This remnant of an old Parliament continued in power till the autumn of 1659, when it gave way to a council of the officers who had been in command under Cromwell. The latter government, in its turn, yielded to the Rump, which sat down once more in December. The people, finding themselves made the sport of a few ambitious adventurers, began to long for some more fixed and respectable kind of government. At this crisis, General Monk, commander of the forces in Scotland, conceived the design of settling the nation. He left Scotland (January 2, 1660), with a considerable army; and though he kept his thoughts scrupulously to himself, all men bent their eyes upon him, as a person destined to realize their hopes. He reached London (February 3), and was received with feigned respect by the Rump. Some resistance was attempted by Lambert, one of Cromwell’s officers, but in vain. Ere long, Monk was able to procure the restoration of the members who had been excluded from Parliament by Cromwell, who, being a majority, gave an immediate ascendancy to anti-republican views. As soon as this was effected, an act was passed for calling a new and freely-elected Parliament; after which, the existing assembly immediately dissolved itself.
The new Parliament proved to be chiefly composed of Cavaliers and Presbyterians, men agreeing in their attachment to monarchy, though differing in many other views. After some cautious procedure, in which the fears inspired by the late military tyranny were conspicuous, they agreed to invite the king from his retirement in Holland, and to restore him to the throne lost by his father. They were so glad to escape from the existing disorders, that they never thought of making any preliminary arrangement with the king as to the extent of his prerogative. On the 29th of May, being his thirtieth birthday, Charles II entered London amidst such frantic demonstrations of joy, that he could not help thinking it his own fault, as he said, that he had been so long separated from his people.
One of the first measures of the new monarch was the passing of a bill of indemnity, by which all persons concerned in the late popular movements were pardoned, excepting a few who had been prominently concerned in bringing the king to the block. Harrison, Scrope, and a few other regicides, were tried and executed; and the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, were raised from the grave and exhibited upon gibbets. In Scotland, only three persons suffered――the Marquis of Argyle, Johnston of Warriston, and Mr. Guthry, a clergyman: it was considered remarkable, that the marquis had placed the crown upon the king’s head at Scone in the year 1651. Excepting in these acts, the king showed no desire of revenging the death of his father, or his own exclusion from the throne. The Parliament which called him home was constituted a legal one by his own ratification of an act for that purpose. In the settlement of other matters, it seemed the prevailing wish that all the institutions of the country should be made as nearly what they were before the civil war as possible. Thus the Episcopal church was established both in England and Scotland, though not without causing about a third of the clergy in both countries to resign their charges. The stern and enthusiastic piety which prevailed during the civil war, was now treated with ridicule, and the most of the people vied with each other in that licentious riot and drunkenness which is condemned by all systems of faith. The nation, in fact, seemed intoxicated with the safety which they supposed themselves to have at length gained, in a restoration to the imperfect freedom they enjoyed before the civil war.