Commonwealth and

Restoration
1699-1650

Dr Islam Aly El-Naggar

Faculty of Arts
(2021-2022)
University Email:
isaly2008@[Link]
 Historical Context
• This chapter covers a relatively short
period of time, but one which is
highly eventful in British history:
• The curtailing of royal power
• The accelerating power of the
Parliament
• The appearance of the British party-
political system [Whigs* and
Tories*]).
• The English Civil War* and the
execution of Charles I in 1649.
The period of 11 years known as the
Interregnum*

• This includes the republican

Commonwealth*, which rapidly
transmutes into the Protectorate* of
Oliver Cromwell.
• The Stuart* monarchy is restored to the
throne in 1660 with King Charles II (The
Restoration*): after Cromwell’s death in
1658 and the failure of his son’s [Richard
Cromwell] short-lived regime.
• Charles’s death in 1685 leads to the
accession of his Roman Catholic brother,
James II.
• The Glorious Revolution of 1688
which deposed James II and established
the Protestant succession of William and
Mary.
INTERREGNUM (1649-1660)

• From the Latin ‘inter’ (between) and ‘regnum’ (rule or

reign), literally: ‘between two reigns’.
• Although used more generally to define any period between two
governments, the term in British history applies specifically to the
period between the execution of Charles I in 1649 [under
Stuart* and Caroline*] and The Restoration* of the
monarchy in 1660 under Charles II. This 11-year period is also
commonly referred to as that of The English Revolution, when
Britain was governed first as a Commonwealth* and then as a
Protectorate*.
COMMONWEALTH

• A 16th-Century word (originally ‘commonweal’) meaning

the general or public good and echoing the Latin ‘res
publica’, from which the notion of a ‘republic’ derives.
Commonwealth with an upper-case ‘C’ is used to define the nature of
the British state during the Interregnum*: the republican
Commonwealth of which Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector.
While generally understood as covering the whole 11-year period, it
refers more specifically to the period between 1649 (after the
execution of Charles I) when Britain was declared ‘a Commonwealth
and free state by the supreme authority of this nation, the
representatives of the people in parliament’.
 Put a title to Cromwell’s Performance?!

• It is characterised by Parliament’s abolition of the monarchy and

House of Lords (the Anglican Church had effectively already been
dismantled in 1646)
• Cromwell’s brutal suppression of rebellion in Ireland
• The confiscation from 1652 onwards of Irish lands
• The crushing by Cromwell of the Scots under Charles Stuart
(already proclaimed King of Scotland; King Charles II to be)
• Continuing conflicts with the Dutch over trade and British claims to
sovereignty of British seas.
• The height of activities by the radical dissenting groups, The Fifth
Monarchists, Ranters, Levellers and Diggers*.
• In 1653, Cromwell dissolved both the ‘Rump’ Parliament and
the Puritan Convention he had summoned (nicknamed the
‘Barebones Parliament’.
• Under Cromwell’s dictatorship (he ruled by decree and
ordinance)
• The Anglican Church was reorganised and Puritanism established,
but Cromwell upheld religious tolerance.
The End of the Protectorate

• there were a number of Royalist risings against Cromwell and his

relations with Parliament were continuously strained, but when
offered the title of king in 1657, he refused it.
• He died in 1658, and his son, Richard, succeeded him as Lord
Protector
• Within months, Richard Cromwell, in conflict with the Army, had
resigned, and the way was open for the restoration of the
monarchy under Charles Stuart as Charles II.
STUART [continued]
Recap
• The family name of the line of monarchs – The
Stuarts – who occupied the British throne from the
accession of King James I in 1603 to the
deposition and execution of King Charles I in
1649; and from the Restoration of King Charles
II in 1660 to the death of Queen Anne in
1714. The Stuart line was restored to the throne in 1660
with Charles II [Restoration*].
 History

• Because Charles II’s marriage remained childless, his brother, James, Duke
of York, succeeded to the throne on Charles’s death in 1685.
• King James II was a declared Roman Catholic who had also married a
Catholic, and his undisguised attempts to return Britain to Catholicism led
to The Glorious (or ‘Bloodless’) Revolution of 1688.
• When James fled to France, Mary, James’s Protestant daughter, with her
Dutch Protestant husband, William of Orange, were summoned back to
Britain to become joint monarchs
• William III and Mary II, in 1689 (the royal House until William’s death in
1702 is described as that of ‘Stuart and Orange’).
• The marriage was again childless
• Anne (Mary II’s sister) followed by George of Hanover, Anne’s
nearest Protestant cousin, who became George I of Great Britain
[Hanoverian*].
JACOBITE

• 'Jacobus’ is Latin for James, but ‘Jacobite’ should not be

confused with Jacobean [see Chapter 1] or with Jacobin.
• After the deposition of James II in 1688, his death in exile in 1701,
and the deaths without issue of William and Mary.
• After the death without heir of Queen Anne in 1714 – when the
British throne passed to the house of Hanover.
(THE) RESTORATION

• Charles (II)was a cunning politician who never clarified his own

religious beliefs (although indicatively tolerant of Roman Catholics
• ‘Declarations of Indulgence’* in 1662 and 1672).
• In return, Parliament passed the Test Act, which prohibited Roman
Catholics from sitting in Parliament or holding government office,
and made repeated attempts to pass a bill preventing James from
acceding to the throne (the ‘Exclusion Crisis’ of the 1770s and
early 1780s)
• He was constantly at odds with Parliament over its attempts at
severe repression of religious dissenters.
Cultural Developments

• Two of the best-known disasters of the early part of the period were the
Great Plague of London in 1665 and the Great Fire of London (1666 –
widely held at the time to be the result of a Catholic plot).
• Sir Christopher Wren was appointed ‘Surveyor-General and principal
architect’ for the rebuilding of the capital city.
• Wren’s architectural work in London and elsewhere is considered one
of the great cultural achievements of the age. Wren’s architectural work
includes:
- St Paul’s Cathedral
- parts of Westminster Abbey
- Buckingham House and Marlborough House
- [Task: Document with photos/create your Album]
• The founding of the Royal Society (1662).
• The founding of the Clarendon Press, Oxford (1672).
• The mathematical and scientific work of Sir Isaac Newton and
Edmund Halley.
• The philosophical writings of John Locke*.
• The diaries of John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys
• The carving of Grinling Gibbons.
• The music of Henry Purcell.
• The paintings of Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller.
• The period also witnesses the beginnings of the
Neo-Classsical* or Augustan*
movement in literature and the arts.
Government and Finance

• Throughout the period, further extreme tensions between king and

Parliament
• Such tensions resulted from the king’s chronic shortage of money
and the Parliament’s resistance to voting him funds, especially
without the right to scrutinise public spending.
• But towards the end of the period, under William III, a system of
National Debt had been put in place (1693).
• The Bank of England was founded (1694), as was the Bank of
Scotland (1695)
• Financial reforms were introduced (overseen by Sir Isaac
Newton and John Locke
• The Royal Board of Trade was established (with Locke as one of its
commissioners)
• LLOYDS’ coffee-house became the headquarters of marine
insurance (1692).
• Such financial innovations were central to the stabilising of the
British economy and to the expansion of Britain’s mercantile
activities at home and abroad.
Law

• As noted earlier, both Stuart monarchs and

Parliamentarians had used censorship to control
opposition, and this remained a feature of The
Restoration, too, with Licensing Acts in 1662 and 1685
introducing strict pre-printing censorship for all English
publications. However, the lapsing of this Act in 1695 laid
the foundations for the freedom of the press in Britain.
Literature and Theatre

• ‘Restoration Comedy’, the drama which followed Charles’s reopening

of the theatres in 1660
• A bawdy but urbane reaction to the austere morality of the
preceding Puritan culture*.
• William Congreve’s The Way of the World, first produced in 1700.
• George Farquhar's cognate comedies, The Recruiting Officer and
The Beaux Strategem, date from 1706 and 1707 respectively.
• John Milton’s epic poems
• Andrew Marvell’s poetry
• The prose of John Bunyan
• The many plays and novels of the prolific woman writer, Aphra
Behn
• The extraordinary flowering of drama by women playwrights.
• Finally, there are the plays and poems of John Dryden*, who is
usually regarded as the harbinger of the Augustan* period in his
deployment of Neo-Classical* forms and genres, and who
therefore also indicates the impossibility of precise periodisation (he
died in 1700).
???????????????
• In this context, too, we might register that the French poet and critic,
Nicolas Boileau, published his critical essay, L’Art poétique, which
outlines the principles of French classicism, in 1674 – a work
imitated by Alexander Pope*in his poem, An Essay on
Criticism, written in 1709 and published in 1711.
Glossary

• Protectorate /prəˈtɛkt(ə)rət/
1.a state that is controlled and protected by another.
"Panama was juridically a protectorate of the United States"
2. HISTORICAL
the position or period of office of a Protector, especially that in
England of Oliver and Richard Cromwell.
The Declaration of Indulgence?

• The Declaration granted broad religious freedom in England by

suspending penal laws enforcing conformity to the Church of
England and allowing people to worship in their homes or
chapels as they saw fit, and it ended the requirement of affirming
religious oaths before gaining employment in government office.