Restoration Period Worksheets
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Summary
- The Protectorate
- Restoration of Charles II
- England and Wales
- English Colonies
- Culture
- End of Restoration
Key Facts And Information
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The Stuart Restoration refers to the reestablishment of the Stuart monarchy in England, Scotland, and Ireland in May 1660. It supplanted the Commonwealth of England, instituted in January 1649 following the execution of Charles I, with his successor Charles II. The Commonwealth of England was administered by Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell and subsequently by his son, Richard Cromwell. The title also refers to the reign of Charles II (1660–1685) and occasionally that of his younger brother James II (1685–1688).
Charles II of England in Coronation robes
BEFORE THE RESTORATION PERIOD: THE PROTECTORATE
- After Richard Cromwell stepped down as Lord Protector in 1658, the Rump Parliament took over. For the next year, Charles Fleetwood and John Lambert effectively ran the government. On 20 October 1659, George Monck, who was the governor of Scotland under Cromwell, moved his troops south to fight Fleetwood and Lambert.
- Lambert's army started to leave him, forcing him to go back to London almost alone, while Monck went on without any problems. The army officially brought back the Long Parliament on 24 December. The Presbyterian members, who had been kicked out during Pride’s Purge of 1648, were allowed back in.
- Fleetwood lost his military command and was called to Parliament to explain what he had done. Lambert was sent to the Tower of London on 3 March 1660. A month later, he escaped and tried to start the civil war again in support of the Commonwealth by issuing a proclamation calling on supporters of the “Good Old Cause” to gather at Edgehill.
- Colonel Richard Ingoldsby, who was involved in the regicide of Charles I, caught him, though. He asked for mercy by handing Lambert over to the new government. Lambert stayed in prison until he died in 1684, but Ingoldsby was set free.
RESTORATION OF CHARLES II
- Charles II made the Declaration of Breda on 4 April 1660. In it, he made several promises about getting the English crown back. At the same time, George Monck was in charge of putting together the Convention Parliament, which met for the first time on 25 April 1660. This Parliament said on May 8 that Charles II had been the rightful king since Charles I was killed on 30 January 1649. Historian Timothy J. G. Harris later said that, according to the Constitution, the previous nineteen years were basically void.
- Charles left exile on 23 May 1660, and arrived in Dover on 25 May 1660. He entered London on 29 May, the day of his thirtieth birthday. 29 May was made a public holiday to honour his return. People call it Oak Apple Day. On 23 April 1661, he was crowned at Westminster Abbey.
- People at the time often called the Restoration “a divinely ordained miracle,” seeing the sudden end of political chaos as a return to both natural and divine order. The Cavalier Parliament met for the first time on 8 May 1661, and lasted until 24 January 1679.
- It was mostly made up of Royalists, and it has also been called the Pensionary Parliament because the King gave out a lot of pensions to his supporters.
- Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, was the most important political figure at the start of the Restoration. His wisdom and statesmanship were credited with making sure that the Restoration went through without any conditions.
- Many Royalist exiles were given back their favour and jobs. Prince Rupert of the Rhine joined the privy council and got an annuity. George Goring, 1st Earl of Norwich, was made Captain of the King's Guard and given a pension. Marmaduke Langdale was made Baron Langdale. William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle, got most of his estates back, was given the Order of the Garter in 1666, and was made a duke on 16 March 1665.
ENGLAND AND WALES
- The Indemnity and Oblivion Act, which was passed on 29 August 1660, gave everyone a general pardon for past acts of treason against the crown. However, this did not include anyone who was involved in the trial and execution of Charles I.
- Thirty-one of the fifty-nine people who signed the king’s death warrant in 1649 were still alive. Some of the regicides were able to get away, but most were caught and put on trial. Three of them fled to the American colonies, where New Haven, Connecticut, secretly sheltered Edward Whalley, William Goffe, and John Dixwell, who are now remembered as the forefathers of the American Revolution.
- Twelve people were sentenced to death in the trials that followed. The first person to be executed was Thomas Harrison, a Fifth Monarchist and the seventeenth commissioner to sign the death warrant. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered because he was still a threat to the restored regime.
- Ten more people were put to death at Charing Cross or Tyburn in October 1660. These included John Carew and Adrian Scrope, who signed the death warrant, as well as military officers like Francis Hacker and Daniel Axtell, legal figures like John Cooke and preacher Hugh Peters. Judges who did not sign the warrant were also found guilty.
- Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, Thomas Pride, and John Bradshaw were all found guilty of high treason after they died. Their bodies were dug up and hanged in chains at Tyburn in January 1661. Then, on 19 April 1662, John Okey, Miles Corbet, and John Barkstead were sent back to England, imprisoned, and put to death. Nineteen other people were sentenced to life in prison.
Oliver Cromwell
- Lambert was not present at the trial of Charles I. He was sentenced to life in prison in Guernsey. Henry Vane the Younger, on the other hand, was tried and executed on Tower Hill on 14 June 1662, despite serving during the Interregnum.
- Even though killing a king was widely condemned, the revolutionary idea of conditional monarchy lived on. Political discourse increasingly asserted that royal authority ought to be limited by legal frameworks and the collective will of the populace, a notion even recognised by Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, in his attempts to secure a lasting postwar settlement.
- The Commonwealth gave out titles like Protectorate knighthoods and baronetcies, but most of them were taken away at the Restoration. Charles II gave many of them back. Some hereditary titles, like the viscountcy given to Charles Howard, stayed in place during the Restoration, and a few baronetcies, like Richard Thomas Willy's, are still around today.
- Thomas Venner led a group of about fifty Fifth Monarchists in the Venner rebellion on 6 January 1661, trying to take over London in the name of “King Jesus.” The rebellion was quickly put down, and Venner and ten of his followers were killed.
- The Clarendon Code and the Act of Uniformity 1662 made the Church of England the national church again. This brought back order to both religion and politics, and there were often public protests making fun of Presbyterians and Independents.
ENGLISH COLONIES
Caribbean
- Caribbean Barbados, which had been a safe haven for Royalist exiles during the English Commonwealth, stayed loyal to Charles II under Lord Willoughby until George Ayscue beat them. When Thomas Modyford heard that the King had been restored, he declared Barbados for Charles II in July 1660. At first, the local planters didn’t want to bring Willoughby back because they were worried about land title disputes, but the King ordered it.
- Jamaica, which Cromwell took over, had a more complicated claim. Charles II's power over the island was not clear in theory, but he chose not to give it back to Spain. As a result, Jamaica became a British colony in 1661. Lord Windsor was the first governor. In 1664, Thomas Modyford, who had been kicked out of Barbados, took over.
New England
- Most of New England was Puritan, and they mostly supported the Commonwealth and Protectorate. This made people hesitant to accept the Restoration, which showed that Puritan reform had failed. Rhode Island pledged its loyalty in October 1660, and Massachusetts did the same in August 1661. In 1662, New Haven, which had sheltered regicides like Edward Whalley, William Goffe, and John Dixwell, became part of Connecticut.
- This may have been a punishment. At the time of the Restoration, John Winthrop, who had been governor of Connecticut and was the father of a Monck army captain, went to England and got a royal charter for Connecticut, which included New Haven.
Virginia and Maryland
- Until the New England forces took over Maryland after the Battle of the Severn in 1655, the state had fought against the authority of Parliament. In 1660, Governor Josias Fendall tried to make Maryland an independent Commonwealth, which is known as Fendall's Rebellion.
- After the English republic fell, he was fired, and Philip Calvert took his place. Virginia showed its unwavering loyalty to the monarchy by giving shelter to Royalist exiles. Robert Beverley Jr., an eighteenth-century historian, said that Virginia was “the last of all the King’s Dominions that submitted to the Usurpation.” William Berkeley was reappointed governor in 1660. He quickly pledged his loyalty to Charles II and brought back the Anglican Church.
- Carolina The Province of Carolina was created in 1663 as a reward for supporters of the Restoration. It was named after Charles I. Settlers from Bermuda founded Charleston in 1669 under William Sayle, who later became Carolina’s first colonial governor in 1670.
Bermuda
- Originally part of Virginia and run by the Somers Isles Company until 1684, Bermuda mostly sided with the Crown, even though there were a lot of Puritans there. Islanders who wanted to stop growing tobacco and start trading by sea fought against company rules, removing its governor and choosing their own. William Sayle led Puritans to leave their homes and move to the Bahamas.
- After a long fight, the Crown took away the company’s charter in 1684, took over the power to appoint governors, and let the new merchant class take over the island's economy. This sped up the shift from farming to sailing.
CULTURE DURING THE RESTORATION PERIOD
- The Restoration and Charles II’s coronation marked a major change from the strict Puritan moral regime. This made it seem like England’s moral climate went from being strict to being more open. Theatres that had been closed during the Protectorate reopened, and Puritanism quickly lost its power. Bawdy comedy became a well-known type of play, and for the first time, women were allowed to work as professional actresses on the commercial stage. Episcopacy was brought back in Scotland, and bishops went back to work. The Dutch Republic also celebrated diplomatic relations by giving Charles II the Dutch Gift, which included beautiful paintings, classical sculptures, furniture, and a yacht.
- Restoration literature shows both the happy and angry sides of the time. It includes works like Milton’s Paradise Lost and John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester’s Sodom, the naughty comedy The Country Wife, and the moral allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress.
- The period saw the rise of political philosophy thanks to Locke’s Treatises of Government, the founding of the Royal Society, Robert Boyle’s experimental and devotional work, John Dryden and John Dennis’s literary criticism, the rise of periodicals, news as a commodity, and the start of textual criticism. A similar change took place in the arts of sight and touch. The royal court came back, and people liked grandeur and luxury instead of the strictness of the Cromwellian period.
- Furniture design showed Dutch and French artistic influences, such as floral marquetry, walnut construction, twisted supports and legs, cane seating, luxurious upholstery, and ornately carved and gilded cabinet bases. Similar changes happened in the way people wrote prose.
- In the late 1600s, people in London were fascinated by the Restoration spectacular, which was a very well-staged machine play. These shows had action, music, dance, moving scenery, baroque illusionistic painting, fancy costumes and special effects like trapdoors, ‘flying' actors and fireworks.
- People often said these shows were vulgar and only for the money, but they brought in huge crowds, with the spectacle and scenery often being more important than the music. These shows were based on the court masque of the early 1600s and were influenced by French opera. Some people called them “English opera,” but only a few of them were really musical.
- Putting on big shows was very expensive, which made it hard for theatre companies to stay in business. When shows such as John Dryden’s Albion and Albanius failed, they lost a lot of money. However, when shows such as Thomas Shadwell’s Psyche or Dryden’s King Arthur were hits, they made a lot of money.
END OF RESTORATION PERIOD
- The Glorious Revolution, which led to the removal of King James II of England, effectively ended the Restoration period. A group of English Parliamentarians and the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau (William of Orange) helped make this political change happen. William’s successful invasion of England, aided by a Dutch fleet and army, led to his joint accession to the English throne with his wife, Mary II, the daughter of James II.
- James II sent out the Declaration of Indulgence again in April 1688 and told all Anglican priests to read it to their congregations. Seven bishops, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, asked the King to change his religious policies.
- They were arrested and put on trial for seditious libel. On 30 June 1688, seven Protestant nobles asked William of Orange to send an army to invade England. By September, it was clear that William was going to invade.
- When William arrived on 5 November 1688, James lost his will to fight and tried to escape to France instead of fighting the Dutch forces. He was caught in Kent and later released into Dutch protective custody. He was finally allowed to escape to France on 23 December, where his cousin, Louis XIV, welcomed him and gave him a home and a pension. William called a Convention Parliament to figure out what to do next. Parliament didn’t officially depose James, but it did say that by running away to France, James had effectively given up the throne and made it vacant.
- To fill the empty spot, his daughter Mary was made Queen and was to rule with her husband, William of Orange. In 1689, the English Parliament passed the Bill of Rights, which condemned James for abusing his royal power.
- Some of the things James did wrong were suspending the Test Acts even though he swore to protect the Church of England’s power, prosecuting the Seven Bishops for asking the crown for help, keeping a standing army, and giving harsh punishments.
- The Bill of Rights also made it clear that no Roman Catholic could become king or queen of England and that no English monarch could marry a Roman Catholic. This made the monarchy’s constitutional and religious limits official.
Frequently Asked Questions About The Restoration Period
- What is the Restoration Period?The Restoration Period refers to the time when the monarchy was restored in England in 1660, bringing King Charles II back to the throne after a period of republican rule.
- Why is it called the “Restoration”?It is called the Restoration because it marked the restoration of the monarchy after the English Civil War and the rule of Oliver Cromwell.
- Who was Charles II?Charles II was the king restored to power in 1660. His reign is known for its cultural revival, political stability, and more relaxed social atmosphere.