafter be excepted by Parliament’. He wished ‘that henceforward all notes of discord, separation and difference of parties be utterly abolished’ and invited his subjects to unite and settle ‘our just rights and theirs in a free Parliament, by which, upon the word of a king, we will be advised’. He likewise referred the question of crown and church lands, and those confiscated from Royalists, to Parliament.

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