Portrait of Charles II after the Restoration, c. 1660-1665, by John Michael Wright. Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons.
In 1649, the unthinkable happened. After seven years of civil war, King Charles I of England was tried for treason, sentenced to death, and beheaded on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House in London. The monarchy was abolished and a republican Commonwealth declared, led by the victorious Parliamentary general Oliver Cromwell.
England descended into a decade of political upheaval and further conflict. Yet just 11 years after Charles I‘s execution, the dead king‘s eldest son, Charles II, returned in triumph from exile to reclaim his throne. The monarchy was restored and the House of Stuart reinstalled. Why did a country that had gone to the drastic lengths of killing its king decide to resurrect the monarchy in the space of a decade? The answer lies in a mix of political pragmatism, social conservatism, and the failures of England‘s brief experiment with republican rule.
Regicide and Republic
The beheading of Charles I shocked the nation and Europe. As historian Robert Tombs notes in The English and Their History, "the English had been among the first to get rid of their king, committing in the eyes of most observers elsewhere the terrible sin of regicide."[^1] Executing a divinely ordained monarch was considered unthinkable to most people at the time. Even in England, the majority of the population did not support such a radical break with the past.
Despite Parliamentarian victory in the Civil Wars, royalist sentiment remained strong in many parts of the country. During the Commonwealth period from 1649 to 1660, there were at least 11 significant royalist uprisings against the republican regime.[^2] The largest rebellion in 1655, led by the Sealed Knot secret society, planned to seize key cities, assassinate Cromwell, and invite Charles II to return as king. The plot was discovered and suppressed, but it revealed the lingering support for the Stuarts.
The Cromwell Protectorate
Under Oliver Cromwell, England officially became a republic known as the Commonwealth. But in practice, Cromwell ruled as a military dictator. His power base was the New Model Army, a formidable Puritan fighting force that had triumphed over the Royalists. Cromwell dismissed the Rump Parliament in 1653 and declared the Protectorate, with himself as Lord Protector. Though he refused the title of king, Cromwell held more power than Charles I ever had.
Cromwell enforced a strict Puritan moral code on the nation. Many popular pastimes were banned – theaters closed, maypoles cut down, gambling dens and alehouses shuttered. His rule relied on a large standing army and political repression. Figures like Sir Henry Vane, who argued for greater democracy and religious freedom, were imprisoned in the Tower.[^3]
England became a diplomatic pariah, cut off from its former allies. The Protectorate waged costly and unsuccessful wars against the Dutch Republic and Spain. Trade suffered and taxes rose to fund the growing state bureaucracy and military. As Tombs writes, "many came to look back nostalgically to the days of King Charles: tyrannical, perhaps, but at least he had not tried to stop people dancing."[^4]
[^1]: Robert Tombs, The English and Their History (New York: Knopf, 2015), 239.
[^2]: Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms (London: Penguin, 2006), 43.
[^3]: Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson by Lucy Hutchinson, ed. James Sutherland (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 303.
[^4]: Tombs, 255.
The Restoration Settlement
When Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, his son Richard assumed the title of Lord Protector. But the younger Cromwell lacked his father‘s authority and support base. As David Underdown outlines in his study of the late 1650s, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion, Richard Cromwell "had none of his father‘s prestige, and he had not created a significant party of his own. Only the army‘s backing had put him in power."[^5] Factions in the army and Parliament soon turned against him.
In 1660, General George Monck, a former royalist turned Cromwellian commander, marched his troops south from Scotland and seized London, forcing the dissolution of the Protectorate. Monck and his allies in Parliament opened secret negotiations with the exiled Charles II. In April 1660, from his temporary court in the Dutch city of Breda, Charles issued a declaration offering a pardon for past crimes, religious toleration, and respect for Parliament‘s rights in return for the throne.[^6] Parliament accepted.
On May 8, 1660, both houses of Parliament approved the Restoration. As historian Tim Harris describes, "The Restoration was not a straightforward return to the old order…but involved a series of political deals and compromises."[^7] The Convention Parliament confirmed many of the constitutional gains from before the Civil War, such as the abolition of the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, no taxation without Parliamentary consent, and no standing army in peacetime.[^8] Charles II agreed to rule in cooperation with Parliament.
In a society still traumatized by civil war and deeply attached to tradition, the restoration of the monarchy satisfied the desire for a return to normalcy. The Stuarts had ruled England for generations and kingship was still seen as the natural, divinely sanctioned form of government. Republicanism, by contrast, was viewed as a strange foreign notion. Lucy Hutchinson, the wife of a Puritan colonel, wrote in her memoirs that the Commonwealth "was looked upon [by most] as a monstrous and unnatural way of government."[^9]
The majority of England‘s nobles and gentry remained monarchists at heart and had only grudgingly accepted Cromwell‘s rule. They welcomed the return of a king as a bulwark against social upheaval. The Church of England also supported the Restoration, seeing it as a way to regain their former dominance and suppress religious radicals. Restoration poets and playwrights like John Dryden shaped public opinion with works praising the monarchy‘s return and denigrating the Commonwealth as an aberration.[^10]
[^5]: David Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603-1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 278.
[^6]: Declaration of Breda, 4 April 1660, quoted in John Miller, Charles II (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991), 27.
[^7]: Harris, 44.
[^8]: Harris, 54.
[^9]: Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, 84.
[^10]: Steven Zwicker, Lines of Authority: Politics and English Literary Culture, 1649-1689 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 35.
Conclusion
Despite the radicalism of the 1640s and 1650s, England was still a fundamentally conservative, monarchical society. The Commonwealth failed to put down deep roots. Many saw the Protectorate as a thinly veiled military tyranny. By 1660, even former Parliamentarians were willing to compromise with the Stuarts to regain stability.
Charles II offered a more conciliatory approach than his inflexible father. Unlike European absolutists, he accepted limitations on his power and worked with Parliament, ushering in a period of calm and prosperity after the upheavals of the previous decades. The Restoration was not so much a complete return to the past as a renegotiation of the core institutions that the majority still supported – king, Parliament, and the Church of England.
Of course, tensions between crown and Parliament would continue, culminating in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and a permanently weakened monarchy. But the Restoration showed that in the end, kings, not commoners or generals, still ruled Britain‘s heart in the 17th century. The Stuarts offered familiarity and legitimacy after a traumatic rebellion – and for a country thirsting for peace, that was enough to give monarchy another chance.
