The Restoration Settlement (AQA A-Level History): Revision Notes
The Restoration Settlement
Introduction
After the civil wars ended in the 1650s, Cromwell had attempted to 'heal and settle' the nation following years of trauma and division. When Charles II returned to the throne in 1660, he and Parliament confronted the same challenge. Charles had promised to allow Parliament to make all major decisions, which led to a series of parliamentary Acts addressing the most pressing issues: the constitution, religion, property, finance, and amnesty.
The Restoration Settlement represented a critical attempt to resolve the issues that had divided England for nearly two decades. However, as we'll see, the solutions reached often created new tensions rather than fully resolving old ones.
The constitutional settlement
Establishing the legal basis of the restored monarchy
The most pressing constitutional question concerned the precise moment at which the monarchy was being restored. Charles II's reign was officially held to have begun on 30 January 1649, the day his father's head was severed from his body. This meant that on all official documents, 1649 was referred to as the first year of Charles II's reign.
Critical Legal Fiction
By backdating Charles II's reign to 1649, Parliament declared that the Commonwealth and Protectorate had never legally existed. This meant all legislation passed during the Interregnum (1649-1660) was considered null and void, regardless of its content or popularity.
Lawful parliamentary legislation describes Acts that had received proper royal approval. However, legislation passed between Charles I's departure from London (when he no longer gave approval) and the Restoration in 1660 was deemed illegal, null and void. This was supported by an Act of Praemunire that threatened life imprisonment and forfeiture of land and goods for anyone who suggested Parliament had the right to legislate without the King.
The Militia Act of May 1661 placed the armed forces back into the King's hands, and the King retained the power to appoint his ministers of state. An Act of 1662 against 'tumultuous petitioning' sought to end popular participation in political decisions.
The monarchy restored in 1660 differed from the Personal Rule
The monarchy restored in 1660 was not identical to that of the 1630s under Charles I's Personal Rule. By agreeing to the legislation of 1641, Charles II had already made concessions that imposed substantial limits on the monarchy's power. Among these was the Triennial Act, whereby the King agreed to call a new Parliament (with new elections) every three years.
The 1664 Triennial Act
Out of sensitivity to Charles II's honour, a new Triennial Act passed in 1664 removed the safeguards that provided automatically for the issuing of new parliamentary writs should the King fail to do so himself. This weakened Parliament's ability to ensure regular sessions but maintained the principle of periodic parliaments.
All the Acts of 1641 that constrained the monarch's power in order to end the Personal Rule remained in force. These included Ship Money, Forest Fines, Distraint of Knighthood, the prerogative courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, and the Council of the North. None of these would ever return.
Even before Charles II's return from exile, the Convention Parliament had passed an Act for the Confirmation of Judicial Proceedings, confirming the legality of the work of magistrates and judges since the outbreak of the civil wars. This was necessary to maintain continuity of the law courts dealing with, for example, the common law and criminal cases.
The Navigation Acts of 1650 and 1651 were also adopted by the Convention Parliament, despite being Acts of a regime that had long been unpopular with Parliament, as they abolished purveyance and wardship, feudal tenures that had long been unpopular with Parliament.
Attempts to limit royal power failed
Despite these changes, the monarchy was restored in 1660 almost unconditionally. Attempts to restrict Charles II's prerogative powers by explicitly confirming parliamentary privileges and the fundamental laws of Magna Carta failed in the House of Lords. None of the terms that Parliament had tried to impose on Charles I, from the Nineteen Propositions of 1642 to the Newport negotiations of 1648, were incorporated in the constitutional settlement of 1660.
An Opportunity Missed
Parliament's failure to impose explicit limitations on royal power in 1660 meant that many of the same constitutional tensions that had led to civil war in 1642 would resurface in the following decades, ultimately contributing to the political crises of the late 1670s.
Settlement of the kingdom
Most historians have argued that the Restoration failed to settle the issues that divided the kingdom in the 1640s. Barry Coward argued that 'the political history of the period 1660–67 is characterised by escalating political instability and by growing conflict between Charles II and Parliament'.
However, the historian Tim Harris, in his work Restoration: Charles II and his Kingdoms (2006), provides a different perspective. Harris argued that it cannot be denied that the Restoration regime faced serious difficulties. Indeed, by the late 1670s these had grown so severe that many contemporaries – including the King himself – genuinely came to fear the possibility of renewed civil war. Healing the divisions that had caused the outbreak of civil war in 1642, and which in turn had been exacerbated by the political experiences of the 1640s and 1650s, proved no easy task, and political tensions soon began to reappear.
Competing Historical Interpretations
The debate between historians like Coward and Harris highlights a central question: Did the Restoration Settlement fail immediately to resolve England's divisions, or did it provide a temporary stability that only gradually broke down over the following two decades? Understanding both perspectives is essential for evaluating the effectiveness of the settlement.
Before considering these arguments more closely, we need to familiarise ourselves with the various Acts that, between them, tried to return the nation to stability and order. Inevitably, this legislation reflected the vengeful attitude of the Cavalier Parliament.
The Cavalier Parliament
The so-called Cavalier Parliament sat from its election in 1660 until its dissolution in 1679, a total of 20 parliamentary sessions, with only one year (1672) in which Parliament did not sit. It gets its name from the large number of Royalist MPs elected, a consequence of the reaction against the events and radicalism of the civil war period at the time of the Restoration.
A Peculiar Role Reversal
The Cavalier Parliament in its early stages witnessed a peculiar 'role reversal', with Parliament imposing an intolerant High Anglicanism while the King attempted to ensure a degree of religious toleration, at least for Presbyterians. This reversed the traditional pattern where monarchs pushed for religious uniformity while Parliament sought greater tolerance.
In its later stages the Parliament began to divide into Country and Court 'parties', partly as a result of growing national suspicions about the King's policies, and partly as a result of Danby's efforts to create a Court 'party' in the House of Commons.
The religious settlement
The Church of England restored
The Church of England was restored in a form that might have pleased Archbishop Laud, had he been alive to see it. Several elements defined this restoration:
Church lands sold during the civil wars were restored without compensation to those who had purchased them.
Episcopal government of the Church was restored, meaning bishops returned to their dioceses.
The Book of Common Prayer was restored, with additional sections on Charles the Martyr and references to the wickedness of rebellion.
The Act of Uniformity (1662) required all clergy to swear to use the Anglican liturgy. All clergy not ordained by a bishop had to surrender their benefices. Some 2000 clergy (one-fifth of the Church) were forced to resign.
The Great Ejection
The Act of Uniformity resulted in approximately 2,000 clergy – one-fifth of the entire Church of England – being forced to resign their positions. This mass expulsion, known as the Great Ejection, created a significant body of Dissenting ministers who would form the backbone of nonconformist congregations throughout the Restoration period.
Charles II and the Earl of Clarendon tried to ensure that Presbyterians had a role in the new Church. For example, some prominent non-Anglicans such as Richard Baxter were appointed royal chaplains. Following the Worcester House Conference, a meeting between the King and leading Presbyterians, Charles proposed a settlement in which Presbyterian councils limited the powers of bishops, with committees of both Anglicans and Presbyterians ruling on doctrinal issues. The Cavalier Parliament, however, rejected these proposals.
The religious settlement: the Clarendon Code
Between 1661 and 1665 the Cavalier Parliament passed a series of Acts designed to restore the religious monopoly of the Anglican Church. The Corporation Act was particularly important in this respect, excluding members of religious sects from public office. Members of town corporations had to take Holy Communion according to the rites of the Church of England, renounce the Solemn League and Covenant and swear loyalty to the King.
Other Acts imposed press censorship, imposed penalties for attending non-Anglican services and prevented Dissenter clergymen from coming into contact with schools or congregations, in order to limit their influence. Together, these Acts became known as the Clarendon Code.
The Declaration of Breda's Broken Promise
In the Declaration of Breda (see Chapter 6, page 164) Charles Stuart had made a vague promise that there would be 'liberty to tender consciences'. It is unlikely that he meant by this toleration of the more radical sects that had developed since the 1640s. The Declaration was aimed at the Presbyterians, those conservative minded allies of the Scots who had been excluded from Parliament by Pride's Purge of December 1649, who had also opposed Cromwell's Protectorate and whose support Charles needed to regain the throne in 1660.
Understandably, however, the Declaration raised the hopes of radicals and moderates alike that the new King would adopt a policy of broad toleration, though the Presbyterians were as keen as the Anglicans that religious radicalism should be suppressed. In the event, even the Presbyterians' hopes were dashed by the religious settlement enacted by the Cavalier Parliament, which was punitive and intolerant.
The settlement of property
The property settlement addressed several categories of land, each with different outcomes that often seemed arbitrary and unfair:
Property Settlement Categories
Royal and Church land sold by Parliament was to be reinstated without compensation to those who had purchased it.
Royalists whose estates had been sequestered and sold by Parliament were able to get them back through the courts.
Royalists who had sold land to pay Decimation Taxes or fines or to raise forces for the King had little chance of receiving compensation.
Property taken from the Church of England or the Crown and sold was restored without compensation to its new owners. People unwise enough to have purchased this property lost their investment. This did little harm to Royalists, however, who were unlikely to have purchased ecclesiastical or royal land.
The situation of Royalists whose land had been removed by Parliament was more complicated. The greatest difficulty was faced by those who had remained inveterate enemies of the Interregnum regimes. Thus the land settlement of the Restoration appeared to punish the most loyal and to reward those who had compromised their beliefs to reach an accommodation with Cromwell's government.
An Ironic Outcome
The property settlement created a bitter irony: Royalists who had remained steadfastly loyal to the Crown throughout the Interregnum often fared worse than those who had compromised with Cromwell's regime. Those who had voluntarily sold land to support the King could not recover it, while those whose land had been confiscated by Parliament could reclaim it through the courts.
The financial settlement
Parliament estimated that the Crown needed a fixed income of £1.2 million per year during his entire reign. Would Parliament strengthen the Crown after the Restoration by giving Charles II a more adequate income?
The King was granted Tonnage and Poundage for life, worth approximately £800,000 per year.
Feudal tenures such as purveyance, wardship and forced loans were abolished.
Dunkirk was sold to the King of France for £400,000.
Hearth tax was introduced in 1662.
Parliament expected the King to raise a further £100,000 from Crown lands.
The Crown's Financial Position in Historical Context
In retrospect, it is clear that the monarchy was genuinely impoverished in the first half of the seventeenth century. During one year of Cromwell's Protectorate, for example, his government received more parliamentary income than Charles I received during his entire reign.
Calculating the Financial Deficit
Parliament's financial settlement can be broken down as follows:
Estimated annual costs: £1,200,000
Income provided:
- Tonnage and Poundage: £800,000
- Crown lands (expected): £100,000
- Hearth tax and other sources: £180,000
- Total income: £1,080,000
Annual deficit: £1,200,000 - £1,080,000 = £120,000 shortfall
This persistent deficit ensured that Charles II would remain dependent on Parliament for additional funding, particularly during times of war or emergency.
The financial settlement left the Crown with a deficit of £120,000 a year short of the estimated costs of government in times of peace. Members of Parliament – even Cavalier ones – had little conception of the real costs of government and lived under the illusion that it could be done on the cheap. Furthermore, it was necessary to keep the King short of money to force him to summon Parliament. If there is one factor that stands out in the growth of constitutional monarchy in the later seventeenth century, it is this continued reliance of the Crown on Parliamentary income.
General amnesty for participation in the civil wars
The Act of Indemnity and Oblivion (1660) took up Charles's offer of a 'free and general pardon' for his opponents in the civil wars.
All acts of hostility between the King and his enemies between 1637 and 1660 were to be erased from the public memory.
The Regicides' Fate
Parliament excluded the regicides from this amnesty – those men who had either signed Charles I's death warrant or were closely associated with his trial and execution. Approximately ten regicides were hanged, drawn and quartered, serving as a stark reminder that while general forgiveness was offered, those directly responsible for the King's death would face the ultimate punishment.
History rewritten
The Restoration also involved a conscious effort to reshape public memory and rewrite the narrative of recent history:
29 May – Restoration Day – was declared a public holiday, celebrated into the nineteenth century by people who pinned sprigs of oak leaves to their jackets, commemorating Charles II's escape after the Battle of Worcester.
Names of some of the Commonwealth's ships were changed, e.g. the Naseby became the Royal Charles.
Providence Reversed
Providence, which for many years seemed to favour Cromwell, now seemed to favour the monarchy and the forces of reaction. This shift in the interpretation of divine will reflected a broader effort to delegitimise the Commonwealth period and present the Restoration as the natural and divinely ordained outcome.
Remember!
Key Points to Remember:
- The Restoration Settlement attempted to address constitutional, religious, property, financial, and amnesty issues, but historians debate whether it successfully healed the nation's divisions.
- Charles II's reign was backdated to 1649, making the restoration nearly unconditional, though the Acts of 1641 that limited royal power remained in force.
- The Cavalier Parliament (1660-1679) passed the punitive Clarendon Code, which imposed a religious monopoly of the Anglican Church and excluded Dissenters from public office.
- The property settlement restored royal and Church lands without compensating purchasers, but proved most difficult for the most loyal Royalists who had remained enemies of the Interregnum regimes.
- The financial settlement left the Crown with a £120,000 annual deficit, ensuring continued Parliamentary control through the Crown's reliance on parliamentary income.