Charles II Returns: England Restores Its Monarchy

London filled with bonfires, wine flowing from public fountains, and church bells that did not stop ringing for days. On May 29, 1660, Charles II entered his capital on his 30th birthday to reclaim the throne, ending eleven years of republican government and restoring the English monarchy after the upheavals of civil war, regicide, and the Cromwellian Protectorate. England had beheaded Charles I in 1649 and abolished the monarchy. Oliver Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector until his death in 1658, but his son Richard lacked the authority to hold the regime together. The army fractured. Parliament deadlocked. General George Monck, commanding the army in Scotland, marched south and engineered a political settlement that brought Charles II back from exile on the Continent. The Declaration of Breda, issued by Charles on April 4, 1660, promised religious toleration, payment of army arrears, and a general pardon for actions during the civil wars and Interregnum, with exceptions to be determined by Parliament. The terms were deliberately vague, designed to make restoration palatable to as many factions as possible. Charles entered London in a procession that took seven hours to pass through the streets. The diarist Samuel Pepys recorded the scene from the Strand, noting the "infinite crowd" and the universal joy. The new king was tall, witty, and politically shrewd, having spent nine years in exile learning exactly how much a monarch could and could not demand. The Restoration brought back the monarchy, the House of Lords, the Church of England, and the theater. It also brought the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666, both of which reshaped the capital. Charles ruled for 25 years, navigating religious conflicts, parliamentary opposition, and secret alliances with France while carefully never provoking the kind of crisis that had cost his father his head. The bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were dug up and posthumously executed. The living regicides were hunted down. But the principle that Parliament could check royal power, established by blood in the 1640s, survived the Restoration intact, emerging even stronger in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.