page_title: Early modern Britain
section_title: Restoration 1660–1688
hierarchical_section_title: Early modern Britain / Later Stuart era 1660–1714 / Restoration 1660–1688
caption_attribution_description: English: The Great Plague of London in 1665. The last major outbreak of the bubonic plague in England.
context_page_description: Early modern Britain is the history of the island of Great Britain roughly corresponding to the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Major historical events in Early Modern British history include numerous wars, especially with France, along with the English Renaissance, the English Reformation and Scottish Reformation, the English Civil War, the Restoration of Charles II, the Glorious Revolution, the Treaty of Union, the Scottish Enlightenment and the formation and collapse of the First British Empire.
context_section_description: In 1660, the remaining members of the Long Parliament (1640–1660) rejected the anarchy and confusion since Cromwell's death. Elite and popular opinion called for a restoration of the monarchy under the Stuarts.  There was widespread revulsion against the intense moralism and high taxes of the Rule of the Major Generals in 1657. Nostalgia for Royal traditionalism was strong. Gen. George Monck, a former supporter of Cromwell, led the movement for a royal restoration.  Charles II in exile paid close attention to the developments and readied himself to take the throne. From Breda in Holland he issued the Declaration of Breda, promising generosity and indicating his willingness to leave the settlement to Parliament. The Convention Parliament, which had been elected to negotiate with the King, invited Charles to return, He landed at Dover amid great enthusiasm on May 26, 1660.
  The new parliament, known as the Cavalier Parliament enacted the Clarendon Code, designed to shore up the position of the re-established Church of England. Strict rules were set up such that only genuine members of the established Church could hold office. The major foreign policy issue was the trade rivalry with the Dutch, leading to the inconclusive Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665-67. The only positive result was the acquisition of new Netherland, which became New York.  Coincidental with the war with the Dutch, was the Great Plague of London of 1665-66, which at its worst cost 1000 deaths a day in London.  On top of that, the Great Fire of London burned out the main commercial districts of London; it destroyed 13,000 buildings, but few lives were lost.  In 1670, King Charles entered into the secret treaty of Dover, an alliance with his first cousin King Louis XIV of France. Louis agreed to aid him in the Third Anglo-Dutch War and pay him a pension, and Charles secretly promised to convert to Catholicism at an unspecified future date; he did so on his deathbed. Charles attempted to introduce religious equality for Catholics and non-Anglican Protestant dissenters with his 1672 Royal Declaration of Indulgence. Elite opinion rejected it and Parliament forced him to withdraw it. In 1679, Titus Oates's highly exaggerated revelations of a supposed "Popish Plot" sparked the Exclusion Crisis when it was revealed that Charles's brother and heir (James, Duke of York) was a Catholic. The issue was whether or not to exclude James from succession to the throne. The crisis sparked the creation of the first political parties: the pro-exclusion Whig Party demanded that James never reach the throne. The anti-exclusion Tory party believed it was against God's will to interfere with the legitimate succession, and supported both the King and James. After the discovery of the failed 1683 Rye House Plot to murder Charles and James, some Whig leaders were executed or forced into exile. Charles dissolved Parliament in 1681, and ruled alone until his death on 6 February 1685.
caption: Collecting the dead for burial during the Great Plague
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