In 1660 the King returned and immediately sought to rebuild the damaged prestige of the Crown. And in popular memory, Charles II’s reputation has been among the best – the Merrie Monarch, a polymath and breath of fresh air that brought back the joy. The episode covers the king’s return, his character and historical reputation – and the Restoration settlement in Ireland and Scotland.

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Transcript

I think we have previously covered the general joy at the return of the King into London in May 1660, invited by the Convention parliament – the it didn’t consider itself a proper parliament, because it hadn’t been called by the king. And you might remember the broad outlines of the deal – which was that no conditions were to be imposed on the king, and that all acts passed without royal assent were to be null and void. They voted money and customs and all that to the king, and critically did what Holles and Haselrig should have done – they raised a tax to pay off the army. And the army left when they were paid – actually a large number of the cavalry, may be 30%, walked out in disgust before that, without their 30 pieces of silver. There was of course the very generous Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, and pursuit of the regicides.  They worked very hard actually, the Convention, there’s a long list of acts. They even found time for An Act Nominating of Commissioners of Sewers, which isn’t something I remember from George Monks list for the declaration of Breda, but maybe they just smelled something fishy. Or some other odour. Who knows.

After sorting out the sewers and other things, the Convention parliament was dissolved in December 1660, and elections called for May 1661, which parliament, the Cavalier Parliament as it would become known, would be responsible for sorting out all the complicated question like what happened to all that land which had changed hands.

There is little reason to suppose that London’s official reaction of joy and delight was not shared up and down England. But of course there were pockets of people who were appalled at the Restoration, especially on these lily livered terms. I guess if you walked down Coleman Street among the Independents you wouldn’t see a single bonfire or string of bunting. And All over the countryside there were reports of people talking against the restoration; there must have been a considerable number who carried in their hearts a loyalty to the Good Old Cause. All together they probably don’t amount to much more than a hill of beans, but Charles‘ new ministers didn’t necessarily know that, and they were worried. And In January 1661 there is indeed a scare when Thomas Venner the cooper raised the Fifth Monarchists who rejected King Charles in favour of King Jersus, and sought to overthrow the state. Trouble is, they probably needed more than 50 blokes to do it. Albermarle’s soldiers, ort Monk’s soldiers, rounded then up and Pepys met Venner one Saturday in January. Pepys was on the way to a meeting in a tavern, Venner was on a hurdle on the way to a meeting at Tyburn. I know which meeting I’d have preferred to be going to.

Venner’s rebellion wasn’t much of a threat; but the likes of Edward Hyde, or Clarendon as we shall now call him, who was now installed as Chancellor and the most powerful man in England under the king, Clarendon didn’t know that. A feature of Charles reign will be a constant fear of rebellion, which repeatedly results in over-reactions. England was a country desperately trying to forget the immediate past – and continually failing to do so.

The reaction seems similar in Scotland and Ireland. In Ireland, a group of officers under Broghill and Charles Coote had been the first in the Three Kingdoms to declare for Charles in December 1659 in the Dublin parliament. Even the Gaelic Irish noted that it was good to have a descendant of the ancient Gaelic kings on the throne. The Scots right from the start had never wanted to get rid of their ancient royal dynasty anyway, not even the most covenanting covenanter had wanted that, and so the Earl of Belcarres was able to report that

Never did a king succeed to a crown or throne with more love and esteem of his subjects.

Again the clock was set back, and the Scottish parliament revived. In Edinburgh they had a big party on 14th May. An effigy of Cromwell with the devil chasing him was blown up on Castle Hill. They know how to party those Scots. But if the Covenanters weren’t worried – they should have been. Charles didn’t have happy memories of his time in Scotland. His most unhappy, unhappy memory, was being lectured by Johnston of Waristoun, author of the Covenant, on his morals. Johnston was excluded from the Scottish 1662 Act of Oblivion, and was pursued until tracked down in Rouen in France and hanged in Edinburgh in 1663. Charles II was well capable of holding a grudge. As a few people would find that out.

 

 

 

 

 

The civil wars had stripped the British monarchy of much of the prestige which had protected and sustained in. In this new wave of goodwill in 1660, Charles was well aware it’s mystique and majesty must be re-established. He had a good start, with the Coronation a chance to emphasise grandeur, wealth, majesty – and the sacral nature of kingship. None of this ‘will of the people’ tripe.  This was no poxy Fenland farmer made good. The King was God’s work.

It was carefully timed – for England’s national day, 23rd April, St George’s Day. Presumably during the planning a few folks rolled out that brilliant and so so surprising gotcha that St George was Turkish, it was Genoa’s flag etc etc so on and so forth, because that is part of the annual ceremony here.

Not only did the magnificence of the procedures help, but there was the stream of foreign dignitaries, who had been arriving for weeks and months to pay their respects at the new court. They in their turn were each trying to out-do each other in magnificence. The first major power were the Spanish, closely followed by the Dutch, and they had a bit of a banger of a gift, since they returned a clutch of paintings Charles the Martyr had collected and the Commonwealth had sold off. That was symbolic. The Venetians were a bit upset at the pressure put on them to up the quality of their gifts – Venice wasn’t quite the economic powerhouse it once used to be; the Russians outdid most people with a delegation of 165 people and gifts which included the teeth of Sea Horses, which is going on my Christmas list right away.

The whole process could get awkward. Every time a new lot arrived, all the foreign ambassadors and their retinues would be invited along – I mean you can imagine the pageant of glorious peacocks regularly paraded before Londoners eyes. But precedence was important, your place in the line indicated your county’s relative importance. So when the Swedes came, and the procession of foreign ambassadors formed to see them, the Spanish team got were late and got behind. So they tried to force their way in front of the French delegation. As Don will one day relate, the marching men refused to yield, so the Spaniards did what any sensible ambassador would do; they opened fire with their muskets, killing several French horses – oh, and French delegates, and carried on triumphant over the blood. Pepys was watching the whole thing, and when the Spanish won, the crowd cheered, whooped and clapped, rang bells and lit bonfires. Pepys joined in the celebration, because as he wrote

Indeed we do naturally all love the Spanish and hate the French[1]

I would like to applaud the first sentiment, and distance myself from the latter.

A third opportunity for the bigging up of majesty, then would come with the marriage of Charles to the Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza, whose dowry included a sack full of cash – and the North African town of Tangiers, curiously. It wasn’t a happy gift – the English would leave in 1683, blowing the town to smithereens before they left.

Anyway Catherine left Lisbon on England’s national Day, 23rd April celebrating England’s patron saint – who I learn is not actually English, and the associated flag shared by other nations. Who’d have thought it., eh? The pair were married publicly under Anglican rites, and all London was astounded by Catherine’s entourage – John Evelyn, a reasonably cultured man, wrote of the train of

Portuguese ladies in their monstrous farthingales

They were also married privately under Catholic rites, and Charles told Clarendon

I cannot easily tell you how happy I think myself…I am confident never two humours were better fitted together than ours are

Which is sad as it turns out. Famously of course it transpired that Catherine could not have children, around which fact will flow a lot of consequences. Now, Catherine was very vulnerable; a princess from a foreign land, who initially spoke no English, and who had been raised in the seclusion and moral atmosphere of a convent, and trained in the formality of the Spanish court. Still since Charles had been so delighted, you might think she would have nothing to gear. In which case, you would be wrong – her husband treated her abominably. To explain.

Charles, famously of course, was a great one for sex. And indeed that will a feature of court life, and theatre – presented generally as a sort of reaction to the Puritan commonwealth. A bit like when you give up alcohol for a month after Christmas, and then get absolutely lathered on 1st February. Well, one of Charles’ most famous mistresses was Barbara Villiers, best known by her later name of Barbara Castlemaine. Her history is fascinating, and incidentally makes it clear that she was also massively into sex. She first became a mistress to a married bloke in 1656 or 7, when maybe 17; got married but kept the affair going on. She was intelligent, sharp as a razor, determined and aggressively acquisitive; she would remain deeply influential for over 10 years, even as other royal mistresses came and went. She would use her super power of access to Charles ruthlessly for her own benefit – without any sign of objectives higher than her own enrichment. Before 1660 was out, she had hooked Charles as her next conquest, and by December 1661 was Lady Castlemaine. She would have 5 children by Charles, all of them publicly acknowledged by him, and the pair of them were outrageously open; their second child received a public christening, at which point Barabara’s husband finally rebelled and left the country. Charles mistresses are not just a bit of fun in this history; they are real political players with clout and influence, and their expense and the stench of corruption, favouritism and excess will sap the dignity of the monarchy in the eyes of the English people.

But back to Queen Catherine. Castlemaine was determined to advertise her influence and position at court; and specifically to establish her dominance over a potential rival in the Queen. As a result she persuaded Charles to place her in the Queen’s household.

Catherine, of course, refused point blank to countenance such an insulting outrage. Charles insisted. Back and forth, back and forth it went. In the end, Charles threatened to remove all Catherine’s Portuguese ladies in waiting. Alone and friendless, Catherine was forced to accept.

For some reason, I find this a particularly hideous though I’m sure the examples of kings doing worse things are legion, but I suppose it’s the thought of the daily and very public personal humiliation she must have endured. Anyway, this got me to thinking about the personality of Charles, and how we and history have thought of him. So this seems a good place to cover that.

 

 

 

 

In preparation I read Ronald Hutton’s biography, some bits and pieces, and some stuff by Paul Seward. I was most struck by Hutton’s reflection that when researching the biography,

I soon realised that I was dealing with a legendary figure. Other kings had inspired more respect, but perhaps only Henry VIII had endeared himself to the popular imagination as much

It’s a really interesting statement don’t you think? I mean, I am tempted to dig into the Henry VIII comment – lord how times have changed – but let’s not do that here. I of course also went to the ultimate authority – The Ladybird book of Kings and queens, which succinctly promotes this positive memory

He was the exact opposite to Cromwell and the Puritans. He was witty, amusing and popular. He was also one of the cleverest kings ever to occupy the throne. He enjoyed music and dancing, and encouraged new theatres in which, for the first time, women appeared on the stage.

Putting aside the obvious observation that Mr and Mrs Cromwell might present a happier picture of domestic harmony and family fun, it strikes me that there are therefore three historiographies for Charles. There’s the contemporary reaction and the following whig tradition. We are blessed with quite a few sources for Charles’ character, since sketches were written by several people who knew him. One of them, John Evelyn, maybe presents the most positive tradition, when he wrote

“a prince of many virtues and many great imperfections, debonair, easy of access, not bloody or cruel”

This plays into a generally Tory view of a benevolent monarch, and as lovers of hereditary monarchy, Tories were always looking for the good side in a Stuart. But it’s the Whig view that generally won out. We’ve already heard last time from the most whiggish of whigs, Charles James Fox, who reflected that tradition that Charles II was

‘a disgrace to the history of our country’

 

and he was not alone; Charles contemporary Gilbert Burnet roasted him for giving himself to ‘a mad range of pleasure’. David Hume would later dismiss him as

‘negligent of the interest of the nation, careless of its glory, averse to its religion, jealous of its liberty, lavish of its treasure, sparing only of its blood’

There is then a second view point, the academic historians; and in general, it is this whiggish view which is largely supported by historians, summarised in an article by Ronald Hutton

“Academic historians have concentrated mainly on his activities as a statesman and emphasised his duplicity, self-indulgence, poor judgement and lack of an aptitude for business or for stable and trustworthy government”.

But then we come to the legend, the third viewpoint – the voice of the people. The Merrie Monarch, Horrible History’s the king of Bling. Naughty but nice, a lad about town, ooh you are awful but I like you.  Interestingly, the merrie monarch moniker seems to come from his contemporary the Earl of Rochester, in what was supposed to be a vicious satire

Restless he rolls about from whore to whore, A merry Monarch, scandalous and poor

Whatever he did, we forgive him because he seemed like such a nice bloke, up for a bit of a laugh, especially compared to those dreadful puritans. In which line it’s the complete reverse of Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell is generally admired by academics, and in the popular memory is the second most despised English head of State beaten only by the ultimate Hero to Zero story of Henry VIII.

And there is a dollop of truth in the popular image of Charles, in the sense that whatever his faults, and they are legion, I suspect that if he had been king in 1638, the Civil Wars, and all that death and destruction, might not have happened, because as Tim Harris says,

although Charles II may have been less fit than Charles I morally speaking, he was arguably more fit to be king

Because unlike his Dad he was flexible, and he was politically astute, as he will prove in the 1680s when sweetly turning the tables on his whig opponents. He was a thoroughly charming man in person, stunningly approachable, with that priceless talent of being able to make anyone to whom he spoke convinced they were at that moment, the most important person in the room to him. He was a compelling conversationalist, interested and interesting, he was witty. When the Moroccan ambassador brought a magnificent and exotic gift of 30 ostriches, he wondered aloud if he should send back 30 geese. He loved doing the things his peers liked to do, and enjoyed taking part in all sorts of sports, a massive range of them; he had a lively interest in science and technology, and was genuinely expert in naval matters. All of this speaks of a wildly engaging enthusiasm, and boundless energy, coupled with physical bravery and excellent personal health. He was open and extraordinarily accessible.  Here is a lovely quote from a memoir of the time after a trip to the countryside

the King was so much pleased in the country, and so great a lover of the diversions which that place did afford, that he lett himselfe down from Majesty to the very degree of a country gentlemen. He mixed himselfe amongst the crowd, allowed every man to speak to him that pleased, went a-hawkeing in mornings, to cock matches in afternoons (if there were no horse races), and to plays in the evenings, acted in a barn and by very ordinary Bartlemew-fair comedians

He was a hoot, the life and soul. There was also his extraordinary sex life; 14 known mistresses, and I bet there are a bunch of unknown ones, and he publicly acknowledged 12 children by them. There is only one English king who outdoes him in this, though look don’t shout at me I am aware this is not a competition. He was evened nicknamed after a favourite and very productive Stallion of his, Old Rowley. There’s a ballad apparently, called Old Rowley the King, sung to the tune of Old Simon the King – I can’t find a recording, if anyone can do please share it with me! We, the public now, and we, his subjects of the time, forgave him for this rather admired him for it, in a ‘you old dog, you’ nudge nudge wink wink, kind of way.

 

 

 

 

All this is easy to go along with until you see the suffering of Queen Catherine when the cost comes home.  And there are some buts … please don’t take that as a pun. The public deeply resented the money he threw at all his mistresses and offspring, and the cost of the libertine excesses of his court. And while it might have been a bit of a laugh, it sullied and drained away the prestige of the crown, which had been such an important objective of the coronation, marriage and all the iconography which had made a conscious effort to reassure people that stability and the old days were back.

Not did his boundless energy necessarily translate into work; his dislike of hard work was legendary among his ministers – though that doesn’t always seem fair. He chaired privy councils and set up committees with great decisiveness. What he does seem to have hated was anything which required reading and concentrating for a longish period – that is what drove his ministers nuts.

All this approachability also had a downside. He was open and accessible, he almost never lost his temper, but he had no filter and was essentially superficial; he appeared to form no deep long term attachment to any of the people around him. The Marquis of Halifax was as close to Charles as anyone, and wrote afterwards a book called The Character of King Charles II. He saw the problem day by day, that Charles was

upon pretty even terms with his Ministers, and could … easily bear their being hanged

Halifax’s point was that it was difficult for any to feel any great loyalty to a man who deep down didn’t really care. Gilbert Burnet saw all the bonhomie as essentially hollow, and that underneath Charles held

a very ill opinion both of men and women; and did not think there was either sincerity or chastity in the world out of principle, but that some had either the one or the other out of humour or vanity

Lacking any great principle or firmness in purpose, Charles assumed no one else had firm principles either. It makes it difficult to assess what Charles really believed – most of his policies were based on personal calculation and advantage rather than principle or strategy. His flexibility had some great political advantages, which might be demonstrated in the case of his basic instinct towards absolutism. He shared that instinct with his brother James – but unlike James, lacked the will to pursue it against opposition, and would concede before coming to blows. This might be considered an advantage also in religion, where he appeared to have no desire for persecuting people for their beliefs. But on the other hand, neither did he have the strength of purpose to push toleration through against opposition – though to be fair he did try. Like Cromwell, he was always more inclined to toleration than his parliaments.

So he was flexible, but inconstant. In fact the only thing he really pursued with any great stubbornness was alignment with France – which would cause him enormous political damage. Hutton accuses him of flexibility to the point of moral cowardice.

Put those things together – accessible, friendly, deeply cynical about people, the moral cowardice which hated open personal conflict, lack of firmness of purpose – and you have his corrosive ability to say one thing and do another which was notorious.  Halifax called it dissimulation — and then corrected himself by saying or in the ‘vulgar definition’, ‘downright lying’. So, you might meet the king on a walk round Whitehall, for which he was famous, get some promises to some course of action. And then find out later he’d done completely the opposite. Charles gave no sign of understanding the consequences of these failings; he was essentially massively selfish, and suffered no self-doubt or feeling of inadequacy.

Well that’s the view on Charles then, which I have to say is way, way more negative that I had imagined when I came to this, and is 180 degrees in opposition to the popular image of him. But then you will probably have a better view once we have been through the next few years and we can come back then to see whether we think those dry as dust academics are being a bit harsh. And Hutton certainly is harsh; he concludes his biography by writing

‘Yet he remains, for us as for contemporaries, a set of strongly marked characteristics with a cold void at the centre of them. He was a man who loved masks, whether of ceremony, of role-playing or of intrigue. Behind all these coverings, something was always missing’.[2]

Wow. I’d hate to get on Ronald’s bad side.

However, there is absolutely a counter view, even amongst historians. Ian Mortimer is a wonderful historian, and I love his books; his Time Travellers’ Guides are treasure troves of social history. His attitude is very different. He sees the wildly crude immorality of the court as a kind of principled even noble reaction to the puritan commonwealth that Mortimer obviously despises.

‘their profanity is more than just profane: it is revolutionary, deliberately offensive, public and proud’

Of Charles his admiration is deep. And he has a point; when Charles hands across the Crown to his brother, the monarchy is great shape:

By the time of his death, Charles has succeeded in creating a form of kingship that is rich, dynamic, colourful and responsible, and yet is still imbued with mystique and majesty. He is one of the great innovators in the developers of monarchy

 

PLACE GAP HERE 26:55

 

 

 

That’s it then, next time we will get back to brass tacks and talk about what happened when the royal train rolled back into British and Irish history. Let’s spend the rest of the episode by starting to describe the general shape of the Restored Three Kingdoms as it emerges. I have decided to make a commitment to you that I will proceed at a much greater speed than I did through the 1640-1660 revolution, where I sorely tried your patience. So what we’ll do in the remaining third of this episode is to summarise the settlements in Scotland and Ireland. Then we can start with a fresh page with the English next time.

Ok, there’s something of a historiographical debate about the paths of Scotland under the Restoration; for historians such as Tim Harris in particular, Charles was determined to use the country as a model to educate all three kingdoms in the perfect form of government. Lest there be any doubt, that was not any of that claptrap about the sovereignty of the people those nasty commonwealthmen and puritans and levellers had blathered on about, we were not at home to Mr Observator. Absolutism, absolutism was the thing, just like France and the lovely Louis. Though For others – such as Hutton – yes, yes, absolutism in Scotland was the thing, but Charles was not following a structured program to leverage politics down south from the example of the north. The outcome in Scotland, though, was the same either way.

Which was as close to absolutism as you are likely to see in these islands. Indeed at the end of it, one contemporary would reflect that the Scottish Restoration parliament

Had done what they could to render their king absolute

And another that the restoration parliament set out to destroy the constitution established by the Revolution

By introducing and advancing ane arbitrary tyranny

A feature of this, was that the Scottish parliament, which was re-established as part of the Restoration, was much easier to manipulate than the English version. It was unicameral, a single chamber, and so the peerage and the royal representatives were able to influence their laird and town clients. Secondly, the agenda was set not by parliament itself, but by a smaller group called the Lords of the Articles – which was very easy for the king to dominate, and so parliament didn’t get to discuss anything the king didn’t like.

There are a couple of contexts. One was the history of the National Covenant and the revolutionary period. The idea of the Breda announcement crafted for Charles by General Monk, was a universal forgetting; the revolution had never really happened, a bit like Dallas and the Shooting of JR it had all been a dream. It occurs to me that is a frighteningly out of date cultural reference, let me know if you’d like me to explain it. So it was agreed that Charles’ reign had started in 1649 in all three kingdoms – in fact of course, that was something all Scots agreed with anyway, they’d said that back in 1649. But as part of that all the statutes passed since 1638 were, and I quote

but a series of rebellions

In effect, the statute clock was reset to 1633, and, as a horrified contemporary wrote, wiped out

All the resistance that ever had been made to any of the ancient tyrants; and more especially all that the estates of Scotland had done in the late Reformation[3]

The second part of that quote is important – because the religious settlement was a complete eradication of the idea beloved of the Most Perfect Kirk in Europe and embedded in the National Covenant – of two separate kingdoms, one of God, entirely outside the control of the other – that of the king. The two were brought together again; an oath of allegiance required everyone to acknowledge the king as not only head of state, but head of the church as well, or in the words of the act, the

only supreme governor of this kingdom over all persons and in all causes’.

And then bishops! Bishops were back, baby! For Charles, just like his daddy and granddappy, Bishops were boit just ecclesiastical governors, they were an arm of government, re-inforcing the authority and power of the king. So get used to them presbytertian dudes.

For most of the nobility, there was another agenda. The Scottish Revolution had not only hobbled the power of the king, it had brought into power men of the middling rank, and to a large degree sidelined the previously unchallenged power of the high nobility in their regional satrapies. That could not, and would not be allowed to stand. Hereditary rights of the nobility to dispense justice had been hobbled by the Commonwealth – those were now back. Government is no longer peppered with people with social backgrounds such as Robert Baillie and Johnston of Waristoun. The Covenant was condemned as having caused a national humiliation, by leading to defeat and incorporation into that Commonwealth

Exposed to be captives and slaves to strangers

Thus was all the social, religious and constitutional change discredited. And just to be more practical, whereas the Act of Settlement would only condemn 12 named individuals to death, it was not passed until 1662, allowing the threat of who would be on the list to be held like an axe over the necks of the resistant from 1660-1662. And when it did come, while only 12 were to die, the act imposed penalties on no fewer than 700 families, which was not only a superb weapon of political control, but also a nice little earner.

The parliament passed so many acts, around 400 of the things, that it became known as the Roaring Parliament. The Duke of Hamilton wrote that

“they were all so drunk that day, that they were not capable of considering anything that was laid before them, and would hear of nothing but the executing of the law, without any relenting “

Together with the restoration of the king to absolute control of the military, the Scottish Restoration was as complete a turnaround as you can imagine. Charles I and Laud would not have been entirely happy; doctrinally, as it happens Episcopalians and Covenanters were not far apart, the BCP was not legally tolerated in Scotland until 1712. But none the less there was a widespread purge in the kirk. About one third, 300 of the 952 ministers of the Kirk were expelled; and control of appointments of ministers removed from many congregations and handed back to the local lairds. In the Presbyterian and Covenanter histories, the Restoration would be remembered as a time of constant and often violent oppression. Corporations also were purged of old Covenanters. A resolution by the General Assembly of the Kirk rather sums up the attitude of the Restored Scotland

…the king would make it his care to settle and secure…the most agreeable to the word of God, most suitable to monarchical government, and most complying with the public peace and quiet of the kingdom

The king would do what was right. In his view. As I say, as close to Absolutism as you like.

 

 

 

In Ireland, the central issue was of course the land settlement, and it is significant that the Restoration settlement was dominated by those Protestants who had profited from the English Parliaments acts of 1642 and 1652; notably the Irish Convention, which had been the first in the Three Kingdoms to declare Charles II restored, which was called by Charles Coote and Cromwell’s old friend Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill. The parliament elected under the Charles’ restored reign was composed of not one Catholic in the lower house, and only a few in the Upper.

Meanwhile, however, Charles’ declaration of Breda had got everyone’s hopes up. Everything was going to be fine. For everyone, everywhere, all at once. Religion would be free and easy, everyone would both have their land and eat it. The Gaelic Irish were quite excited because they fully embraced the myth that the Stuart kings were descended from the ancient kings of Ireland, and therefore theoretically one of their own.

The disappointment set in early. Once the Irish Convention heard that Charles was a Bishop lover they gave him to understand that’d be fine by that, and in January 1661 Charles issued a proclamation declaring all meetings by papists, Presbyterians, Independents and sectarians – illegal. Next up, once the legally constituted and elected Irish parliament met they ordered the Solemn League and Covenant burned, established government of the church by Bishops and that everyone should use the BCP immediately. It took until 1666 to put through a formal Act of Uniformity, by which time most non conformists ministers had been driven out.

In practice, Catholics were somewhat better off under Charles II than the Commonwealth and Protectorate. While the Irish parliament and government ruled strictly in the Anglican Protestant interests, their legislation was milder in comparison to the old English legislation, and it was applied quite generously, sometimes not at all, though equally there were bouts of repression when some sort of panic came over from England. Though the legislation did make very sure of Protestant and English control of the town corporations.

The land settlement was equally disappointing. It started well – Charles announced that any Catholics innocent of involvement in the Irish Rebellion should get their lands back. Sadly Charles wasn’t really interested in Ireland, certainly not enough to make the really tricky decisions about who the winners and losers would really be in detail; and in this situation there needed to be winners and losers. Meanwhile the government in Ireland was determined to rule in the English interest. So while all those loyal Royalists, both Catholic and Protestant, expected to be rewarded for their loyalty and have the land returned to them they firmly believed had been taken illegally; so too did all those Commonwealth soldiers and English landowners who had faced down the revolt, so too did they think their land was legally held.

So the Act of Settlement in 1662 enforcing the king’s proclamation set about trying to determine who was innocent and who not; it heard about 800 cases, and ruled in favour of 566 catholics as being innocent, but by the time their mandate expired in 1663 there were thousands of cases unheard. There was a further act in 1665 trying to get the soldiers and adventurers to give back a third of the land awarded by the 1642 and 1652 acts. But there was just nowhere near enough land to go round. And Charles demonstrated his complete lack of interest by unhelpfully handing out land that was available to his chumps – Ormonde did rather nicely thank you; and then 164,000 acres confiscated from regicides did go to a Catholic – but o a new one, to his younger Bro James. For Irish Catholics, it was yet another terrible injustice

‘excluded from their birthright’

The Gaelic Irish did even worse; one Irish poet complained that the Irish nobility had loyally followed their king into exile

Yet when home they returned they got nought of their old demesnes

But to graze their lands like a dog at a lump of beef…

…

Left all cloakless and shirtless in poverty

If the land settlements in the 1650s had left something like only 15% of land owned by Catholics, by 1670 the figure had risen – but only to around 20%, a long way short of the 60% they had held in 1640.

In practice, although Ireland was full of disappointed people the great majority of Protestant dissenters did become reconciled to the Restoration regime, which gave them a deal of de facto toleration – there were no Conventicle or Test acts to penalise them as there would be in England, which we’ll hear about next time. Once again the Catholics had the most right to outrage, let down by the Stuart king for whom they had fought – not for the first or last time. And yet many of the most influential tried to win the favour and reward they deserved by demonstrating their loyalty yet more strongly – such as the declaration of unreserved loyalty made by 164 of the Catholic disposed lay landowners – and even 70 Catholic Clergy, though the vast majority of them remained unrelentingly hostile to the Anglican king. Despite this – the threat of rebellion should they not be rewarded always lay in the corner of the room, like a large elephant.

A couple of general points. Firstly, although most did become largely reconciled – or at least resolved to wait for better times – there were enough incidents to maintain a constant fear among Protestants and English that Ireland offered a potential back door for foreign Catholic invasion from France or Spain. And there was no let-up in the eternally bad behaviour of the English parliament in putting Irish interest at the very bottom of the pile. A particularly depressing example are the 1663 and 1667 Cattle Acts, which prohibited export of Irish Cattle to England. And so although there was considerable economic revival in Ireland, which was surely one way at least of offering the people some benefit to reconcile them to their lot, said revival was against the odds and limited necessarily limited. Enlightened rule and government was yet again in very short supply. As one letter from Ireland put it in 1677

We are in all things treated by you like or worse than, Aliens

And meanwhile the basic Three Kingdoms conundrum remained unchanged. If the conditions of Catholics were too far improved, it could give rise to Protestant Irish and English panic; if repression went too far, the likelihood of Catholic rebellion increased. An inherently unstable situation.

A couple final personalities to keep in mind then. In Ireland it was the long suffering James Butler, now Duke of Ormonde, who regained the Lord Lieutenancy in Ireland for long periods until his death in 1688; and what he could do to be lenient, he did. In Scotland, a fascinating character came to dominate politics.

Red John, the Duke of Lauderdale would engineer the fall of the King’s initial leader in Scotland in 1663. He was an extraordinary man – red haired, vulgar, loud aggressive, in yer face, outwardly an philistine, but behind closed doors sharp as a tack and highly cultured. And politically very, very astute, and not troubled too much by matters of principle that might make the accumulation of personal power and riches tricky. He knew where power lay; he would stay for the most part in London, by the king’s ears and in the king’s eyes, with as trusty working with his political allies in Edinburgh.

Ok, there we have it, Two out of three ain’t bad. Next time, it’s back to England, to find out if the Restoration really would be the dawning of the light of toleration, reconciliation and political freedom the declaration of Breda had promised. Or not.

[1] Jackson, C : ‘Devil Land’, p386

[2] Hutton, R; ‘Charles II’, p458

[3] Harris, T ‘Restoration’, p109