This was an attempt by people such as Lord Shaftsbury to exclude James. Duke of York, from becoming heir to the throne. The Exclusion crisis came about as a result of the Test Act revealing James to be a catholic coupled with the distinct fear of Catholicism and Absolutism at the time. As the 1670s […]
Charles’s foreign policy was focussed on the Dutch and the French. Thanks to the rule of King Louis XIV, France had become the most powerful European state, and accordingly relations with France were the dominant factor in Charles’s foreign policy. Despite the triple alliance in 1668 between the Dutch, England and Sweden, Louis sent secret […]
Some historians believe that the reason why more parliaments were called in the 1660s was an attempt by the monarch to mange Parliament, and this in many ways led to the erosion of shared interests between the courts and the country, causing the division which emerged in the 1673 – 78 period. These disparities would […]
Due to the perceived judgement by God of Charles’s reign – resulting the outbreak of the bubonic plague, defeats to the Dutch and the great Fire of London, the relationship between Charles and the largely Presbyterian Parliament were strained. Royal income was dropping, and some Mps felt that the problems were directly a result of […]
1667 marked the fall of Clarendon and the rise of the Cabal; which consisted of five eminent men who were the principal advisors to the King. Something which these five men did share in common was that none of them were Anglican, but that is about as far as the similarities went. The cabal was […]
There were a series of different uprisings in opposition to the regime of Charles, and one was by John Lambert. Lambert escaped from the tower of London in 1660, and tried to galvanise support from the army, and the force which he did manage to gather disintegrated when faced with the government troops, and he […]
With the Restoration of the Crown came the reimposition of the Church of England, and this showed another of the failures of the restoration; failure to address the religious issues released by the civil war and revolution. There was no way the Church of England could represent England, nonconformity was still a definite reality no […]
Unlike the Cromwellian protectorate before him, Charles was prepared to establish good relationship with France because the king, Louis the XIV was Charles’s cousin, and Charles both admired him and wanted to emulate him. Louis was the true absolute monarch, and it is thus unsurprisingly that Charles wanted a similar situation in England to what […]
In 1660, the Convention Parliament ruled that justice be served out on the regicides Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Pride, Henry Ireton and John Bradshaw, and this was no surprise for a parliament that had welcomed the king back with open arms. However, all these men were dead already, and thus for justice to be served their […]
The Earl of Clarendon was the principal advisor to Charles throughout his exile and the Restoration through to 1667. Yet there were weaknesses in his position; he was perceived as arrogant and self-righteous, and his feeling that he did not need to build up a political network, both in the Privy Council and Parliament, served […]
The English Civil War (And Its Long-Term Effects) 
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