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 From the Civil War to the Restoration, 1645-1660
  Events leading to Restoration, 1658-1660

Events leading to Restoration, 1658-1660

Then follows the Fourth Period-a year and a half of great complexity, between 1658 and 2660. " There is not a dog that wags his tongue, so great a calm are we in ", wrote one man, when Richard, Cromwell's son, was made Protector. The calm was not to continue for long. A new Parliament met; the officers of the army quarrelled with it; and Richard, after trying to mediate, threw in his lot with the officers, and dissolved it. A fortnight later Richard resigned (At the Restoration Cromwell had to fly to the Continent. He came back to England twenty years later, and died in 1712. "Gentle and virtuous, but became not greatness" is the verdict passed upon him by a contemporary). The army decided to recall the "Rump". The "Rump"-consisting now of some sixty or seventy members-wanted to limit the powers of the new commander-in-chief, and to provide that in future all commissions in the army should be signed by the Speaker, and therefore to a certain extent be controlled by him. Moreover, they threatened the freedom of conscience so dear to the army. Eventually "Honest John" Lambert, the darling of the soldiers, a brave and generous ii unstable man, surrounded the House and stopped the entrance of members, and once again the army was triumphant.

But then another general appeared, determined, with the aid of a large army and, £70,000 in his treasury, to put an end to what he called the "intolerable slavery of sword government", and to call a free Parliament. This was the Commander-in-chief in Scotland, George Monck. On December 8, 1659, he reached Coldstream; Lambert, who had gone north to meet him, found his army dwindling away, and was unable to do anything. Marching to London, Monck restored the members of the Long Parliament, including those originally evicted by Pride's Purge, but only so that they might make arrangements for a new and free Parliament being called.

Chronology
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