Charles II's Restoration

“I took up my politics,” said Sir Walter Scott of his school-days, “as King Charles II did his religion, from an idea that the Cavalier creed was the more gentlemanlike persuasion of the two.”

This quote of Walter Scott’s is found on the Bartleby.com website.  May 29^th was a significant date for Charles II, for more than one reason.  It was his birthday, and his restoration day.  Diarist John Evelyn records the restoration:

‘29th May, 1660. This day, his Majesty, Charles II 

came to London, after a sad and long exile and calami- 

tous suffering both of the King and Church, being seven- 

teen years. This was also his birthday, and with a 

triumph of above 20,000 horse and foot, brandishing their 

swords, and shouting with inexpressible joy; the ways 

strewn with flowers, the bells ringing, the streets hung 

with tapestry, fountains running with wine; the Mayor, 

Aldermen, and all the companies, in their liveries, chains 

of gold, and banners ; Lords and Nobles, clad in cloth of 

silver, gold, and velvet; the windows and balconies, all 

set with ladies; trumpets, music, and myriads of people 

flocking, even so far as from Rochester, so as they were 

seven hours in passing the city, even from two in the 

afternoon till nine at night. 

I stood in the Strand and beheld it, and blessed God. 

And all this was done without one drop of blood shed, 

and by that very army which rebelled against him : but it 

was the Lord's doing, for such a restoration was never 

mentioned in any history, ancient or modem, since the 

return of the Jews from their Babylonish captivity; nor 

so joyful a day and so bright ever seen in this nation, 

this happening when to expect or effect it was past all 

human policy.’

John Pym

‘…There were, however, two of the household at Woodstock, who appeared not so entirely reconciled with Louis Kerneguy or his purposes. The one was Bevis, who seemed, from their first unfriendly rencontre, to have kept up a pique against their new guest, which no advances on the part of Charles were able to soften. If the page was by chance left alone with his young mistress, Bevis chose always to be of the party; came close by Alice's chair, and growled audibly when the gallant drew near her. "It is a pity," said the disguised prince, "that your Bevis is not a bull-dog, that we might dub him a roundhead at once— He is too handsome, too noble, too aristocratic, to nourish those inhospitable prejudices against a poor houseless cavalier. I am convinced the spirit of Pym¹  or Hampden.…

1) John Pym (1584-1643), the Parliamentary leader, prominent in the impeachment of Buckingham, Strafford and Laud. He was one of the "five members" whose attempted arrest by Charles I in January. 1, 1642 hastened the outbreak of civil war.’

Puritan John Pym was a leader in the Long Parliament, and was very much in opposition to King Charles I, as the note to the text of Walter Scott’s “Woodstock” above attests.  “Woodstock” was set in 1651, around Charles I’s son Charles II’s escape from England.  Among other accomplishments, John Pym also negotiated the Solemn League and Covenant in 1643, not long before his death, which occurred on December 8^th, 1643. 

Battle of Worcester

‘…The circumstances are familiarly known, to the reader of English history, of the march of the Earl of Derby, in I65l, with a corps from the Isle of Man for the service of the King; his joining the royal army on the eve of the battle of Worcester ; his flight and imprisonment at Chester, after that signal defeat ; and his trial and execution at Bolton in Lancashire, by the officers of the Parliament, on the I5th October of that year.

Immediately afterwards, Colonel Duckenfield, who commanded at Chester on behalf of the Parliament, proceeded with an armament of ten ships, and a considerable military force, for the reduction of the Isle of Man…’

The Battle of Worcester, which is mentioned in the introduction to Walter Scott’s “Peveril of the Peak” (text above), took place on September 3^rd, 1651.  The result was a victory for Parliamentarian forces under Oliver Cromwell.  James Stanley, the 7^th Earl of Derby, was executed well after the efforts of Charles II to regain his throne had failed.  Not as fortunate in hiding as Charles, Stanley was captured near Nantwich, tried for treason, and executed on October 15^th.

Battle of Inverkeithing

‘The devotion of the young chief of Clan Quhele's foster father and foster brethren in the novel is a trait of clannish fidelity, of which Highland story furnishes many examples. In the battle of Inverkeithing, between the Royalists and Oliver Cromwell's troops, a foster father and seven brave sons are known to have thus sacrificed themselves for Sir Hector Maclean of Duart; the old man, whenever one of his boys fell, thrusting forward another to fill his place at the right hand of the beloved chief, with the very words adopted in the novel, "Another for Hector!"…’

The Battle of Inverkeithing was fought on July 20, 1651, with Covenanting forces fighting in support of Charles II, against the Parliamentarian army.  Cromwell’s forces won the day, providing a strategic advantage in the last of the English Civil Wars.  Sir Walter Scott’s observation above is taken from the preface to “The Fair Maid of Perth”.

Prince Rupert's Return to England

‘Up and comes the flageolet master, and brings me two new great Ivory pipes which cost me 32s., and so to play, and he being done, and Balty’s wife taking her leave of me, she going back to Lee to-day, I to Westminster and there did receive 15,000l orders out of the Exchequer in part of a bigger sum upon the eleven months tax for Tangier, part of which I presently delivered to Sir H. Cholmly, who was there, and thence with Mr. Gawden to Auditor Woods and Beales to examine some precedents in his business of the Victualling on his behalf, and so home, and in my way by coach down Marke Lane, mightily pleased and smitten to see, as I thought, in passing, the pretty woman, the line-maker’s wife that lived in Fenchurch Streete, and I had great mind to have gone back to have seen, but yet would correct my nature and would not. So to dinner with my wife, and then to sing, and so to the office, where busy all the afternoon late, and to Sir W. Batten’s and to Sir R. Ford’s, we all to consider about our great prize at Hull, being troubled at our being likely to be troubled with Prince Rupert, by reason of Hogg’s consorting himself with two privateers of the Prince’s, and so we study how to ease or secure ourselves…’

The text above is from Pepys’ Diary, entry dated July 19, 1667.  Samuel Pepys was not friendly with Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who served on the Tangier Committed with Pepys.  Rupert was related to the Stuarts, and returned to England from German military service with the Restoration of Charles II.  Sir Walter Scott thought of Rupert in terms of his battles with Montrose.  The following passage comes from Scott’s “A Legend of Montrose”:

‘The celebrated Sir Henry Vane, one of the commissioners who negotiated the alliance betwixt England and Scotland, saw the influence which this bait had upon the spirits of those with whom he dealt; and although himself a violent Independent, he contrived at once to gratify and to elude the eager desires of the Presbyterians, by qualifying the obligation to reform the Church of England, as a change to be executed "according to the word of God, and the best reformed churches." Deceived by their own eagerness, themselves entertaining no doubts on the JUS DIVINUM of their own ecclesiastical establishments, and not holding it possible such doubts could be adopted by others, the Convention of Estates and the Kirk of Scotland conceived, that such expressions necessarily inferred the establishment of Presbytery; nor were they undeceived, until, when their help was no longer needful, the sectaries gave them to understand, that the phrase might be as well applied to Independency, or any other mode of worship, which those who were at the head of affairs at the time might consider as agreeable "to the word of God, and the practice of the reformed churches." Neither were the outwitted Scottish less astonished to find, that the designs of the English sectaries struck against the monarchial constitution of Britain, it having been their intention to reduce the power of the King, but by no means to abrogate the office. They fared, however, in this respect, like rash physicians, who commence by over-physicking a patient, until he is reduced to a state of weakness, from which cordials are afterwards unable to recover him.
But these events were still in the womb of futurity. As yet the Scottish Parliament held their engagement with England consistent with justice, prudence, and piety, and their military undertaking seemed to succeed to their very wish. The junction of the Scottish army with those of Fairfax and Manchester, enabled the Parliamentary forces to besiege York, and to fight the desperate action of Long-Marston Moor, in which Prince Rupert and the Marquis of Newcastle were defeated. The Scottish auxiliaries, indeed, had less of the glory of this victory than their countrymen could desire. David Leslie, with their cavalry, fought bravely, and to them, as well as to Cromwell's brigade of Independents, the honour of the day belonged; but the old Earl of Leven, the covenanting general, was driven out of the field by the impetuous charge of Prince Rupert, and was thirty miles distant, in full flight towards Scotland, when he was overtaken by the news that his party had gained a complete victory. ..’

Charles II of England Born

‘In Charles the Second's time, the representative of this ancient family was Sir Geoffrey Peveril, a man who had many of the ordinary attributes of an old-fashioned country gentleman, and very few individual traits to distinguish him from the general portrait of that worthy class of mankind. He was proud of small advantages, angry at small disappointments, incapable of forming any resolution or opinion abstracted from his own prejudices--he was proud of his birth, lavish in his housekeeping, convivial with those kindred and acquaintances, who would allow his superiority in rank--contentious and quarrelsome with all that crossed his pretensions--kind to the poor, except when they plundered his game--a Royalist in his political opinions, and one who detested alike a Roundhead, a poacher, and a Presbyterian. In religion Sir Geoffrey was a high-churchman, of so exalted a strain that many thought he still nourished in private the Roman Catholic tenets, which his family had only renounced in his father's time, and that he had a dispensation for conforming in outward observances to the Protestant faith. There was at least such a scandal amongst the Puritans, and the influence which Sir Geoffrey Peveril certainly appeared to possess amongst the Catholic gentlemen of Derbyshire and Cheshire, seemed to give countenance to the  rumour.’

The passage above, from Sir Walter Scott's "Peveril of the Peak", discuss Charles Stuart's time.  England’s Charles II was born this day, May 29^th , in 1630.  Charles was 18 when his father, Charles I was executed, and he spent many years in exile, before returning during the Restoration to become king.

Out of Exile

‘But our brave young king is now come home,
King Charles the Second in degree;

The Lord send peace into his time,
And God preserve his majestie! ‘ 

The text above is from “The Gallant Grahams”, which is included in Sir Walter Scott’s “Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border”.  On May 25^th, 1660, Samuel Pepys, in his diary, records arriving in England with Charles II and Charles’ brother James, Duke of York. The Stuart brothers were returning from their exile in the Netherlands.

‘By the morning we were come close to the land, and every body made ready to get on shore. The King and the two Dukes did eat their breakfast before they went, and there being set some ship’s diet before them, only to show them the manner of the ship’s diet, they eat of nothing else but pease and pork, and boiled beef. I had Mr. Darcy in my cabin and Dr. Clerke, who eat with me, told me how the King had given 50l. to Mr. Sheply for my Lord’s servants, and 500l. among the officers and common men of the ship. I spoke with the Duke of York about business, who called me Pepys by name, and upon my desire did promise me his future favour. Great expectation of the King’s making some Knights, but there was none. About noon (though the brigantine that Beale made was there ready to carry him) yet he would go in my Lord’s barge with the two Dukes. Our Captain steered, and my Lord went along bare with him. I went, and Mr. Mansell, and one of the King’s footmen, with a dog that the King loved,1 (which [dirted] the boat, which made us laugh, and me think that a King and all that belong to him are but just as others are), in a boat by ourselves, and so got on shore when the King did, who was received by General Monk with all imaginable love and respect at his entrance upon the land of Dover. Infinite the crowd of people and the horsemen, citizens, and noblemen of all sorts. The Mayor of the town came and gave him his white staff, the badge of his place, which the King did give him again. The Mayor also presented him from the town a very rich Bible, which he took and said it was the thing that he loved above all things in the world. A canopy was provided for him to stand under, which he did, and talked awhile with General Monk and others, and so into a stately coach there set for him, and so away through the town towards Canterbury, without making any stay at Dover. The shouting and joy expressed by all is past imagination. Seeing that my Lord did not stir out of his barge, I got into a boat, and so into his barge, whither Mr. John Crew stepped, and spoke a word or two to my Lord, and so returned, we back to the ship, and going did see a man almost drowned that fell out of his boat into the sea, but with much ado was got out. My Lord almost transported with joy that he had done all this without any the least blur or obstruction in the world, that could give an offence to any, and with the great honour he thought it would be to him. Being overtook by the brigantine, my Lord and we went out of our barge into it, and so went on board with Sir W. Batten, and the Vice and Rear-Admirals. At night my Lord supped and Mr. Thomas Crew with Captain Stoakes, I supped with the Captain, who told me what the King had given us. My Lord returned late, and at his coming did give me order to cause the marke to be gilded, and a Crown and C. R. to be made at the head of the coach table, where the King to-day with his own hand did mark his height, which accordingly I caused the painter to do, and is now done as is to be seen.’

Long Parliament Dissolves

On March 16, 1660, the Long Parliament was disbanded.  This Parliament had stood since 1640, when Charles I called it, and ended with the Restoration of Charles II.  Sir Walter Scott has some words on this event, in his "Tales of a Landlord":

'...The assurance that General Monk had openly quarrelled with the present rulers, and was disposed to insist for a free and full Parliament, was made public by the printing and dispersing of the General's letter, and the tidings filled the City with most extravagant rejoicings. The rabble rung all the bells, lighted immense bonfires in every street, and danced around them, while they drank healths to the General, the secluded members, and even to the King. But the principal part of their amusement was roasting rumps of poultry, or fragments of butcher-meat cut into that form, in ridicule of their late rulers, whose power they foresaw would cease, whenever a full Parliament should be convened.. The revelry lasted the whole night, which was that of 11th February, 1660.Monk, supported at once by military strength and the consciousness of general popularity, did not wait until the new Parliament should be assembled, or the present dissolved, to take measures for destroying the influence of the junto now sitting at Westminster. He compelled them to open their doors to, and admit to their deliberations and votes, all the secluded members of their body, who had been expelled from their seats by military violence, since it was first practised on the occasion called Colonel Pride's Purge. These members, returning to Parliament accordingly, made by their numbers such a predominant majority in the House, that the fifty or sixty persons, who had lately been at the head of the Government, were instantly reduced to the insignificance, as a party, from which they had only emerged by dint of the force which had been exercised to exclude the large body who were now restored to their seats.


The first acts of the House thus renovated were to disband the refractory part of the army, to dispossess the disaffected officers, of whom there were very many, and to reduce the country to a state of tranquillity ; after which they dissolved themselves, having first issued writs to summon a new Parliament, to meet on the 25ih of April. Thus then finally ended the Long Parliament, as it is called, which had sat for nearly twenty years; the most eventful period, perhaps, in British history...'

Coronation of Charles II at Scone

Charles II of England was the last monarch crowned at Scone.  The coronation occurred on January 1, 1651, and the following description is included in "A collection of scarce and valuable tracts: on the most interesting and Entertaining Subjects", bu Sir Walter Scott and Baron John Somers Somers:

'The following account of the coronation at Scone, when the Scottish clergy, content to have established their superiority over the crown, were in the mood of admitting Charles II. to some external marks of dignity, affords abundant illustration of Clarendon's account of his reception and treatment in the hereditary kingdom of his ancestors.


" The king was received by the Marquis of Argyle with all the outward respect imaginable; but within two days after his landing, all the English servants he had of any quality were removed from his person, the Duke of Buckingham only excepted.


" He was not present in their councils; nor were the results thereof communicated to him; nor was he in the least degree communicated with in any part of the government; yet they made great shew of outward reverence to him ; and even the chaplains, when they used rudeness and barbarity in their reprehensions and reproaches, approached him still with bended knees, and in the humblest postures. There was never a better courtier than Argyle, who used all possible address to make himself gracious to the king, entertained him with very pleasant discourses, with such insinuations, that the king did not only very well like his conversation, but often believed that he had a mind to please and gratify him ; but then, when his majesty made any attempt to get some of his servants about him, or to reconcile the two factions, that the kingdom might be united, he gathered up his countenance and retired from him, without ever yielding, to any one proposition that was made to him by his majesty. In a word, the king's table was well served: there he sate in majesty, waited upon with decency: he had good horses to ride abroad to take the air, and was then well attended; and in all public appearances seemed to want nothing that was due to a great king. In all other respects, with power to oblige or gratify any man, to dispose or order any thing, or himself to go to any other place than was assigned to him, he had nothing of a prince, but might very well be looked upon as a prisoner. — Clarendon's History, III. 286.


It is singular that, on the very day of Charles's coronation, the themes on which the clergy who officiated enlarged with most unction, were the backslidings and covenant-breaking of his grandfather and father, with the guilt of encouraging sectaries and Erastians, and the solemn, burden, that he should beware, " Ne quid detriment! ecclesia capiat"


First the king's majestic, in a princes robe, was conducted from his bed chamber, by the constable on his right hand, and the marishall on his left hand, to the chamber of presence, and there was placed in a chaire, under a cloath of slate, by the Lord of Angus, chamberlayne appointed by the king for that day, and there, after a little repose, the noblemen, with the commissioners of barons and burroughes, entered the hall, and presented themselves before his majesty.


There-after, the lord chancellour spoke to the king to this purpose: Sir, your good subjects desire you may be crowned, as the righteous and lawful heire of the crown of this kingdome; that you would maintain religion as it is presently professed and established, conform to the nationall covenant, league and covenant, and according to your declaration at Dumfermring in August last; also that you would be graciously pleased to receive them under your highnesse protection, to govern them by the laws of the kingdome, and to defend them in their rights and liberties, by your royall power, offering themselves in most humble manner to your majestic, with their vowes to bestow land, life, and what else is in their power, for the maintainance of religion, for the safety of your majesties sacred person, and maintainance of your crowne, which they intreat your majestic to accept, and pray Almightie God that for man) years you may happily enjoy the same.


The king made this answer: I do esteeme the affections of my good people more than the crownes of many kingdomes, and shall be ready, by Gods assistance, to bestow my life in their defence, wishing to live no longer then 1 may see religion and this kingdome flourish in all happiness.


Thereafter the commissioners of burroughes and of barrones, and the noble-men, accompanied his majestic to the kirk of Scoone, in order and rank according to their qualitie, two and two.

The spurres being carried by the Earle of Eglinton.  Next, the sword by the Earle of Rothes.  Then the scepter by the Earle of Craufurd and Lindesay.  And the crown by the Marques of Argyle, immediately before the king.

Then came the king, with the great constable on his right hand, and the great marishall on his left hand, his train being carried by the Lord Erskine, the Lord Montgomery, the Lord Newbottle, and the Lord Machlene, four carles eldest sonnes, under a canopy of crimson velvet, supported by six earles sonnes, to wit, the Lord Druinmond, the Lord Carnegie, the Lord Ramsay, the Lord Johnstoun, the Lord Brechin, the Lord Yester, and the six carriers supported by six noble-men's sounes.


Thus the kings majestic entereth the kirk.

The kirk being fitted and prepared with a table whereupon the honours were layed, and a chaire in a fitting place for his majesties hearing of sermon, over against the minister, and another chaire on the other side, where he sate when he received the crowne, before which there was a bench decently covered, as also seats about for the noblemen, barons, and burgesses.


And there being also a stage in a fit place erected of 14 foot square, about four foot high from the ground, covered with carpets, with two stairs, one from the west, and another to the east, upon which great stage there was another little stage erected, som two foot high, ascending by two steps, on which the throne or chaire ot state was set.


The kirk thus fittingly prepared, the kings majestie entereth the same, accompanied as aforesaid, and first setteth himself in his chaire, for hearing of sermon...'