The official website for BBC History Magazine
Star witness: how the Royal Observatory transformed our understanding of astronomy and time
From the moment it was founded 350 years ago, the Royal Observatory in Greenwich drove our understanding of astronomy, navigation and time. Louise Devoy explores eight milestones in the history of this pioneering scientific institution
The big bang moment 1675: Charles II sparks a star-gazing revolution In the 17th century, the great maritime nations were vying to solve a puzzle that had confounded philosophers for many centuries: how to determine exact positions on the Earth’s surface. And in Britain, Charles II took a major step to ensure his realm’s position at the head of the pack. On 4 March 1675, the king signed a royal warrant appointing John Flamsteed as the first “astronomical observator”, tasked with “perfecting the art of navigation”. Flamsteed’s specific objective was to devise a method by which sailors could establish their longitude (east–west position) at sea – which involved measuring the positions of celestial bodies – and of knowing the time at a ship’s local position. And Flamsteed would get to carry out this vital research from the surroundings of the country’s first state-funded, purpose-built scientific institution: the Royal Observatory. It was urgent work, because England’s great rival, France, had stolen a march: Louis XIV had established an observatory in Paris nearly a decade earlier. Flamsteed was, in effect, playing catch-up. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/T809MT-CMYKWeb-Ready-7606aa3.jpg" width="2663" height="1775" alt="an illustration showing a large crowd looking at several artefacts including a globe, a map, and a satellite dish" title="King Louis XIV visits the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1671. The creation of an observatory in the French capital had left England playing catch-up (Image by Alamy)" /> The size of the task facing the astronomer clearly wasn’t lost on Charles II, for the king appointed none other than the celebrated architect Christopher Wren to design the observatory. Wren’s chosen site was the hilltop ruins of Greenwich Castle – and it was here that the foundation stone was laid on 10 August 1675. With its lofty windows, royal portraits and accurate pendulum clocks, the octagonal ‘star chamber’, completed in 1676, was grand in appearance. Unfortunately, it was also unsuitable for mapping the stars, as it was 13.5° askew from the meridian, an imaginary north-south line connecting the poles. So Wren designed another building nearby. This one would last for the remainder of Flamsteed’s tenure, before being demolished, rebuilt and extended as the Meridian Observatory. As for Flamsteed, he went on to conceive Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), by which he produced an average (‘mean’) 24-hour day that could be tracked using a mechanical clock year round. And that would have ramifications across the planet. Read more | A brief history of astronomy Dressed for success 1767: How a man in a padded suit transformed the art of navigation No one could accuse Nevil Maskelyne of not being dedicated to his job. In the dead of night across the mid-1760s, the fifth Astronomer Royal could be found staring up at the sky for hour upon hour, while straining his ears to hear the beats of a nearby clock. Dressed in an extravagant padded suit made from wool, silk and linen, Maskelyne was prepared for all that a British winter could throw at him. Not even perishing temperatures could stand in the way of the task in hand: to devise a ‘lunar distance method’ to calculate longitude at sea. This technique required mariners to measure the angular distance between the moon and a specific star, then compare it to Greenwich time. And they all used data gleaned from Maskelyne’s meticulous study of the movement of the stars. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/1767-L4962-001-CMYKWeb-Ready-30917ec.jpg" width="1709" height="1139" alt="Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne wore this wool, silk and linen suit to ward off the perishing cold while studying the stars (Image by Royal Museum Greenwich)" title="Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne wore this wool, silk and linen suit to ward off the perishing cold while studying the stars (Image by Royal Museum Greenwich)" /> This was, however, far from a one-man endeavour. Maskelyne was joined on his freezing vigils by his assistant, David Kinnebrook, and enlisted a network of mathematicians – dubbed ‘computers’ – to work remotely on calculating the predicted position of the moon over the year ahead. The Astronomer Royal even had a team of ‘comparers’ check the computers’ work (which paid off when two of them were found to be copying one another’s work). All this enabled Maskelyne to produce the Nautical Almanac, the first edition of which was made available on 6 January 1767. It quickly became an essential tool in navigation, reducing the time taken to make longitude calculations from hours to minutes. Updated annually, the Almanac became a required element of navigators’ training, and set the trend for mariners to calculate their position relative to Greenwich. High standards 1833: A curious metal sphere regulates clocks It can be seen from miles around – and with good reason. Sitting atop the Royal Observatory is a large red, metal ball that rises to the top of a mast at the same time every day, and drops a few minutes later. For those who haven’t set eyes on it before, it makes for a strange sight. But what is it there for? To answer that question, we need to rewind to 1764 when John Harrison, the celebrated English clockmaker, sent his fourth marine timekeeper, later known as ‘H4’, on a trial voyage to Barbados. The clock performed exceptionally well, losing a mere 39.2 seconds over 47 days at sea. To Harrison’s delight, it proved that such devices could provide mariners accurate reference times for calculating longitude. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/dreamstimexxl73355384-CMYKWeb-Ready-1ba1cb2.jpg" width="6567" height="4378" alt="A photograph of a large red brick building, with a domed roof on the right. There is a tower with a red ball on the top. Behind the building there is a purple and orange cloudy sunset" title="The time ball was installed on the turret of Flamsteed House at the Royal Observatory in 1833. It dropped at 1pm each day, enabling mariners to check their on-board chronometers (Image by Dreamstime)" /> Other clockmakers developed Harrison’s innovative ideas into a standard design that was cheaper and easier to reproduce. By the 1820s, the ‘marine chronometer’ was being used on both commercial and Royal Navy ships. But these chronometers only worked if they were telling the correct time when ships left port. That’s where the Greenwich ‘time ball’ came in. A time ball is a large spherical device that drops at a predetermined time of day, enabling mariners to set their clocks by it. The first modern example of this technology was erected in Portsmouth in 1829. Greenwich’s, however, would be the most famous. It was installed in 1833 on Flamsteed House, at the heart of the Observatory, providing maximum visibility from the Thames. Ever since, it has risen halfway up the mast at 12.55pm, climbed to the top at 12.58pm and then dropped at precisely 1pm GMT. Soon time balls were appearing at harbours and observatories around the globe, meaning that mariners could check their chronometers against accurate clocks, even during the longest of voyages. Timetable drama 1852: Greenwich rides to the railways' rescue Take a stroll down Corn Street in the heart of Bristol and you’ll come across a clock mounted to the wall of the city’s old corn exchange. There’s nothing unusual about that, you may think. But take a closer look and you’ll notice that this elegant 1820s timepiece has two hands for minutes: a red one for GMT and a black one for local Bristol time. The clock is a curious snapshot of a bygone age, and also a marker of a technological conundrum that the Royal Observatory played a central role in solving. The mid-19th century was very much the age of the railways – by the 1840s tracks were snaking across the country. This was all well and good. But when, in 1847, the railway companies decided to coordinate their timetables across Britain using GMT, they ran into a problem. Back then, Britain’s cities relied on local times set by sundials, varying by as much as 30 minutes between west and east. So how could the railway companies ensure that these times were perfectly aligned? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-170477153-CMYKWeb-Ready-b814769.jpg" width="2589" height="1726" alt="With its three hands, the clock on Bristol’s Corn Exchange offers a snapshot of an age when Britain’s cities relied on a variety of local times (Image by Getty Images)" title="With its three hands, the clock on Bristol’s Corn Exchange offers a snapshot of an age when Britain’s cities relied on a variety of local times (Image by Getty Images)" /> Enter George Biddell Airy, the seventh Astronomer Royal. Airy reasoned that a new technology – that of sending impulses via telegraph wires to a series of synchronised dials – could provide a solution. And so he ordered a new timepiece – the Shepherd Motor Clock – to be installed at the Royal Observatory. From 1852, the clock began sending daily time signals to railway stations across London and Kent, along with hourly signals to the Electric Telegraph Company on London’s Strand for national distribution. Train travel would never be the same again and, by 1880, GMT had been embraced as Britain’s legal Civil Time. Read more | Art, culture and science in the Restoration period A moment in the sun 1874: Greenwich leads the race to record the transit of Venus For astronomers everywhere, 9 December 1874 was like Christmas come early. Star gazers counted down the days to this landmark date, while George Biddell Airy ordered expeditions to Egypt, New Zealand and the Indian Ocean to observe the amazing event unfolding overhead. That event was a transit of Venus, a rare astronomical phenomenon in which the planet appears to cross the Sun as a slow-moving black dot. This was the first time that the transit had occurred since 1769, and the first such event since the invention of photography in the 1820s. Little wonder astronomers were excited. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/T4323-001-CMYKWeb-Ready-44133fe.jpg" width="5686" height="3790" alt="An observation hut is set up in Greenwich ahead of the transit of Venus in 1874. This astronomical phenomenon enabled star-gazers to accurately calculate the Sun-Earth distance (Image by Royal Museum Greenwich)" title="An observation hut is set up in Greenwich ahead of the transit of Venus in 1874. This astronomical phenomenon enabled star-gazers to accurately calculate the Sun-Earth distance (Image by Royal Museum Greenwich)" /> And their excitement was justified. By timing the transit’s key moments as seen from different locations on Earth, star gazers can measure the Sun–Earth distance, known as the ‘astronomical unit’. This yardstick (just under 93 million miles) is still used by scientists today. Ahead of the 1874 transit, Airy ordered special telescopes known as photoheliographs to project the Sun’s disc onto glass plates. However, his teams struggled with the kit, and the photoheliographs failed to capture the transit with any great accuracy. Despite those issues, the transit of Venus inspired a renewed interest in sun studies. Greenwich assistant EW Maunder started to compile a daily record of sunspot observations. In 1904, Maunder and his wife, Annie, assembled 30 years of sunspot data into the ‘butterfly diagram’ that still underpins our understanding of the Sun’s 11-year magnetic cycle. A degree of certainty 1884: The world aligns itself to Greenwich John Flamsteed had been dead for more than a century. Yet, on 13 October 1884, his great brainchild, Greenwich Mean Time, truly went global. On that day, delegates at the International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC voted in favour of making Greenwich the world’s prime meridian, or 0° longitude. The decision was influenced by a combination of technological supremacy and pragmatism. Greenwich was one of only four observatories with a suitably accurate telescope – the Airy Transit Circle Telescope – to define a meridian. And more than 70 per cent of shipping companies by tonnage already relied on the Greenwich meridian. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/2YXWWWX-CMYKWeb-Ready-602ff19.jpg" width="3242" height="2161" alt="Delegates at the 1884 International Meridian Conference agreed to use the Greenwich meridian as 0° longitude (Image by Alamy)" title="Delegates at the 1884 International Meridian Conference agreed to use the Greenwich meridian as 0° longitude (Image by Alamy)" /> The delegates also agreed that the Universal Day – a 24-hour period to be used as a common reference to record events around the world – should begin at midnight GMT on the Greenwich meridian. This would hardly have come as a surprise: a year earlier, railroads in the US had already agreed to use standard time zones based on hourly meridians from Greenwich. The delegates assembled in the American capital that October day voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Universal Day, and countries started to define their own standard time zones as hourly intervals before or after Greenwich. The result was the familiar time-zone system we use today. Seeing double 1893: The Royal Observatory makes its biggest statement yet Was Greenwich under threat? The International Meridian Conference of 1884 might have confirmed the Royal Observatory’s primacy in the world of astronomy. But, within a year, the eighth Astronomer Royal, William Christie, was voicing his concerns that the principal telescope at Greenwich was being overtaken by newer, better instruments at rival observatories across Europe and North America. Determined to keep Greenwich out in front of the chasing pack, Christie persuaded the Admiralty to fund a new instrument, and that 28-inch diameter lens telescope – still the largest of its type in Britain – came into use in 1893. Most other telescopes at Greenwich were designed to be fixed into position to ensure the accurate measurement of the stars for timekeeping and navigation. The Great Equatorial Telescope – named after its mount, which kept the instrument moving parallel to the Earth’s equator – was part of a new generation designed for astrophotography. With a clockwork drive that kept the instrument moving in sync with the stars from east to west, it could be used to take photos with very long exposures stretching to several hours, capturing impressive views of faint gas clouds (nebulae). However, astronomers struggled to configure the heavy glass lens for photography, and so the telescope was reassigned to the study of double stars. By measuring the changing angle between an orbiting pair of stars, the astronomers could now calculate the mass of these distant suns. All that came to an end in 1971 when the Great Equatorial Telescope was finally retired. However, you can still see this extraordinary instrument – housed in its distinctive onion-shaped dome – at Greenwich today. Read more | A brief history of daylight saving time Pip pip hooray 1924: GMT is piped into homes across Britain If we want to know the time in 2025, all we have to do is check the phone in our pocket, or glance at the digital watch on our wrists. Across most of the 20th century, of course, that wasn’t an option. If Britons sought an accurate time-check that they could, quite literally, set their clocks and watches by, then they had to turn on their radios and listen out for the familiar strains of the ‘six pips’. The six pips first entered the public consciousness on 5 February 1924, when the ninth Astronomer Royal, Frank Dyson (below), announced a collaboration with the BBC. The Royal Observatory would start sending electrical impulses down a telephone wire to the newly created broadcaster. These would then be converted into a series of six audio alerts – or ‘pips’ – that would go out on the radio on the hour, every hour. But while some technologies were underscoring Greenwich’s enduring relevance, others were undermining it. In the 1930s, scientists developed clocks based on the natural vibration of quartz crystals; then, a decade later, the first atomic timekeepers began to appear. Both offered reliability and accuracy that the system of measuring time by the stars couldn’t match. This wasn’t the only threat to the Royal Observatory’s pre-eminence in the 20th century. As the march of industry impacted visibility across London’s skies, so Greenwich’s suitability for the practice of astrophysics declined. Soon it became clear that the Observatory would have to move. And it did so twice – first to East Sussex in 1957; then to Cambridge in 1990. Eight years later, it shut altogether. Time had finally caught up with the great old scientific institution. But its huge contribution to the fields of astronomy, timekeeping and navigation cannot be doubted – as the many thousands of people who visit the Royal Observatory museum that now occupies the famous Greenwich complex will no doubt testify. John Flamsteed would surely be proud. Dr Louise Devoy is senior curator at the Royal Observatory and author of Royal Observatory Greenwich: A History in Objects (October, 2025) This article was first published in the November 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
“Radical ideas that had been preached and published could not be unthought”: Clare Jackson on the legacy of the Restoration
Dr Clare Jackson examines the lasting legacy of the period following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and how the return of the king did not immediately imagine away two decades of bloody civil war, religious division and constitutional crisis
The Restoration of Charles II in 1660 was a monumental turning point in England’s history. It followed 20 years of bloody civil wars and constitutional crisis during which a larger proportion of the British and Irish populations died than in both World War I and World War II combined. Between 1649 and 1660, England had been a republic for the only time in its history. Charles II’s restoration as monarch therefore offers a fascinating case study in post-conflict resolution. Accompanied by official injunctions to forgive and forget, the ‘Act of Free and General Pardon, Indemnity and Oblivion’ (1660) conferred a general pardon on everyone except a small number of named individuals directly involved in his father Charles I’s execution in 1649. Read more | Your ultimate guide to the Restoration period But trying to put back the political clock and imagine away two decades in which worlds had been turned upside down was not straightforward. Radical ideas that had been preached and published could not be unthought, and the popular mood was febrile. As the rector of Bath Abbey, Joseph Glanvill, warned in 1667, a “people that rebelled once, and successfully, will be ready to do so often”, just “as water that has been boiled, will boil again the sooner”. The restored government faced natural disasters, too, such as the Great Fire of London in 1666 – still a popular feature of the Key Stage 1 national curriculum today. Through Samuel Pepys’s eyewitness accounts, primary schoolchildren encounter one of history’s most brilliantly evocative diarists who buried his prized Parmesan cheese in his garden to save it from the flames. Read more | A timeline of the Restoration period Significantly, the fire fanned erroneous suspicions that foreign Catholics had set fire to London, just four years after Charles II’s original hopes of offering “a liberty to tender consciences” had been frustrated by the Act of Uniformity (1662), which imposed harsh penalties on Protestant nonconformists. Indeed, the Restoration remained a persecuting society: the last era in English history when the state coercively sought to secure religious uniformity before the Toleration Act was passed in 1689. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/G5N19C-be753a4-e1681207136714.jpg" width="620" height="414" alt="The Act of Uniformity (1662), passed after the restoration of the monarchy, resulted in thousands of Puritan ministers being forced out of their jobs (Image by De Luan / Alamy Stock Photo)" title="The Act of Uniformity (1662), passed after the restoration of the monarchy, resulted in thousands of Puritan ministers being forced out of their jobs (Image by De Luan / Alamy Stock Photo)" /> The Restoration also saw the emergence of England’s first political parties, as ‘Tory’ defenders of Charles II’s monarchy defeated attempts by a ‘Whig’ opposition in the late 1670s to prevent his brother, James, from inheriting the throne. Succeeding as England’s last Catholic monarch in 1685, James II (who was also James VII of Scotland) then embarked on a disastrous attempt to re-Catholicise the British Isles, which led to the armed intervention of his Dutch son-in-law and nephew, William of Orange, three years later. Haunted by fears of a renewed descent into the bloodbath of civil war, England’s political leaders achieved, instead, what generations of historians have acclaimed as the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688–89, which secured the system of Protestant, parliamentary monarchy that still governs England today. This article was first published in the Christmas 2022 issue of BBC History Revealed
Making of a monarch: how the young Charles II endured war, defeat and exile before the Restoration
At the age of 12, the prince was present at a battle; before he was 20 his father, King Charles I, had been executed and the monarchy abolished; and his attempt to take back his birth right ended in disaster and exile on the continent. Spencer Mizen explores the events before Charles II returned in glory in 1660
It’s the early hours of 15 October 1651, and most of the residents of the West Sussex town of Shoreham-by-Sea are asleep in their beds. But not all of them. Two men walk silently across a beach and board a boat. A couple of hours later, before the Sun has crept above the horizon, the vessel slips out to sea. And barely anyone has even noticed. As turning points in English history go, the duo’s departure made for a fairly unremarkable scene. Yet a turning point it undoubtedly was. One of the men was, in fact, the future King Charles II. And he was fleeing for his life. A few months earlier, Charles had launched a bid to win back the kingdoms that Oliver Cromwell’s forces had seized from his father, Charles I, in the Civil Wars that raged across the British Isles. That bid had ended in defeat and so the younger Charles was forced to beat a silent retreat back across the Channel – accompanied by his close friend, Lord Wilmot – before Cromwell’s forces caught up with him. And catch up with him they nearly did. Hours after Charles departed for the continent, his pursuers swept into Shoreham in search of their prey. They would have good reason for rueing this nearest of misses, for Charles wouldn’t be down and out forever. Nine years later, he would return to English shores – this time not as a hapless fugitive but as the master of all surveyed. Read more | Your ultimate guide to the Restoration period As his boat pulled away from Shoreham on that October morning, Charles could have been forgiven for wondering how he found himself in this perilous predicament. This was not how it was meant to be. When he was born at St James’s Palace in May 1630, his inheritance was the three crowns of England, Scotland and Ireland, and the awesome power that came with being a divinely appointed ruler in the 17th century. On the day on which he was born, a brilliant star shone brightly in the daytime skies over London. Today, this is believed to have been a supernova; back in 1630, it was interpreted as a sign of great things to come. Charles II: a young boy at war It was not to be. At 12 years old, Charles’s pampered childhood – spent chiefly at the courts of St James and Whitehall in London and Richmond Palace in Surrey – was shattered by war. Over the preceding years, tensions between Charles I and an array of opponents over religious policy, the power of parliament and the question of the king’s divine right to rule had reached boiling point. In 1642, those tensions exploded into outright conflict – and the consequences for the king and his family would prove catastrophic. The younger Charles may have only been a boy, but he wasn’t sheltered from the conflict. He was present when his father raised the royal standard at the battle of Edgehill, the first pitched battle of the Civil Wars, and was made a commander of royalist forces in the West Country when he was just 14. But soon the tide of the war was turning decisively in favour of the king’s parliamentarian enemies and, in March 1646, his eldest son was forced to flee the mainland. It wouldn’t, of course, be for the last time. The then Prince Charles initially made for the royalist strongholds of the Scilly Isles and Jersey before crossing the Channel to mainland Europe. At first, he joined his mother – the French-born Henrietta Maria – near Paris, where he lived under the protection of the French king, Louis XIV. Later, however, he moved to the Hague (in the modern-day Netherlands), where his brother-in-law William II, Prince of Orange, seemed more likely to offer support to the royalist cause. Read more | A timeline of the Restoration period All the while, back in England, things were going from bad to worse for Charles’s father. The war was now heading inexorably in parliament’s favour, and, in May 1646, the king placed himself in the hands of a Scottish army, who later handed him over to English parliamentarian forces. By the end of 1647, Charles I would find himself in captivity in Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight. But what would the parliamentarians do with their royal prisoner? The answer came in dramatic fashion in early 1649, when the leaders of the New Model Army and the more radical parliamentarians put the king on trial for high treason. After being convicted, he was beheaded in Whitehall. The execution of Charles I was a truly stunning event that sent shockwaves coursing through Europe’s courts. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages51242787-aaefdfb-e1681725272458.jpg" width="620" height="414" alt="The execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649 was met with horror. One witness claimed a “loud groan” rose from the crowd when the axe fell (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" title="The The execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649 was met with horror. One witness claimed a “loud groan” rose from the crowd when the axe fell (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)of Charles I on 30 January 1649 was met with horror by onlookers. One witness claimed a “loud groan” rose from the crowd when the axe fell (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> Read more | Killers of the king: the men who dared to execute Charles I The question that was now being asked was, what would the dead king’s son do next? The answer arrived in June 1650, when Charles sailed to Scotland with the aim of wresting back his father’s kingdoms. There, on 1 January 1651, he became the last monarch to be crowned north of the border, at a coronation ceremony at Scone Palace in Perthshire. Unfortunately, Charles’s return to the mainland hadn’t gone unnoticed by Oliver Cromwell, now the most powerful man in the three kingdoms. The parliamentarian leader was determined to crush Charles’s campaign before it had begun and sent an army north to stamp out the royalist uprising. That army inflicted a bloody defeat on the Scots at Dunbar, killing 3,000 and taking a further 10,000 prisoner. Battle of Worcester: bloodbath for the royalists Yet Charles hadn’t given up all hope of regaining his father’s kingdoms quite yet. In fact, soon he had devised a new plan: to march an army into England, join up with his supporters there, and drive towards London. But Charles had failed to read the room. South of the border there simply wasn’t the appetite for more death and destruction, especially death and destruction meted out by a marauding Scottish army. When Charles marched south, the anticipated explosion of popular support didn’t materialise. Even Charles I’s former royalist capital of Oxford refused to open its gates to the Scottish army. The invasion turned into a fiasco; one that reached a nightmarish crescendo when a parliamentarian army numbering 28,000 men caught up with Charles II’s army in Worcester. With the Scottish army less than half the size of its opponents, and absolutely exhausted, the result was a bloodbath. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages51240785-c019546-e1681725450924.jpg" width="620" height="414" alt="A royalist meets an unfortunate end at the battle of Worcester in 1651. Charles’s men were no match for Oliver Cromwell’s army (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" title="A royalist meets an unfortunate end at the battle of Worcester in 1651. Charles’s men were no match for Oliver Cromwell’s army (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> What would have made Cromwell’s victory even more complete was if his forces had captured Charles. Yet somehow the fugitive king slipped through the net: first by hiding in an oak tree, then, assisted by a young woman named Jane Lane, whose brother was an officer in the royalist army, riding to Bristol. From there, the king travelled to the beach at Shoreham where he and his friend Lord Wilmot made their getaway to the European continent. Following the defeat at Worcester, Charles’s hopes of ever regaining what he believed to be his rightful inheritance seemed to be well and truly expunged. And so he spent the next eight years enjoying the hospitality of various royal courts, filling his days partying, riding, sailing and womanising. Bough for the king: when Charles II had to hide up a tree In 1651, a young Charles narrowly escaped the clutches of the parliamentarian forces thanks to an unlikely hiding place The search was on. A massive parliamentarian force had just crushed a Scottish army, led by Charles II, at Worcester. Now, to put the icing on the cake, all the victors had to do was capture the fugitive king himself. With his army emphatically beaten and supporters deserting him in droves, it would surely be the easiest of tasks. Yet, as Charles’s pursuers would discover over the next few days, the king was resourceful, elusive and not entirely without sympathisers. Among those still willing to support the king were the Penderels. This family of Roman Catholic farmers spirited the exhausted monarch – now disguised as a woodman – to their home, Boscobel House, nearly 40 miles from Worcester. Here, Charles was joined by a fellow royalist fugitive, William Careless. And it was Careless who came up with a quite remarkable plan: for the pair to evade their would-be captors by hiding in a nearby oak tree. And that’s exactly what they did, hurrying to the oak as dawn broke on 6 September 1651. “While we were in the tree we see soldiers going up and down in the thickest of the wood searching for persons escaped, we seeing them now and then peeping out of the woods,” Charles II would later recall. The soldiers failed to find their quarry and Charles would, against all odds, escape to France. End of the republic: return of the king But soon his prospects were to take another turn – and, once again, the trigger was a dramatic change of events in England. On 3 September 1658, Cromwell died. With his passing, the cement that had held together the republican regime that had ruled in the absence of the monarchy, began to crumble. The army didn’t trust Oliver’s nominated successor, his son Richard, and so in May 1659 they forced him into retirement. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages51245265-4ea7789-e1681725135100.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Parliamentarian general George Monck switched allegiances and became a pivotal figure in the restoration of Charles II (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" title="Parliamentarian general George Monck switched allegiances and became a pivotal figure in the restoration of Charles II (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> In a kingdom increasingly living under the yoke of high taxes and declining trade, what followed was a period marked by disputes between parliament and army. Enter George Monck. This Scotland-based parliamentarian general sensed that the public was becoming increasingly receptive to the idea of a restoration of the monarchy and so, in February 1660, Monck marched an army south into England with the aim of bringing that about. In March, with a parliament that was now full of newly elected royalist supporters, Monck began to make private overtures to Charles. The events of spring 1660 marked an astonishing change of fortunes for the exiled king. The famed diarist and naval administrator Samuel Pepys had recently reported that Charles and his court were virtually living in rags, not a coat among them worth more than 40 shillings. Yet now he was on the cusp of regaining his father’s throne. A critical development in that scenario being realised was the Declaration of Breda (named after the Dutch city in which the king was residing), in which Charles set out the terms for the restoration of the monarchy. In the declaration, he struck a strikingly conciliatory tone, offering a full pardon to all who appealed to him within 40 days, except those who had signed his father’s death warrant in 1649. On the podcast | Dr Clare Jackson tackles listener questions on the Restoration <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages515992354-2ce5eac-e1681725077267.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A large gathering watches the departure of Charles II and his entourage from the Dutch port of Scheveningen in 1660, bound for England (Photo by Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images)" title="A large gathering watches the departure of Charles II and his entourage from the Dutch port of Scheveningen in 1660, bound for England (Photo by Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images)" /> He also offered “liberty to tender consciences” (unless religious differences threatened national peace), and payment of arrears of army pay. In a letter addressed to the speaker of the House of Commons, the king even extended an olive branch to MPs, appealing to them as “wise and dispassionate men and good patriots”. The campaign behind the restoration had now gained an unstoppable momentum. Soon, people were flooding into Breda to wish him well, including Sir John Grenville, who came with a large sum of money from the new Convention Parliament and the City of London. When Charles saw this, Pepys reports, he became “so joyful, that he called the Princess Royal and Duke of York to look upon it as it lay in the Portmanteau before it was taken out”. A few days later, having received deputations from parliamentary commissioners in the Hague, Charles set sail for England. By the time his fleet emerged over the horizon, thousands of people had lined Dover’s iconic white cliffs. They were there to welcome the ultimate survivor: their returning king. This article was first published in the Christmas 2022 issue of BBC History Revealed
Art, culture and science in the Restoration period
King Charles II may be remembered for his hedonism, but he supported a wide range of scientific and artistic endeavours that would help shape the modern world. Elinor Evans explores the strides made in the Restoration, from safer navigation at sea to putting women on the stage
While Charles II has gone down in history as the ‘Merry Monarch’ due to his well known pleasure-seeking proclivities, that nickname belies his dedicated patronage of science and the arts during his nearly 25-year reign. What’s more, it was a connection to his pursuit of pleasure that spurred him on to one of his most significant commissions. In the mid-17th century, many minds were concerned with the ‘longitude problem’. The challenge of finding a ship’s precise longitude at sea had haunted sailors for centuries. While latitude – the measurement of distance north or south of the Equator – was known, when out of sight of land, ships’ crews had no method of telling how far east or west they were, meaning terrible consequences for many vessels. Read more | Your ultimate guide to the Restoration period One of Charles II’s mistresses, a Frenchwoman named Louise de Kéroualle, was aware of the puzzle. She heard a rumour through the French court that an astronomer and fellow countryman, Sieur de St Pierre, had devised a means of determining longitude at sea by observing the moon’s position in relation to the background stars. Intrigued, she pressed the king to investigate, leading Charles II to set up a Royal Commission to examine the new proposals. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages917704228-25c9d7c-e1681202985132.jpg" width="620" height="415" alt="A portrait of Charles II, wearing his robes of the Sovereign of the Order of the Garter, by Dutch artist Peter Lely (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" title="A portrait of Charles II, wearing his robes of the Sovereign of the Order of the Garter, by Dutch artist Peter Lely (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" /> This commission marked the start of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich – the oldest scientific institution in Great Britain, founded by the king in 1675 – and the appointment of John Flamsteed to the role of astronomical observator (later astronomer royal). Many thinkers in the 16th and 17th centuries had begun to question received knowledge, turning instead to observation and experimentation, and the Restoration was an era when many titans of science flourished. ‘Take nobody’s word for it’ Figures such as Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke and Christopher Wren all gained prominence through the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, on 28 November 1660 and granted a royal charter from Charles soon after. Founded on the principles of scientific experimentation, the early society was made up of leading philosophers, mathematicians and inventors, who elected as their motto nullius in verba (‘take nobody’s word for it’). Read more | A timeline of the Restoration period The society’s members produced some of the era’s most eminent work. Robert Hooke’s Micrographia was published in 1665, a groundbreaking study of minute objects through a microscope (an invention dating from around a century earlier that had been improved by a Dutchman named Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in the early 1660s). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages517331694-e421bcd-e1681203378704.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The title page from The title page from Robert Hooke’s book Micrographia, which was published by the Royal Society in 1665 (Photo by Bettmann / Getty Images)" title="The title page from Robert Hooke’s book Micrographia, which was published by the Royal Society in 1665 (Photo by Bettmann / Getty Images)" /> Alongside detailed drawings of gnats, louses and fleas, Hooke took care to record the methods of his experiments, including the tactic of dousing his subjects in alcohol. One ant was so “troublesom to be drawn”, noted Hooke, that he used brandy which “knock’d him down dead drunk, so that he became moveless”. Hooke’s study of objects that had been previously invisible to the naked eye was pivotal in advancing understanding of the natural world. Read more | 9 places where British astronomy flourished Polymath Christopher Wren, who served as the Royal Society’s president between 1680 and 1682, was deeply engaged in the challenge of determining longitude, and is another figure inextricable from innovation during the Restoration era. In 1663, Wren designed a ‘weather-clock’ that would record temperature, humidity, rainfall and barometric pressure. As well as his experiments in anatomy, astronomy and geometry, Wren is today best known for his work as an architect. Wren was sought by Charles II for the construction of new harbour defences at Tangiers (between 1661 and 1684, the Moroccan port city was occupied by English forces). Wren refused, though was later tasked with the restoration of Old St Paul’s Cathedral to a more classical style. Before work could get fully underway, the site was ravaged by the Great Fire of London in 1666. Wren took on the full redesign, resulting in the spectacular landmark that survives to the present day – though true to the society’s principles, the project was not without some experimentation. During the build, Wren used new techniques with gunpowder to demolish walls that remained after the fire; however, Wren’s chosen method wasn’t easy to control, and several workers were killed. By 1669, he had been appointed King’s Surveyor of Works, and supervised the building and maintenance of all the royal palaces. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages1020542688-bc3437b-e1681202892467.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A cross-section drawing showing the dome of Sir Christopher Wren's St Paul’s Cathedral, after the old one was destroyed in the Great Fire of London (Photo by The Print Collector/Getty Images)" title="A cross-section drawing showing the dome of Sir Christopher Wren's St Paul’s Cathedral, after the old one was destroyed in the Great Fire of London (Photo by The Print Collector/Getty Images)" /> As well as taking a keen interest in architecture and science, Charles II was also patron to a mass of artwork. His investment wasn’t merely aesthetic; the king was savvy to the prestige and power that a collection of art could convey. One of his first acts as king was to hunt down the many works that had belonged to his late father, a large number of which had been sold by the government during the Interregnum. On the podcast | The Restoration: everything you wanted to know Over the course of his reign, Charles amassed a significant collection, with art playing a vital role in representing his legitimacy and authority as monarch. He often employed foreign painters, most notably the Dutchman Peter Lely, who often painted the king wearing his robes of the Sovereign of the Order of the Garter. Charles also recognised the value of art in strengthening diplomatic ties – in 1660 he accepted a gift that included sculpture and furniture from the Netherlands (although the present did not ensure peace; by 1665, the Second Anglo-Dutch War had begun). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages591977326-8abb60c-e1681203245420.jpg" width="620" height="415" alt="A 1926 illustration of Nell Gwyn backstage at London’s Theatre Royal, which received the king’s patronage (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)" title="A 1926 illustration of Nell Gwyn backstage at London’s Theatre Royal, which received the king’s patronage (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)" /> Art wasn’t all business for the king. Charles’s willingness to experiment meant changes for the lives of women, too. During his years spent abroad in exile, the king had witnessed women performing in public theatres on the continent. Upon his restoration to the throne in 1660, the king overturned the rigid Puritan rules that had banned theatrical performances, and decreed that women should be allowed to act on the stage. Female actors such as the king’s mistresses Moll Davis and Nell Gwyn were able to make a name for themselves, while other women, such as Aphra Behn, were able to achieve success as writers. While undoubtedly offering one form of progress, the parts for women were often bawdy and specifically intended to titillate Restoration audiences; so-called ‘breeches roles’ saw women playing men. These roles offered the chance for theatregoers to see the shape of women’s legs – and perhaps also give a glimpse into how social progress continued to be shaped by the king’s own indulgent lifestyle. This article was first published in the Christmas 2022 issue of BBC History Revealed
Your ultimate guide to the Restoration period
What was the Restoration? How did it come about? What was the reaction to Charles II? And what was life like in Restoration England? Dr Clare Jackson answers key questions about the historical period that was shaped by the restoration of the monarchy
What was the Restoration? In short, the Restoration was the re-establishment of Charles II as king of England following more than a decade of different types of constitutional regime. Charles II’s father, Charles I, had acceded to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1625, but his reign had been tumultuous. In the late 1630s, his authority had started to collapse, and he’d faced increasing challenges to his rule in all three kingdoms, which blew up into what we think of now as the Civil Wars. The conflict lasted through the 1640s until the decision was taken by a purged parliament and army leaders to put Charles I on trial, and he was executed in 1649. At that point, his eldest son, Charles, Prince of Wales, who was 18, was immediately named as his father’s successor in Scotland, thereby becoming King Charles II. The Scots very pointedly declared the young man to be not only king of Scotland, but also of England and Ireland. He spent the next 11 years in exile, trying to support royalist attempts to re-establish the monarchy during the unstable years of first the English Commonwealth, and then the Cromwellian Protectorate. There was a bewildering succession of short-lived regimes that followed Oliver Cromwell’s death in 1658, but in the spring of 1660, parliament made the decision to invite Charles II back as king of England. Today, we tend to date the Restoration from the re-establishment of the monarchy in 1660, but Charles II always dated the start of his reign as the moment of his father’s death on 30 January 1649. How did the Restoration come about? You might think that the Interregnum – the period between Charles I’s death and Charles II’s restoration – would have been a time of settling down following years of upheaval, but the reality was that there was never any real security about what the next year might look like. Part of the reason for Oliver Cromwell’s popularity was that he appeared to bring stability. I think most historians would probably say that the way the Restoration turned out in 1660 was the result of several complex factors that only came together in the 18 months before it actually took place. Cromwell died in September 1658, and it was quickly announced that his eldest son, Richard, would succeed him as lord protector, even though he had little in the way of military or political experience. Richard Cromwell’s Protectorate was short-lived, and he was unable to command the confidence of MPs, or indeed the army, on whose power the Protectorate essentially sat. Read more | A timeline of the Restoration era A series of confusing constitutional experiments followed Richard’s resignation in May 1659, and there was a lot of affection for what was known as the ‘good old cause’ (re-establishing a Republic). But increasingly, there were also irreconcilable divisions between the army and many civilian politicians, as well as a general feeling of constitutional exhaustion and a desire for normality. And all the time, there was Charles II’s court in exile, biding its time and ready to offer everything that the English people thought they needed at that stage – stability, traditional government and so on – but waiting for the right moment to make a serious move. It was much more desirable for Charles II that his own people restore him to the throne; there were serial offers, especially in the late 1650s, from countries like Spain and France to help with an armed invasion on his behalf. But that wouldn’t have done much to help Charles’s legitimacy or credibility with the English people. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages464504579-7ca542c-e1680788870785.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A Victorian-era painting imagines Oliver Cromwell gazing at the body of Charles I, whose death warrant he had signed in 1649 (Photo by Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" title="A Victorian-era painting imagines Oliver Cromwell gazing at the body of Charles I, whose death warrant he had signed in 1649 (Photo by Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" /> After this succession of different types of constitutional regime, there was a great deal of instability, to put it mildly, and in 1660, parliament invited Charles II to reclaim his throne. Charles himself was skilful in helping to draft literature confirming that, if restored as king, he would not prioritise vengeance. The Declaration of Breda, drafted by the exiled court in April 1660, made it clear that Charles wanted to offer stability, to respect the rule of law, and work with a free parliament. On the religious front, he famously promised “liberty to tender Consciences, and that no man shall be disquieted... for differences of opinion in matters of Religion”. It was certainly a reassuring manifesto and one that seemed to offer stability and legitimacy. Read more | "Charles II had to appeal to public opinion more than his predecessors did": Clare Jackson on the 'star king' How was Charles II received when he returned to England? Once his return had been agreed, things happened very quickly; Charles, who was staying in the Protestant Dutch town of Breda where he worked closely with the English deputations, was less than a day’s sailing from England. After a series of farewell banquets and ceremonies, he sailed to Dover, famously accompanied by a 27-year-old Samuel Pepys, who recorded it all in his diary. Upon landing they moved with a lot of pomp and ceremony to Canterbury and, finally, on 29 May 1660 (Charles’s 30th birthday), he made his entry into London where there were crowds of people cheering and welcoming him. He then attended dinner in the Banqueting House – the same building his father had been executed in front of in 1649, and is now the only surviving part of the Palace of Whitehall. Most people, I think, were relieved and surprised that his return had taken place in so bloodless a manner, and that the emphasis was on celebration rather than division. How quickly would news of Charles II’s return have spread? Very quickly. When Charles I was beheaded on 30 January 1649, the news had travelled to Edinburgh fast enough for Charles II to be crowned king of Scotland just a few days later, on 6 February. One of the interesting dilemmas of the Restoration for the exiled court was that owning any image of Charles II had been made a crime during the 1650s, so there were few pictures of the king when he returned in 1660. Consequently, there was much anxiety to distribute images of him; some of these were crudely drawn tavern signs and woodcuts, and many purists were appalled at the character of such images. But the Restoration court needed to disseminate as many likenesses of him as possible. A state portrait is traditionally commissioned at the accession of a new monarch, but, because of the precariousness of the situation, it was decided not to create a formal portrait of Charles’s English coronation in 1661. More than any other monarch, Charles II was always aware that his survival on the throne depended on his subjects wanting him there. Read more | How Charles II put Britain back together after the Civil War Despite this, there was still a great amount of state theatre to the occasion. Charles had decided that his coronation day would be 23 April 1661 – St George’s Day – and for the rest of his reign, the great National Saint’s Day and his crowning would be celebrated together. Were there any repercussions for the Cromwell family? One thing I’ve always found remarkable was the obvious vengeance directed at Oliver Cromwell himself. Despite all the Restoration’s rhetoric of forgetting and moving on, vengeance was targeted towards those directly involved in Charles I’s execution. Accordingly, Cromwell’s body – like those of other regicides who had died before 1660 – was exhumed, subjected to a ritual hanging, drawing and quartering, with his head placed on a spike. I studied at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, the college that Cromwell had attended as an undergraduate, and to which, in 1960, his severed head was entrusted and buried. To this day, the exact location of the head within the college is a secret, such is the sensitivity that surrounds it. But apart from that, there was remarkably little vengeance directed towards the living members of the Cromwell family; even Richard was left alone and lived until he was 85. What was life like in Restoration England? There were lots of different strains to it. The image of Charles II as the ‘Merry Monarch’ has become almost synonymous with the era – the flowing curls, cavalier costumes, the reopening of the theatres. For the rest of the country, though, on a day-to-day basis, there must have been a lot of apprehension. This was a population that had risen in revolt against their government and then lived through a bewildering and discombobulating 20-year period. The radicalism of the Civil Wars and the ideas that had been articulated – be it about annual parliaments or universal suffrage – could never be simply ‘unthought’. The historian Jonathan Scott has talked about this being a population that had all the hallmarks of something like PTSD, living through a traumatic period and instinctively inclined to become alarmed by any moment of instability, fearing a return to civil war and revolution. On the podcast | Dr Clare Jackson discusses the reestablishment of the monarchy in 1660 In the late 1670s and early 1680s, when Charles’s reign became unstable during the so-called Exclusion Crisis [when moves were made to exclude Charles’s Catholic brother and heir, James, Duke of York, from the succession], there were real fears that ‘1641 is come again’ and the chaos of civil war would be repeated. Did the Restoration have a discernible impact on the status of women in society? For most women, restoring the monarchy was assumed to restore all the patriarchal structures and authority that had been in place before the Civil Wars. There had been something of an explosion of female publishing and petitioning during the conflict and later, too, in the 1650s, but a lot of that would have declined during the Restoration period. But women’s agency is evident in other areas of life. A lot of women had been widowed in the Civil Wars, and many continued to occupy responsible roles into the Restoration or spent years petitioning on behalf of injured or deceased family members. So there were different avenues of female influence. Read more | Was Charles II too randy to rule? The idea of state mistresses was something that Charles II’s reign really epitomised in a way that the English monarchy hadn’t seen before, and many people looked to the king’s mistresses, particularly the French-born Louise de Kéroualle, who became duchess of Portsmouth, as alternative avenues to Charles. That’s just one sort of woman in a privileged position, though; the general emphasis was very much on re-establishing traditional, patriarchal norms of social order. Many of the more radical ideas about gender that had emerged in the preceding decades couldn’t be forgotten, though, and we find that, wrapped up in the fears of a descent back into civil war that were expressed by many men at the time, were concerns about the return of the sorts of articulate women who were publishing in the 1650s. Dr Clare Jackson was speaking to Elinor Evans This article was first published in the Christmas 2022 issue of BBC History Revealed
Discover the most important moments in the story of the Restoration period with our handy timeline...
Chart the most pivotal moments in the Restoration period with our timeline, from Charles II's homecoming to the highs and lows that came to define his quarter-century reign: 30 January 1649 King Charles I is beheaded outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall. 1 January 1651 Charles II is crowned king of Scotland at Scone Abbey having already, in June 1650, reluctantly promised to establish Presbyterianism (a branch of Protestantism originating in Scotland) across all three kingdoms. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages173339552-57d2957-e1680780186912.jpg" width="620" height="411" alt="King Charles I on his way to be executed, 30 January 1649, in a 19th-century painting by Ernest Crofts (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)" title="King Charles I on his way to be executed, 30 January 1649, in a 19th-century painting by Ernest Crofts (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)" /> 3 September 1651 Hoping to take back the English crown, Charles II and his mainly Scottish army take on Oliver Cromwell’s superior forces at Worcester and lose. The young king narrowly evades capture and is forced to flee to France, disguised as a servant. Read more | Your ultimate guide to the Restoration era 3 September 1658 Oliver Cromwell dies, aged 59. His eldest son, Richard, succeeds him as lord protector. May 1659 With little political or military experience, Richard Cromwell is unable to command the respect or confidence of the army and parliament. Nine months after his father’s death, he resigns, ending the Protectorate. 4 April 1660 The exiled king issues the Declaration of Breda, outlining his terms for a restoration of the monarchy, including freedom of religious conscience and a “general pardon” for those who swear loyalty to him. It is made public on 1 May. 29 May 1660 Charles II triumphantly enters London on his 30th birthday. His huge procession makes its way to Whitehall, where the king meets with peers and MPs, who queue to kiss his hand. Read more | How Charles II put Britain back together after the Civil War November 1660 The Royal Society is founded at Gresham College, London. 30 January 1661 The bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Robert Blake, John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton – all instrumental in the trial and execution of Charles I – are exhumed and posthumously hanged, drawn and quartered, after which their heads are placed on spikes above Westminster Hall. 23 April 1661 Charles II is crowned king of England at Westminster Abbey. The loss or destruction of the Crown Jewels during the Commonwealth era has seen new pieces of royal regalia specially made for the occasion. 19 May 1662 The Act of Uniformity enforces the use of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. More than 2,000 clergymen refuse to comply and are expelled from the Church of England. 21 May 1662 Charles II marries the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza. October 1662 In need of money, Charles agrees to sell Dunkirk, which has been in English hands since 1658, to Louis XIV of France for 5 million livres (around £320,000). The price is later brought down by a 12 per cent discount. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages599965549-2fcbee7-e1680779780202.jpg" width="620" height="410" alt="The Raid on the Medway, 1667, painting by Dutch artist Pieter Cornelisz van Soest (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" title="The Raid on the Medway, 1667, painting by Dutch artist Pieter Cornelisz van Soest (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" /> March 1665 – July 1667 The Second Anglo-Dutch War, stemming from commercial rivalry between England and the Dutch Republic, ends in victory for the Dutch. 1665–66 The Great Plague of London kills as many as 100,000 people, roughly 20 per cent of the city’s population. It is the worst outbreak of plague in England since the Black Death of 1348. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages802465290-5218254-e1680779636889.jpg" width="620" height="404" alt="An illustration showing a group of men filling a mass grave during the Great Plague of London, 1665-66 (Photo by The Print Collector/Getty Images)" title="An illustration showing a group of men filling a mass grave during the Great Plague of London, 1665-66 (Photo by The Print Collector/Getty Images)" /> February 1666 Catherine of Braganza suffers a miscarriage. She will lose two more pregnancies before 1669 and will never bear a living heir for the king. Read more | Coffee, plague and the Great Fire: the pleasures and perils of living in Restoration London 2 September 1666 The Great Fire of London begins in a baker’s shop off Pudding Lane. Some 13,200 houses, as well as St Paul’s Cathedral, are destroyed. The financial costs are estimated at £10 million. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages464477641-8f8f540-e1680780109394.jpg" width="625" height="413" alt="A 17th-century depiction of the Great Fire of London, 1666, looking towards the west facade of old St Paul's Cathedral (Photo by Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" title="A 17th-century depiction of the Great Fire of London, 1666, looking towards the west facade of old St Paul's Cathedral (Photo by Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" /> Summer 1667 Charles forms the Cabal ministry, a private group of high councillors who help him extend his power. The first letters of the names or titles of the five most prominent men – Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley and Lauderdale – give the Cabal its name. April 1668 Charles begins a relationship with orange seller-turned actor Nell Gwyn. June 1670 Charles signs a secret treaty with Louis XIV. In it he promises to convert to Catholicism at a future date and provide warships and soldiers to help the French war against the Dutch, in return for French subsidies. March 1672 Charles bypasses parliament and issues the Declaration of Indulgence, which states that penal laws against Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters will be removed. Parliamentary protests see the proclamation revoked. 1672–74 According to the terms of his secret treaty with the French king, Charles sends the English navy to support France in its war with the Dutch Republic. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages544166568-56d87b0-e1680779927531.jpg" width="629" height="402" alt="The battle of Solebay in 1672, the first naval engagement of the Third Anglo-Dutch War, painting by Willem van de Velde (Photo by VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images)" title="The battle of Solebay in 1672, the first naval engagement of the Third Anglo-Dutch War, painting by Willem van de Velde (Photo by VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images)" /> March 1675 John Flamsteed is appointed the first astronomer royal. He is charged with drawing up an accurate map of the night sky, which can be used for navigation. September 1678 A renegade Anglican clergyman named Titus Oates informs parliament of a fictitious plot (known as the Popish Plot) alleging that members of the Jesuit religious order are planning to assassinate Charles II and bring his brother James, Duke of York to the throne. On the podcast | Dr Clare Jackson tackles listener questions on the reestablishment of the monarchy 1679–81 A parliamentary bill is introduced in May 1679, intended to exclude Charles II’s Catholic brother and heir from the succession. The so-called Exclusion Crisis continues until 1681, when Charles dissolves parliament for the last time before his death. May 1679 The Habeas Corpus act is passed, ensuring that no one can be imprisoned unlawfully. The term – Latin for “you may have the body” – has ancient beginnings in the common law of England, dating back before the creation of Magna Carta in 1215. Early 1683 A group of Protestants, including James, Duke of Monmouth (an illegitimate son of Charles II), plan to murder the king and his heir in the Rye House Plot. 6 February 1685 Charles II dies at the Palace of Whitehall, having apparently suffered a stroke a few days earlier. In his final moments he converts to Roman Catholicism, taking Communion, and is anointed with holy oil. His younger brother succeeds him as James VII and II. This article was first published in the Christmas 2022 issue of BBC History Revealed
Part fourteen in our 20-part series looking at decisive moments of the last 1,000 years in British history explores 1650–1699. Charles II had been on the throne since 1660 and civil war scars were fading. But now, says John Morrill, attempts to restore a national church set the scene for 200 years of political turmoil
The year 1662 was a warm, bright year: the warmest winter and spring of the whole half century and one of the warmest overall – only dwarfed by the scorching summer of 1686. The scars of civil war, the buildings burned and wrecked by war, were being repaired and replaced. Carpenters and masons were reconverting churches from whitewashed auditoria into sacramental spaces and theatres were being built at an unprecedented rate. Samuel Pepys was able to see a new show most weeks, including The Knight of the Burning Pestle, The French Dancing Master and the first recorded Punch and Judy show. The king was to be seen at many of these plays with his pregnant mistress, a casual insult to the reformation of manners at the heart of Interregnum high-mindedness. A grimmer kind of theatre was enacted at Tyburn where the procession of Regicides dragged there to be half-hanged, eviscerated and cut into pieces was completed. The Restoration made an example of those who took part in Charles I’s trial and execution but passed a wide-ranging indemnity that protected everyone else from prosecution for what they had done over the past 20 years. Read more | Your ultimate guide to the Restoration period But a series of parliamentary acts revealed an on-going neurosis: in late 1661 an Act “against tumultuous petitioning” required all but the humblest petitions to be initiated by JPs and grand juries at quarter sessions; the Licensing Act of 1662 brought in a tougher regime for the control of the press than had existed even before the Revolution – one of its results was effectively to drive newspapers off the streets for most of the next 30 years. Later in 1662, “an Act for the relief of the poor” allowed local officials to forcibly remove all newcomers from a parish if they were “likely to be chargeable” to the poor rate and to return them to their previous place of residence. This was motivated as much by fear of sedition as of vagrancy. But for the better off, 1662 was a good year. The shops were full of goods, the King’s wife introduced the English to tea and the Great Turk coffee house opened in London. In 1662 what Pepys called “the college of virtuosos” (the Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge) was established by Royal Charter, and its meetings were one of the few things to distract the king from pleasures of the chase (human and animal). In 1662, Isaac Newton was in his first year at Cambridge, but Christopher Wren was designing weather-clocks, and Robert Boyle was announcing his discovery about the inverse relationship of volume and pressure in gases. In Derby John Flamsteed, later to be the first Astronomer Royal, made his first ever recording of the partial solar eclipse. 1662 in context The country was still recovering from Puritanism and revolution, while the restoration of church and king brought its own problems In 1662, The peoples of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland were coming to terms with the effects of 20 years of civil war and political and religious violence. In the course of the 1640s and 1650s, parish churches were purged of all “monuments of idolatry and superstition”, Christmas and Easter were banned, the Prayer Book was proscribed, bishops, church courts and trappings of hierarchy were swept away. A variety of religious sects sprang up with more (Baptist) or less (Quaker) state encouragement. In 1649 Charles I was put on trial and beheaded for treason against his people, and monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished. A godly army set up and then pulled down various constitutional experiments, the most long-lasting of which made the Lord General Oliver Cromwell Lord Protector. The most contentious of his achievements was the military subjugation of Ireland and Scotland. In Ireland, the Commonwealth governments took almost half the land from Catholics born in Ireland, and gave it to Protestants from England. The population shrank by one third. The proportion of British adult males who died as a result of the fighting was higher than in the First World War. The revolutionaries made many enemies and few friends. By 1660, there was an overwhelming desire for Restoration – for a return to hereditary monarchy, to bishops and Cranmer’s prayers, to Christmas pies, maypoles, sport on Sunday afternoons. But the revolution cast a long shadow. There were enough supporters of the Puritan way – freedom of conscience, the imposition of strict moral codes, plain dealing, plain dress – for the celebration of old and new freer ways to cause political polarisation. All kinds of enthusiasm were discredited. A new spirit of dispassionate, sceptical inquiry challenged the claims of all churches and churchmen. So Church and King were restored, but had to face their critics. And the alliance was fatally wounded by the fact that none of the three monarchs in this half-century was a supporter of the Established Church. Charles II hid his private beliefs so deeply behind a protective marshmallow coating (he was all things to all men) that historians are still not sure whether he was a secret Catholic or an early Deist. James II and VII was a Catholic with an extreme case of convertitis, and William III would do whatever was necessary to ensure that English politicians would underwrite his crusade against Louis XIV. And so the central instabilities of the Restoration, so evident in 1662, created crisis after crisis in 1672, 1679, 1688, 1701. It took Louis XIV of France, threatening to impose popery and arbitrary government on the country, to persuade the political elite to convert the country into a fiscal-military state capable of dominating Europe and claiming a lion’s share of the world’s commerce. That threat was an indirect result of the instabilities of the 1662 settlement, but without those, the trajectory of later 17th-century politics would have been very different. A peaceful year in Europe Internationally, 1662 was a quiet year. There was no European war, although the Chinese seized Formosa (Taiwan) from the Dutch. Charles II married Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese princess on 3 May, bringing Bombay and Tangier as part of her dowry. To cover some of the costs of setting her up with an appropriate household, Charles sold Dunkirk, occupied by Cromwell’s troops, back to France for £400,000. In 1660, Charles II had made it clear that he wanted an inclusive settlement. He gave more office, more patronage and more financial rewards to his father’s enemies than to his father’s friends: his friends would not send him on his travels again. He attempted to achieve this breadth in both secular and religious affairs; but he succeeded only in the former. The forces of religious reaction were too strong for him in each of his kingdoms, and in 1662, legislation was passed in each kingdom privileging those who embraced the spirit of the Elizabethan and Jacobean settlements. In England, the Act of Uniformity of 1662 restored a church both Catholic and Reformed, which looked Catholic and sounded Protestant, with a prayer book little changed from that of Elizabeth, with lordly bishops in their medieval palaces. Read more | A timeline of the Restoration period Membership of this state church was made mandatory, with fines and other minor penalties on those who would not attend; and with heavier penalties on those who tried to worship, even in private, according to their experience and conscience. For the next 200 years, the position in English law was that only communicating members of the Church of England could hold public office, or attend university or an inn of court. Charles had wanted to loosen up the terms of membership of his national church, believing persecution would breed far more sedition, than tolerating separation would. But since he never relished a fight, and since his Parliament and many of his advisers were adamant the Church needed to be true to its pre-war traditions and that tolerance would allow sedition to fester, he gave in. As a result, more than one in ten of the clergy resigned, and a similar proportion opted out of regular church attendance and into attendance at conventicles – meetings of dissenters for worship. This created a fundamental instability in English political culture: between those who believed that monarchy needed to be underpinned by a hierarchical, narrow, national church; and those who wanted a different kind of national church or no national church at all. In time, these tensions congealed into the two great parties: Tory (strong church equals strong monarchy equals security of life and property); and Whig (religious pluralism as a hallmark of personal liberty as a hallmark of economic and social prosperity). Expulsion of Scottish clergy Much the same happened in Scotland. A ruined nobility were more ruthless in reclaiming social power and happy to see the power of the Kirk broken and its ministers humbled, and a settlement made that was both erastian (advocating the doctrine of state supremacy over the Church in ecclesiastical affairs) and episcopalian (governed by bishops). The purge on the uncompromising led in 1662 to the expulsion of one third of the clergy. Such men remained convinced they were instruments of God’s will; this made them more seditious than English dissenters. The more seditious they became, the more brutal the reactions of the Scottish establishment: a dark era of torture, massacre, assassination and fanaticism ensued. In 1689 the Revolution was not to be the peaceful fudge that it was in England, but violent, counter-vindictive, partisan. In Ireland, too, religion was the crunch issue. There was spasmodic persecution of clergy, but little attempt to compel Catholics to attend Protestant worship, let alone to convert them. But the big problem was land. In England and Scotland, compromises between the purchasers of confiscated land were usually possible (the purchasers of the land surrendering the title but staying on as tenants on low rents), but in Ireland the problem was unmanageable. More than 40 per cent of the land of Ireland had been confiscated and redistributed to those who had bankrolled English armies to put down the Irish rebellion of 1641 and to 30,000 soldiers who had effected the reconquest. In Ireland, unlike the king’s other kingdoms, in 1662 those confiscations were deemed legal. Charles II promised in 1660 to restore those who had not been directly implicated in the massacres of 1641 and who had supported his Lord Lieutenant against the Parliamentarians. He also promised to compensate those who had to surrender land to that group. These were unrealisable promises. In 1662, the Irish Act of Settlement set up a Court of Claims to examine all these issues. It was overwhelmed by the volume of work and lack of land to square the circle. It left almost everyone dissatisfied except those with family connection or clout with the Irish administration to get their claims to the head of the queue. The 80 per cent of the population who were Catholic were left with 20 per cent of the land. It left England with a permanent problem of garrisoning Ireland and facing a low-level insurgency of “Tories” and “Rapparees” (brigands). It ensured that the Revolution of 1688 in Ireland was not in the least Glorious. It was another bloodbath. 1662 was a year of deceptive calm. Everywhere there is evidence that in the face of a grieving Puritan minority, the peoples of England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland set out to enjoy the pleasures forbidden them for 20 years, and engaged in febrile efforts to silence or intimidate those who might try to start the conflict all over again. Charles II talked of religious liberty but ordered the assassination of his most implacable opponents as they plotted against him in exile. The Puritan minister Adam Martindale gave up his pulpit in Rostherne, Cheshire, and invited his parishioners round of a Sunday evening to criticise the sermons given earlier in the day by his successor. He was one of many. What was not restored at the Restoration was peace of mind. History facts: 1650–1699 Number of inhabitants in England 1650: 5.2m Inhabitants in England 1700: 4.9m Number of sick given “royal touch” (cure) by Charles II 1660–85: 51,236 Average age of marriage in England 1650–1700: male 27.7, female 25.9 Tobacco imported into Britain 1675: 2,000 tons Gin distilled in Britain in 1684-5: 533,000 gallons Key years: other important events in the second half of the 17th century 1653 – Cromwell as Lord Protector. Cromwell – wearied by the failure of the Rump Parliament to come up with a new constitution, a new religious framework, more social justice – used his troops to disband it (20 April) and established a Nominated Assembly of godly men with a mandate (4 July) to find long-term solutions. It failed completely and in December Cromwell reluctantly agreed to become Lord Protector under a constitution drawn up by General John Lambert. 1657 – Cromwell refuses the crown. Cromwell was put under great parliamentary pressure to become King. Since the Protectorate was not “known to the laws”, he had more discretionary power than many MPs thought wise; and they thought King Oliver would broaden his support among the many who admired monarchy but not the House of Stuart. But his fear that because God had “blasted the family and the name” it meant He did not want any monarch, made him decline. 1660 – The death of Puritanism. After Cromwell’s death in 1658, there was political meltdown and the Army too fell into factions. In February George Monck, the general in charge of Scotland, marched south and ordered free elections. Parliament recalled the king, but even before they did so, Easter was celebrated in thousands of parishes, and maypoles sprang up on village greens, both symbols that the Puritan experiment had failed. 1672 – The Test Acts. Charles went to war with the Dutch in alliance with the French but chickened out of a deal with Louis XIV to declare himself a Catholic. He did however attempt, by prerogative action, to give full rights of religious assembly to both Protestant and Catholic Dissenters. This backfired, however, and Parliament used the power of the purse to force Charles to accept new restrictions on practising Catholics (the Test Acts). 1679 – Failure of Exclusion Bill. Charles II had no legitimate children, and, as he aged, many Protestants feared both his authoritarianism (bribing of MPs, excessive use of discretionary power, closeness to Catholic France) and the prospect that he would be succeeded by his Catholic brother, James. The Whigs tried (but failed in the House of Lords) to break the hold of “divine right theory” by promoting an Exclusion Bill making Parliament the arbiter of the succession. 1685 – Accession of King James. In February Charles was replaced by James II and VII, who easily saw off rebellions in England by Charles’s bastard son, the Duke of Monmouth, and in Scotland by the rabidly Presbyterian Earl of Argyll. Initially James tried to coax the Tory-Anglicans into working with him to give equal rights to his Catholic coreligionists. They defied him. 1688 – Glorious Revolution. By 1688, James was trying to work with Whigs and Dissenters to promote his Catholic cause. The birth of a Catholic heir and the sheer scale of his attack on Anglican privilege provoked a section of the elite to invite William of Orange to invade to protect Protestantism, the succession rights of his wife (James’s daughter Mary) and to bring English arms and cash into the international coalition against Louis XIV. 1689 – William and Mary. After James fled to France, there was vicious civil war in Ireland, political blood-letting in Scotland and a painful set of compromises in England that allowed William and Mary to rule jointly on terms which some at the time (and since) believed to have changed the nature of monarchy and which others denied. The most important change was the 25 years war with France (1688–1713) that transformed the finances and governance of Britain. 1697 – Peace in Europe.The treaty of Ryswick brought a fragile peace to Europe, although everyone knew that a war between rival claimants to the Spanish succession was imminent. In Ireland, Parliament reneged on the promises William’s generals had made to the Catholics and began a process of sectarian measures (the Penal Laws) that enshrined social and religious injustice. It was also the year St Paul’s Cathedral (rebuilt after the Great Fire of London) reopened for business. More turning points in British history Read next: 1745: The Jacobite rebellion Go back: 1638: The Scottish Revolution <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2007/05/TP-Images-with-overlay15-a4b3be8.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Part fifteen in our 20-part series looking at decisive moments of the last 1,000 years in British history explores explores 1700–1749. (Image by Getty Images)" title="Part fifteen in our 20-part series looking at decisive moments of the last 1,000 years in British history explores explores 1700–1749. (Image by Getty Images)" /> Further reading: The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales 1658–1667 by Ronald Hutton (Oxford UP, 1985); The Restoration: England in the 1660s by NH Keeble (Blackwell, 2002); Restoration: Charles II and his Kingdoms by Tim Harris (Penguin, 2004) This article was first published in the May 2007 issue of BBC History Magazine
Your guide to King Charles II, the ‘merry monarch’
How did Charles II come to the throne? How many children did he have? And why is the title the ‘merry monarch’ less flattering than you might think? Clare Jackson presents a guide to the royal and the Restoration…
On the day on which the future Charles II was born at St James’s Palace in Westminster – 29 May 1630 – a brilliant star shone brightly in the daytime skies over London. Now thought to have been a supernova, this 'royal star' was regarded as an auspicious sign. The new Stuart prince was the first surviving son of King Charles I and his French wife, Queen Henrietta Maria, and the first child born as heir to the three crowns of England, Scotland and Ireland. Charles spent much of his childhood at Richmond Palace in Surrey, and was joined by two younger brothers, James and Henry (later the dukes of York and Gloucester respectively) and four younger sisters, Mary, Elizabeth, Anne and Henrietta Anne. Charles II: key dates and facts Born: 29 May 1630 Died: 6 February 1685 Reigned: Following the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II ruled as King of England, Scotland and Ireland until his death in 1685. He was also King of Scotland from 1649 to 1651. Coronation: Crowned King of Scotland on 1 January 1651 at Scone; then King of England, Scotland and Ireland on 23 April 1661 at Westminster Abbey Parents: Charles I and Henrietta Maria of France Spouse: Catherine of Braganza, daughter of King John IV of Portugal Children: No legitimate children, and at least 13 illegitimate children by seven mistresses by the time of his death Cause of death: Either a stroke or an illness brought on by chronic kidney disease Succeeded by: King James VII and II What was Charles II’s childhood like? Charles’s childhood was cut short prematurely when his father’s royal authority started to unravel in the late 1630s, first in Scotland, and subsequently in Ireland and England, as civil war broke out in all three kingdoms. While Charles I confronted his Scottish Covenanter opponents during the summers of 1639 and 1640, his eldest son remained at Whitehall. Even when Queen Henrietta Maria departed for the continent in 1642, the young Charles remained with his father on campaign, being given nominal command of the royalist war effort in western England in March 1645. After soon leaving the royal court in Oxford for Bristol, Prince Charles never saw his father again. Read more | Your ultimate guide to the Restoration era As the military tide turned in favour of Parliamentarian forces, Charles fled from Cornwall in March 1646 and moved to the Scilly Isles and Jersey, before joining his mother at the expense of King Louis XIV of France’s court near Paris. What happened after Charles I’s death in 1649? While staying with his sister, Mary, in The Hague, in the Netherlands, Charles learned that the English Parliament had convicted his father of high treason and had overseen Charles I's execution on 30 January 1649. When news of the regicide reached Edinburgh in February, the Scottish Parliament instantly proclaimed Charles II king of Scotland, England and Ireland. Hoping to raise a royalist force to reassert monarchical authority in all three kingdoms, Charles sailed to Scotland in June 1650 and became the last monarch to be crowned in Scotland at a coronation ceremony at Scone Palace in Perthshire on 1 January 1651. Read more | A timeline of the Restoration era But after launching an invasion of England on 31 July, Charles’s royalist army was heavily defeated by Oliver Cromwell’s republican forces on 3 September 1651 at the battle of Worcester. Having fled the scene, the 21-year-old king famously spent the day after the battle hiding in a local oak tree in Boscobel Wood, explaining why ‘Oak Apple Day’ later became a national day of thanksgiving in England until 1859 and why ‘The Royal Oak’ remains one of the most popular English pub names. After spending 43 nights on the run, furtively moving south, Charles sailed from Shoreham to the French coast and spent the next nine years enduring an itinerant and impoverished exile. Having resided at different foreign courts in France, the Holy Roman Empire and the Spanish Netherlands, Charles formed an alliance with Philip IV of Spain. His two brothers, James and Henry, would fight unsuccessfully for the Spanish Habsburgs at the battle of the Dunes, near Dunkirk, in June 1658 against an expeditionary force of 6,000 soldiers fighting for England’s Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, who were supporting Louis XIV’s French army. How did Charles II’s Restoration come about in 1660? In September 1658, Oliver Cromwell died of natural causes, and was succeeded as Lord Protector by his son, Richard, whose tenure in office proved short-lived. After successive republican regimes failed to provide stability, secret negotiations started between Charles II’s court-in-exile and the military governor in Scotland, General George Monck. On the podcast | Charles II on the run In April 1660, the exiled court issued a strategically worded ‘Declaration’ from its Dutch base in Breda, reassuring the English political nation that, if restored as king, Charles would not seek revenge for civil war injuries, but would extend a wide indemnity to his subjects and, in the religious sphere, offer a “liberty to tender consciences”. In London, free parliamentary elections returned a royalist majority to the House of Commons and the Convention Parliament declared Charles II to have been king of England since his father’s execution 11 years previously. Charles left the Dutch republic and made a triumphant entry into London on 29 May 1660, his 30th birthday. Read more | How Charles II put Britain back together after the Civil War Ruling a people traumatised by two decades of civil war divisions was far from straightforward. Alongside recurrent difficulties in raising sufficient crown finance from parliament, Charles’s inclination towards schemes of religious accommodation and toleration were rejected by supporters of the Act of Uniformity (1662) that reimposed a narrowly Anglican church settlement in England. The second Anglo-Dutch war (1665–7) brought financial strain and coincided with an extensive outbreak of bubonic plague in London in 1665. Further catastrophe ensued when the Great Fire of London destroyed large parts of the capital city in September 1666, while the Royal Navy’s flagship, the Royal Charles, was humiliatingly captured in a Dutch raid on the River Medway in June 1667. Quiz | How much do you know about the Great Fire of London? Did Charles II marry? How many children did he have? In May 1662, Charles married King John IV of Portugal’s daughter, Catherine of Braganza, acquiring a generous dowry, as well as the trading ports of Tangier and Bombay. Although the new queen failed to produce an heir, by 1667, Charles had fathered at least nine illegitimate children, by four different women. While living in exile, his eldest son, James (later duke of Monmouth) had been born in 1649 to Lucy Walter, followed by a daughter to Elizabeth Killigrew, countess of Shannon. In 1657, Charles had a son by Catherine Pegge, by whom he also had a daughter the following year. Following the Restoration, Charles had three sons and two daughters by Barbara Villiers (later duchess of Cleveland). By 1673, Charles had also sired another two sons by the actress, Nell Gwyn, as well as a son by his French mistress, Louise de Kéroualle (later duchess of Portsmouth), and a daughter by another actress, Mary Davis. Read more | Was King Charles II too randy to rule? Why was Charles II called the ‘merry monarch’? Although the king’s overt sexuality and numerous illegitimate offspring proclaimed an energetic virility and fecundity, Charles II remains unique among British monarchs in the extent to which he flaunted his sexual conquests and publicly dignified his natural children with aristocratic titles and royal privileges. The traditional epithet attached to Charles II – ‘the merry monarch’ – was less flattering when restored to its original literary context. As John Wilmot, earl of Rochester, had written of the king: “His sceptre and his prick are of a length”, but “restless he rolls about from whore to whore / A merry monarch, scandalous and poor”. Read more | Sex, scandals and betrayals of the court of Charles II How did Charles II die, and who succeeded him? Since Charles II failed to produce a lawful heir through his wife, Catherine, his heir remained his younger brother, James, duke of York, who had converted to Catholicism and, in 1673, married a second Catholic wife, Mary of Modena. Amid a rising tide of anti-Catholicism, Restoration politics polarised and, in 1678, Charles received details of an alleged plot to assassinate him, install his brother as king, and return England to Catholicism. The political fallout from this ‘Popish Plot’ then escalated into a full-blown ‘Exclusion Crisis’ when a parliamentary bill demanding that, on account of his Catholicism, the duke of York be removed from the royal line of succession, passed its second reading in the House of Commons in May 1679. Read more | Charles II: the king in danger Although Charles was a characteristically pragmatic, and sometimes unprincipled, political operator, he refused to compromise the integrity of hereditary succession, having himself been deprived of his English and Irish thrones for over a decade after his father’s execution in 1649. Suspecting that public opinion feared a descent into renewed civil war even more than a Catholic successor, Charles defeated his ‘Exclusionist’ opponents by dissolving the ‘Oxford Parliament’ in March 1681 and never again summoning an English parliament. In early February 1685, Charles became critically ill, suffering either a stroke or the effects of chronic kidney disease. He died four days later, on 6 February, having been secretly received into the Catholic church on his deathbed. Charles II was succeeded by his brother who became King James VII and II and the first openly Catholic monarch of England since the unfortunate reign of Mary Tudor.
Nell Gywn: the orange girl who became a king's mistress in Restoration England
From penniless orange seller to wealthy mistress of Charles II, Nell Gwyn’s wit and charm endeared her as a darling of society and a symbol of a more fun-loving and lavish England. Hers is story of rags to riches and back again...
Before the restoration of the monarchy, Britain was under the yoke of strict Puritan principles. For 18 years, all theatre was banned – the stage was, to Puritan eyes, immoral and sinful – so when Charles II was crowned king in 1660, the monarchy wasn’t the only thing to make a triumphant return. Read more | Your ultimate guide to the Restoration period Theatres re-opened, and playwrights and actors were intent on enjoying their new incarnation. Plays were infamously graphic and sexually explicit, much to Charles II’s liking. And, for the first time, women were allowed to tread the boards. One such actress who ascended to the stage, and far beyond, was Nell Gwyn. Who was Nell Gwyn? Little is known about Eleanor ‘Nell’ Gwyn’s childhood but it is thought that her mother owned a brothel where Nell served drinks to the booze-soused patrons and, despite being a young girl, there is a chance she also became a prostitute. With theatres opening around London, however, there were other opportunities for a job. A teenage Nell and her sister Rose found work at the King’s Theatre on Drury Lane as orange girls – selling fruit to the audiences. Bold, witty and a beauty, Nell caught the eye of actor Charles Hart and with his help, the pair were sharing the stage before long, as well as a bed. Read more | A timeline of the Restoration period Gwyn’s first recorded play was alongside Hart in a drama, The Indian Emperour by John Dryden, but she always knew her acting future was in comedies, not serious plays. For several years, Gwyn was a star in play after play, from her role as Florimel in Secret Love – which won the plaudits of renowned diarist Samuel Pepys, who had previously called her “pretty witty Nell” – to All Mistaken by James Howard. Supposedly, it was while rolling around the floor in the latter that she wowed Lord Buckhurst, Charles Sackville, and the two became lovers, even though Hart appeared in the play. The affair didn’t last long, and Gwyn was soon back on stage. Her charms, svelte figure and flowing brown hair worked their magic once again, but on a much bigger fish than Lord Buckhurst. She was not yet 20 when she became a mistress of the rakish libertine Charles II, who was himself approaching 40. As the (possibly apocryphal) tale goes, they flirted together while she was on stage then went out to supper. After food, Charles realised he had no money so Gwyn paid, but not without blurting, “Od’s fish! But this is the poorest company I ever was in!” Read more | Was Charles II too randy to rule? Charles was enamoured by her jovial spirit, risqué humour and smouldering sexuality, which meant she became the talk of the country. In May 1670, Gwyn gave birth to Charles’s son, his seventh from five mistresses (his wife had never had a child due to numerous miscarriages). It was not long after the birth that Gwyn retired from performing. Although, she did return to appear in Dryden’s Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards. It was something of a sensation, to see the favourite mistress of the king – and mother to his son – performing on stage. Mistress to King Charles II Now an established feature in Charles’s court, Gwyn moved into a grand home at 79 Pall Mall. From there, she entertained the King, impressed nobles, was loved by the poor and always had a charming story to tell. Her son, Charles Beauclerk, was made Earl of Burford after, if the story is to believed, she tricked the King. One day, she called out to the boy, “Come here, you little bastard, and say hello to your father”. When met by Charles’s remonstrances, she declared, “Your Majesty has given me no other name by which to call him,” and so Charles gave him a title. Gwyn gave birth to a second son, but he died as a child. Did you know: Nell Gwyn wasn't Charles II's only mistress... "What’s rather curious is that, although the colourful stories that have been passed down in English folklore about Nell Gwyn make her the most well-known of Charles’s mistresses, in my view she was one of the least significant," says Linda Porter Gwyn enjoyed many luxurious years, but then it almost came to a crashing halt. On 6 February 1685, Charles died, leaving Gwyn alone and in debt. She was so badly off that her creditors outlawed her, but she was saved from ruin by Charles’s dying wish. He implored his brother, James VII and II: “Let not poor Nelly starve”, and the new future king kept his word. He had most of her debts paid off and gave her an annual pension of £1,500 (over £100,000 a year today). In March and May 1687, Gwyn was struck down by two strokes that left her paralysed on one side and bed-ridden. She lived on for six months but, at the age of 37, she died. To many, Gwyn personifies the spirit of the Restoration – after the colourless existence of the Puritans, she embraced the new cultures and social conventions and made them her own. This content first appeared in the March 2015 issue of BBC History Revealed
Coffee, plague and the Great Fire: the pleasures and perils of living in Restoration London
What was life like for a 17th-century Londoner? From avoiding the plague to coping with the Great Fire, Londoners in the Stuart period had a lot to deal with. Here, author Nick Rennison investigates the perils and the pleasures of living in the nation's capital...
Two of the greatest disasters in London’s history both occurred in the 1660s: plague and fire struck the city in successive years. Neither was a novelty. The bubonic plague was endemic – there were outbreaks in 1603 and 1625 that killed tens of thousands – but neither was as bad as the Great Plague of 1665. By some estimates it caused the deaths of a quarter of London’s population. Fire, meanwhile, was a permanent danger in a 17th-century city but it is difficult to exaggerate the damage caused by the Great Fire. “In three days the most flourishing city in the world is a ruinous heap,” one official wrote, and he was right. More than 13,000 houses were gone and so too were 87 parish churches, St Paul’s Cathedral, 44 Livery Company halls and three of the city gates. Almost miraculously there was only a handful of deaths recorded – less than 10 according to most authorities. If you were a Londoner in the 17th century, however, death was an ever-present possibility. All sorts of things could carry you off. Examination of just one of the weekly ‘bills of mortality’, the official death statistics of the day, for 1665 is revealing. Given the year it is no surprise that by far the greatest number of fatalities – more than 7,000 – were caused by the plague. Other diseases, however, also took their toll. Just over 100 deaths were ascribed to ‘spotted fever’; 134 to ‘consumption’; 64 to ‘convulsion’ and 51 to ‘griping in the guts’. Three unfortunates were so troubled by ‘wind’ that it proved fatal to them. Some 43 women died in childbirth. In addition there were the one-off accidents: one man was “burnt in his bed by a candle at St Giles Cripplegate”; another was “killed by a fall from the belfry at All-Hallows-the-Great”. Read more | Your ultimate guide to the Restoration period Disease in 17th-century London Plague was only the scariest of an assortment of diseases that might befall you. Smallpox was prevalent, killing thousands and disfiguring many more. The unmistakable ‘pockmarks’, signs that a person had survived the disease, would have been visible on the faces of a remarkably high proportion of London’s citizens, perhaps as many as half. Tuberculosis was another prolific killer, its symptoms exacerbated by the smoke and poor air of the city. It is easy to forget just how many of the medical advances we take for granted today were made in the past 150 years. Three-and-a-half centuries ago physicians were largely helpless in the face of most illnesses. It is little wonder, then, that people resorted to remedies and ‘cures’ that now seem bizarre. The London Pharmacopoeia, or list of drugs, issued by the College of Physicians in 1618 and reprinted several times later in the century, suggested such dubious ingredients for its prescriptions as dog excrement, moss from a recently buried skull and the saliva of a fasting man. Smog in 17th-century London The city itself was not a healthy place. Pollution of all kinds was ever present. Smog was not just a consequence of the Industrial Revolution. The burning of sea-coal in domestic fires meant that 17th-century London was as foul-smelling and filled with sulphurous smoke as the Victorian city. John Evelyn claimed that nearly half the deaths in the city were caused by it and that “the inhabitants are never free from coughs and importunate rheumatisms, spitting of impostumated and corrupt matter”. Read more | The Great Smog of London: what caused the 1952 crisis? The city streets were mostly narrow, packed and filthy. A 1662 Act of Parliament admitted that “the common highways leading unto and from the cities of London and Westminster” were “miry and foul” and were thus “noisome, dangerous and inconvenient to the inhabitants”. Drainage was poor – in some areas non-existent – and faeces, both human and animal, befouled the roads. The dangers of being deluged by filth and rubbish thrown from windows were such that the wise pedestrian strove to walk under the projecting upper storeys of the houses. Jostling for the best positions next to the walls could lead to fights and even, on occasions, deaths. Crime in 17th-century London The streets were also ill-lit and dark, perfect for footpads and robbers. Although their heyday was in the following century, highwaymen (muggers) had begun to demand that travellers on the edges of the city should stand and deliver. One of the most famous was Claude Duval, who began his career as a ‘gentleman of the road’ in 1666. Many of the stories told of Duval are later inventions by writers with a romantic imagination, but it may well be true that he once invited the wife of one of his victims to dance a coranto with him on the roadside and then charged her husband £100 for the entertainment the dancing had provided. He was captured in January 1670, drunk, in a pub called the Hole-in-the-Wall in Chandos Street, found guilty of robbery and, despite attempts to persuade the king to pardon him, was hanged at Tyburn. Duval was an aristocrat of crime. More typical were the petty pickpockets who stole purses and handkerchiefs or the housebreakers who ran off with bed linen, clothes and anything else they could carry. Punishment for such crimes was draconian. In theory at least, if the value of stolen goods exceeded 12 pence, theft was punishable by death. In practice, many judges and magistrates found reasons to avoid the letter of the law but plenty of people – men, women and even children – were condemned to “dancing on air” at Tyburn largely because their poverty and desperation had driven them to theft. Read more | Crime and punishment through history Unexpected pleasures in 17th-century London And yet, despite all the perils of 17th-century London, life in the great city was not all gloom and doom. Its citizens found much to amuse and delight them. Pleasures that had been banned under Cromwell’s Commonwealth returned with Charles II’s restoration. John Aubrey reported that “Maypoles which in the late hypocritical times ‘twas forbidden to set up now were set up in every cross-way” and “the tallest maypole ever seen” was erected in the Strand. Read more | Your guide to Charles II, the 'merry monarch' The late hypocritical times had, of course, not been kind to the theatre but the stage enjoyed a renaissance under Charles. The king loved plays in general and, in particular, some of the actresses who appeared in them. (Nell Gwyn famously began her career selling oranges to theatregoers, progressed to roles in comedies and ended up in the royal bed. And she was not the only actress to catch the king’s eye.) A new theatre was built in Drury Lane and another was created in Lincoln’s Inn Fields by converting an old tennis court. Music was another source of entertainment, from street musicians and strolling ballad-singers to makeshift concerts at gatherings of friends. The diarist Samuel Pepys was passionately fond of music, which he called “the thing of the world I love most”. He played the flageolet, a kind of early flute, and was possessed of a fine singing voice. Even he, however, drew the line at the bagpipes which, he reckoned, produced “mighty barbarous music”. He paid for his wife to take dancing lessons, although he grew very jealous of Mr Pembleton, the dancing master, who was, he decided, becoming far too friendly with his pupil. Eventually, he himself also took lessons from Pembleton and was soon reporting merry evenings when the three of them “danced three or four country dances”. Cruel entertainment in 17th-century London Cruder and crueller entertainments than country dancing could be found in Southwark, the centre of the theatrical world in Shakespeare’s time and also home to less attractive pursuits. Bear-baiting, in which a hobbled and occasionally blind bear was set upon by a pack of dogs, was enjoyed by many. So too was bull-baiting. In his diary entry for 14 August 1666, Pepys records his visit to the Bear Garden with his wife and a friend where they saw “some good sport of the bull’s tossing of the dogs”. The diarist did have the grace to admit that it was “a very rude and nasty pleasure”. Four years later another great diarist of the period, John Evelyn, “went with some friends to the Bear Garden where was cock-fighting, dog-fighting, bear and bull-baiting, it being a famous day for all these butcherly sports”. While he was there, “one of the bulls tossed a dog full into a lady’s lap as she sat in one of the boxes”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/Bear20Garden2C20London-6bbf96d-e1681725402265.jpg" width="620" height="411" alt="Bear Garden, Southwark, London, after its third rebuilding, 1648. By this time plays and prize-fighting had been added to the original entertainment of bear baiting. Woodcut based on a detail in the Bohemian etcher and engraver Wenceslas Hollar's (1607-1677) view of London. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)" title="Bear Garden, Southwark, London, after its third rebuilding, 1648." /> Perhaps the lady was not too bothered. After all, this was an age in which the average Londoner necessarily had a strong stomach. Executions provided a form of public theatre, as they were to do for nearly 200 years to come. In the years after Charles II’s restoration, those who had condemned his father to death were pursued relentlessly by the regime. Many were executed and the heads of some of these regicides were stuck on top of the city gates, often remaining there for years. Oliver Cromwell was posthumously disinterred from his supposedly final resting place in Westminster Abbey and his skull placed on a spike above Westminster Hall, where it stayed for more than 20 years. Many citizens and visitors to the city flocked to see it. Read more | A timeline of the Restoration period More edifying excursions could be made to outlying villages like Islington and Highgate, to New Spring Gardens (later Vauxhall Gardens) south of the river and to the royal parks. For those with an inquisitive mind, cabinets of curiosities were the museums of the day. One, advertised as open for business in the Strand in June 1661, offered the sight of “an entire Egyptian mummy with all the hieroglyphics”. The collection of the botanist John Tradescant included a deerskin cloak that had once supposedly belonged to the Native American chieftain Powhatan, father of Pocahontas, and which is now in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. Another magnet for visitors was the royal menagerie, housed in the Tower of London, which was home to the city’s more exotic animals. Pepys took a party of women and children there in May 1662 and “showed them the lions”. Want to learn more about the Great Fire of London? Your guide to the Great Fire of London (+ 10 surprising facts) How the Great Fire of London revealed the city’s Roman past Alternate history: what if the Great Fire of London never happened? Great Fire of London quiz – how much do you know? Food and drink in 17th-century London For those who could afford it, food was rich and plentiful. One meal for 12 persons from 1663 consisted of “a fricassee of rabbits and chicken, a leg of mutton boiled, three carps in a dish, a great dish of a side of lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, a dish of four lobsters, three tarts, a most rare lamprey pie, and a dish of anchovies”. Vegetables are not mentioned, either because they were not on the table at all or because they were considered too ordinary to describe. The poor, of course, could only dream of dining so lavishly. They would have rarely eaten meat at all, although oysters, today considered rather upmarket, were then so plentiful that they were a staple food for Londoners of all classes. In pre-refrigeration days, it was difficult to keep food fresh. Pepys was mortified when he invited a colleague to dinner, and a sturgeon was brought to the table, “upon which I saw very many little worms creeping”. Read more | A drink for the devil: 8 facts about the history of coffee New drinks had recently arrived in town. Hot chocolate came from the New World via Spain, but the most successful novelty was coffee. The first coffeehouse in London was opened in an alley off Cornhill in 1652 by a Greek man named Pasqua Rosee (who was originally from Sicily and had lived in Smyrna). Ten years later there were nearly 100 of them. They were used almost exclusively by men. One of the unfortunate consequences of the fashion for this “newfangled, abominable, heathenish liquor”, according to The Women’s Petition Against Coffee, a pamphlet published in 1674, was the sapping of the nation’s virility. “Our gallants,” the pamphlet’s writer claimed, “are become mere cock-sparrows” who “are not able to stand to it, and in the very first charge fall down flat before us.” Better, perhaps, to stick to more traditional drinks like beer and ale, which were consumed at home and in the hundreds of taverns that catered to the city’s thirsty population. The Londoners of the 1660s had to face crises unmatched in the city’s history until the Second World War. They struggled to survive in a dangerous world, one in which life was cheap and death could be just around the corner, but they did so with the energy and capacity for enjoyment for which the inhabitants of this great city have always been known.