This remnant of an old Parliament continued in power till the autumn
of 1659, when it gave way to a council of the officers who had been in
command under Cromwell. The latter government, in its turn, yielded to
the Rump, which sat down once more in December. The people, finding
themselves made the sport of a few ambitious adventurers, began to
long for some more fixed and respectable kind of government. At this
crisis, General Monk, commander of the forces in Scotland, conceived
the design of settling the nation. He left Scotland (January 2, 1660),
with a considerable army; and though he kept his thoughts scrupulously
to himself, all men bent their eyes upon him, as a person destined to
realize their hopes. He reached London (February 3), and was received
with feigned respect by the Rump. Some resistance was attempted by
Lambert, one of Cromwell’s officers, but in vain. Ere long, Monk was
able to procure the restoration of the members who had been excluded
from Parliament by Cromwell, who, being a majority, gave an immediate
ascendancy to anti-republican views. As soon as this was effected, an
act was passed for calling a new and freely-elected Parliament; after
which, the existing assembly immediately dissolved itself.
The new Parliament proved to be chiefly composed of Cavaliers and
Presbyterians, men agreeing in their attachment to monarchy, though
differing in many other views. After some cautious procedure, in which
the fears inspired by the late military tyranny were conspicuous, they
agreed to invite the king from his retirement in Holland, and to
restore him to the throne lost by his father. They were so glad to
escape from the existing disorders, that they never thought of making
any preliminary arrangement with the king as to the extent of his
prerogative. On the 29th of May, being his thirtieth birthday, Charles
II entered London amidst such frantic demonstrations of joy, that he
could not help thinking it his own fault, as he said, that he had been
so long separated from his people.
One of the first measures of the new monarch was the passing of a bill
of indemnity, by which all persons concerned in the late popular
movements were pardoned, excepting a few who had been prominently
concerned in bringing the king to the block. Harrison, Scrope, and a
few other regicides, were tried and executed; and the bodies of
Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, were raised from the grave and
exhibited upon gibbets. In Scotland, only three persons suffered――the
Marquis of Argyle, Johnston of Warriston, and Mr. Guthry, a clergyman:
it was considered remarkable, that the marquis had placed the crown
upon the king’s head at Scone in the year 1651. Excepting in these
acts, the king showed no desire of revenging the death of his father,
or his own exclusion from the throne. The Parliament which called him
home was constituted a legal one by his own ratification of an act for
that purpose. In the settlement of other matters, it seemed the
prevailing wish that all the institutions of the country should be
made as nearly what they were before the civil war as possible. Thus
the Episcopal church was established both in England and Scotland,
though not without causing about a third of the clergy in both
countries to resign their charges. The stern and enthusiastic piety
which prevailed during the civil war, was now treated with ridicule,
and the most of the people vied with each other in that licentious
riot and drunkenness which is condemned by all systems of faith. The
nation, in fact, seemed intoxicated with the safety which they
supposed themselves to have at length gained, in a restoration to the
imperfect freedom they enjoyed before the civil war.
Ireland, which, during the Protectorate, had been managed by Henry, a
younger son of Cromwell, acceded to the Restoration with as much
readiness as any other part of the British dominions. An act was
passed for settling property, by which the Catholics obtained some
slight benefits, but which, in its main effects, tended to confirm the
rights of the settlers introduced by Cromwell.
Though Charles had been restored with the approbation of a very large
portion of his subjects, his most zealous friends were the Royalists
and Episcopalians; hence he almost immediately subsided into the
character of a party ruler. It was deemed necessary that he should
maintain an armed force for the protection of his person, and to keep
down popular disturbances. He therefore caused several horse regiments
to be embodied under the name of Life Guards, being chiefly composed
of Royalist gentlemen upon whom a perfect dependence could be placed;
and he afterwards added two or three foot regiments, the whole
amounting to about 5000 men. The King paid these troops chiefly out of
the money allowed for his own support, for Parliament did not sanction
his keeping up such a force, and the nation generally beheld it with
suspicion. This was the commencement of a _standing army_ in England.
Personally indolent, dissolute, and deficient in conscientiousness,
and surrounded almost exclusively by the ministers of the basest
pleasures, Charles was not qualified to retain the sincere respect of
a people whose habitual character is grave and virtuous. His
extravagant expenditure soon cooled the affections of his Parliament,
and he began to find considerable difficulties in obtaining money. To
relieve himself from this embarrassment, he accepted £40,000 from the
French king for Dunkirk, a French port, which had been acquired by
Cromwell. For the same purpose, he married a Portuguese princess of
the Catholic religion, who possessed a dowry of half a million. He
also commenced (1664) a war against Holland, for apparently no better
reason than that, in applying the Parliamentary subsidies necessary
for keeping up hostilities, he might have an opportunity of converting
part of the money to his own personal use.
This Dutch war was chiefly conducted by sea. On the 3d of June 1665,
an English fleet of 114 sail met a Dutch one which numbered just one
ship less, near Lowestoffe, and after an obstinate fight, gained a
complete victory, depriving the enemy of eighteen vessels, and
compelling the rest to take refuge on their own coast. The commander
on this occasion was the Duke of York, the king’s younger brother; a
man of greater application and more steady principles, but who soon
after became unpopular, in consequence of his avowing himself a
Catholic.
Some other well-contested actions took place at sea, and the English,
upon the whole, confirmed their naval supremacy. Owing, however, to a
failure of the supplies, the king was obliged to lay up his best
vessels in ordinary, and to send only an inferior force to sea. The
Dutch took advantage of this occurrence to send a fleet up the Thames
(June 10, 1667), which, meeting with no adequate resistance,
threatened to lay the capital in ruins and destroy its shipping.
Fortunately, the Dutch admiral did not think it expedient to make this
attempt, but retired with the ebb of the tide, after having sunk and
burnt nearly twenty vessels, and done much other damage. The king,
finding himself rather impoverished than enriched by the war, soon
after concluded a peace.