The Stuart Restoration was the return in May 1660 of the Stuart monarchy to the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, ending the Interregnum and the Commonwealth of England that had been established after the execution of Charles I in January 1649. The Commonwealth had been governed by the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell and, briefly, his son Richard Cromwell, before political instability and the intervention of General George Monck led to the Declaration of Breda and the return of Charles II from exile. Charles landed at Dover on 25 May 1660 and entered London on 29 May, his thirtieth birthday. He was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1661. The term "Restoration" is also used more broadly to describe the reign of Charles II (1660–1685), and sometimes that of his brother James II (1685–1688).
The Restoration had significant political and legal consequences. The Indemnity and Oblivion Act 1660 granted a general pardon to most former opponents of the Crown, but excluded those directly involved in the trial and execution of Charles I. Ten of these regicides were executed in October 1660 at sites including Charing Cross and Tyburn. The exhumed bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, and John Bradshaw were subjected to posthumous execution in January 1661. A further nineteen regicides were imprisoned for life. The Cavalier Parliament, which first met in May 1661 and sat for over seventeen years, was strongly royalist and oversaw the re-establishment of the Church of England through the Clarendon Code, a series of measures including the Act of Uniformity 1662.
Culturally, the Restoration marked a reaction against the stricter moral and social climate associated with Puritanism during the Interregnum. Theatres, which had been closed under the Commonwealth, reopened, and Restoration comedy flourished. Women appeared on the public stage as professional performers for the first time in England. The court of Charles II became an important centre of artistic and literary life, contributing to the development of Restoration literature and distinctive styles in art and design, influenced in part by continental tastes, especially Dutch and French.
The Restoration period is commonly considered to have ended with the Glorious Revolution of 1688. In that year, the Dutch stadtholder William of Orange intervened in England with the support of Protestant political elites, leading to the flight of James II to France. A Convention Parliament declared that James had abdicated and offered the crown jointly to William III and Mary II. The subsequent Bill of Rights 1689 established limits on royal authority and barred Roman Catholics from the English throne.
After Richard Cromwell, Lord Protector from 1658 to 1659, ceded power to the Rump Parliament, Charles Fleetwood and John Lambert then dominated government for a year. On 20 October 1659, George Monck, the governor of Scotland under the Cromwells, marched south with his army from Scotland to oppose Fleetwood and Lambert. Lambert's army began to leave him, and he returned to London almost alone whilst Monck marched to London unopposed. The Presbyterian members, excluded in Pride's Purge of 1648, were recalled, and on 24 December the army restored the Long Parliament.
Fleetwood was deprived of his command and ordered to appear before Parliament to answer for his conduct. On 3 March 1660, Lambert was sent to the Tower of London, from which he escaped a month later. He tried to rekindle the civil war in favour of the Commonwealth by issuing a proclamation calling on all supporters of the "Good Old Cause" to rally on the battlefield of Edgehill, but he was recaptured by Colonel Richard Ingoldsby, a participant in the regicide of Charles I who hoped to win a pardon by handing Lambert over to the new regime. Lambert was incarcerated and died in custody in 1684; Ingoldsby was pardoned.
On 4 April 1660, Charles II issued the Declaration of Breda, in which he made several promises in relation to the reclamation of the crown of England. While he did this, Monck organised the Convention Parliament, which met for the first time on 25 April. On 8 May, it proclaimed that King Charles II had been the lawful monarch since the execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649. Historian Timothy J. G. Harris would later argue that "Constitutionally, it was as if the last nineteen years had never happened."
Charles returned from exile, leaving The Hague on 23 May and landing at Dover on 25 May. He entered London on 29 May 1660, his 30th birthday. To celebrate his return to his Parliament, 29 May was made a public holiday, popularly known as Oak Apple Day. He was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1661.
Some contemporaries described the Restoration as "a divinely ordained miracle". The sudden and unexpected deliverance from political chaos was interpreted as a restoration of the natural and divine order. The Cavalier Parliament convened for the first time on 8 May 1661, and it would endure for over 17 years, finally being dissolved on 24 January 1679. Like its predecessor, it was overwhelmingly Royalist. It is also known as the Pensionary Parliament for the many pensions it granted to adherents of the King.
The leading political figure at the beginning of the Restoration was Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon. It was the "skill and wisdom of Clarendon" which had "made the Restoration unconditional".
Many Royalist exiles returned and were rewarded. Prince Rupert of the Rhine returned to the service of England, became a member of the privy council, and was provided with an annuity. George Goring, 1st Earl of Norwich, returned to be the Captain of the King's guard and received a pension. Marmaduke Langdale returned and was made "Baron Langdale". William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle, returned and was able to regain the greater part of his estates. He was invested in 1666 with the Order of the Garter (which had been bestowed upon him in 1650), and was advanced to a dukedom on 16 March 1665.
Commonwealth regicides and rebels
The Indemnity and Oblivion Act, which became law on 29 August 1660, pardoned all past treason against the crown, but specifically excluded those involved in the trial and execution of Charles I. Thirty-one of the 59 commissioners (judges) who had signed the death warrant in 1649 were living. The regicides were hunted down; some escaped but most were found and put on trial. Three escaped to the American colonies. New Haven, Connecticut, secretly harboured Edward Whalley, William Goffe and John Dixwell, and after American independence named streets after them to honour them as forefathers of the American Revolution.
In the ensuing trials, twelve were condemned to death. The Fifth Monarchist Thomas Harrison, the first person found guilty of regicide, who had been the seventeenth of the 59 commissioners to sign the death warrant, was the first regicide to be hanged, drawn and quartered because he was considered by the new government still to represent a real threat to the re-established order. In October 1660, at Charing Cross or Tyburn, London, ten were publicly hanged, drawn and quartered: Thomas Harrison, John Jones, Adrian Scrope, John Carew, Thomas Scot, and Gregory Clement, who had signed the king's death warrant; the preacher Hugh Peters; Francis Hacker and Daniel Axtell, who commanded the guards at the king's trial and execution; and John Cooke, the solicitor who directed the prosecution. The 10 judges who were on the panel but did not sign the death warrant were also convicted.
Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, Judge Thomas Pride, and Judge John Bradshaw were posthumously attainted for high treason. Because Parliament is a court, a bill of attainder is a legislative act declaring a person guilty of treason or felony, in contrast to the regular judicial process of trial and conviction. In January 1661, the corpses of Cromwell, Ireton and Bradshaw were exhumed and hanged in chains at Tyburn.
In 1661 John Okey, one of the regicides who signed the death warrant of Charles I, was brought back from Holland along with Miles Corbet, friend and lawyer to Cromwell, and John Barkstead, former constable of the Tower of London. They were all imprisoned in the Tower. From there they were taken to Tyburn and hanged, drawn and quartered on 19 April 1662. A further 19 regicides were imprisoned for life.