Plague, fire and war

By the mid-1660s Charles II's honeymoon period was over and the situation worsened when two natural disasters seriously weakened crown finances, and dented national self-confidence: bubonic plague and the Great Fire. These calamities were compounded by an avoidable disaster, the humiliation at the hands of the Dutch navy, which seriously undermined the prestige of the monarchy.

Collecting the dead for burial
Public domain

The plague of 1665

The effects of the plague, which seems to have arrived at Yarmouth in 1663 and reached its height in the summer and early autumn of 1665, can perhaps be exaggerated. The mortality was high (70,000 deaths) but plague was a common phenomenon and it probably had more effect on the poor than on the trading and governing classes (Pepys’s life was not disrupted). It is known as the Great Plague because it was the last major incident of bubonic plague to hit England.

A plague doctor, from a
contemporary Italian print

The Great Fire of London

The effects of the Fire (3-6 September) were more serious. Contemporaries estimated that it gutted most of the City and destroyed 13,200 houses, 89 churches and goods valued at £3.5 million. The overall damage is estimated to have been £10 million. London’s commerce was brought to a standstill for six months. Pepys gives the classic account.

A painting of the fire, probably from the
seventeenth century.
Public domain

The Second Dutch War

Throughout the early 1660s relations with the United Provinces (the Dutch Republic) steadily declined. The fundamental causes of the war that England were economic, but the war also sprang from Cavalier Anglican dislike of the Calvinist republic. While Charles II admired France, he snobbishly viewed the Dutch as a society of low-born merchants. He also wanted to promote the interests of the future Stadtholder, his nephew William, Prince of Orange, against the States-General.

The Restoration

Charles II, Coronation portrait
by John Michael Wright, c. 1661.
Public domain

The Restoration of Charles II was both an event and a process. The King’s peaceful accession ... put an end to twenty years of internecine war. What were left were the intractable problems that had created the conflict and the bitter legacy it had engendered (Mark Kishlansky, A Monarchy Transformed. Britain 1630-1714, 1996, p. 216).

Restoration England was a society that desperately wanted to be able to forget its past, but which forever remained haunted by it. (Tim Harris, Restoration. Charles II and his Kingdoms, 2005, p. 46). 

The story is a great deal more complicated than a simple narrative of the merry monarch presiding over the reopening of the theatres.

A decisive shift? 

The Restoration was an attempt to put the clock back. Charles II’s rule was dated from 1649 rather than 1660. An Act of August 1660 ordained that 29 May be kept as a perpetual anniversary of thanksgiving for his escape. Partly out of a feeling for  constitutional propriety, the Convention Parliament that had summoned the king to England did not impose any conditions on him. 

However, the clock was turned back to 1641 not 1640. The constitutional reforms of 1641 – the destruction of the prerogative courts, the abolition of the Crown’s feudal revenue, and prerogative taxes such as Ship Money – all stayed in place. But the issue of the militia, which had led directly to the Civil War, was settled in the king's favour. He retained ‘sole right of command’ over the militia, though day-to-day control was delegated to the lords lieutenant.

In some respects, the monarchy was strengthened as a result of the Interregnum. The shock and horror of Charles I’s execution drove some towards support for a strong authoritarian monarchy and religious intolerance. This was part of a Europe-wide trend. Others were less willing to abandon religious and parliamentary liberties. The Restoration was full of ambiguities, and the great constitutional and religious issues of the Civil War remained unsettled. 


The character of Charles II
Charles sailed to England on the Naseby (hastily re-christened The Royal Charles!) and landed at Dover - the town celebrated all night. On Tuesday 29 May he entered London. What type of man was he?

Restoration House, Rochester,
where Charles
spent his first night in England.
The model for Satis House in
Great Expectations

He had had a very chequered life. In 1644, at the age of fourteen, he had been appointed commander of the king’s western forces in the civil war and subsequently fled abroad. In February 1649 he had been proclaimed King of Scots and crowned in the following year. After his defeat at Worcester in 1651 he had set up his own court in exile, taking refuge in France, Germany and Holland.

The reign of Charles II: the Clarendon period

Clarendon

Until 1667 the king’s chief minister was his Lord Chancellor, Edward Hyde, created earl of Clarendon in 1661. In the reign of Charles I he had been seen as the face of constitutional royalism - a believer in a balanced constitution rather than an absolute monarchy. From the mid 1640s he became the future Charles II’s guardian - a position Charles came increasingly to resent. He saw his former tutor as stuffy and self-righteous and resented his attempts to influence his policies. 

Edward Hyde, 1st earl of Clarendon
Public domain

The Braganza marriage

In 1661 Clarendon secured the marriage of Charles II to Catherine of Braganza, the daughter of King João IV of Portugal. He regarded this as a great diplomatic coup. Since 1640 Portugal had been engaged in a struggle with the crumbling Spanish Empire for her independence. She was also a major colonial power. Catherine's dowry was Tangier (which would give England a Mediterranean base), Bombay (which would secure the trade of the Indies) and 2 million cruzados (c.£300,000). This marriage was encouraged by France, which offered £50,000.