| Date | 29 May 1660 |
| Location | London, England |
| Caused by | Collapse of the Protectorate following Richard Cromwell's resignation; General Monck's march south; Convention Parliament's invitation to Charles II |
| Resulted in | Re-establishment of the monarchy under Charles II; restoration of the Church of England; Act of Indemnity and Oblivion (1660); Act of Uniformity (1662); designation of Oak Apple Day as public holiday |
| Parties | Convention Parliament · Army of Scotland under General Monck · Charles II and the Court in Exile · New Model Army · Long Parliament |
| Lead figures | Charles II, General George Monck, Edward Montagu, Richard Cromwell, Samuel Pepys |
The Restoration was a constitutional and political settlement enacted on 29 May 1660 in London, by which the English monarchy was re-established under King Charles II following eleven years of republican governance under the Commonwealth of England and the Protectorate. The settlement concluded a prolonged period of constitutional instability that had followed the [English Civil War](/wiki/english-civil-war) and the execution of Charles I in 1649, and resulted in the return of the Crown, the Church of England, and the bicameral Parliament.
Following the death of Oliver Cromwell in September 1658, the Protectorate rapidly lost political coherence. His son Richard Cromwell succeeded him as Lord Protector but resigned the office in May 1659 after fewer than nine months, unable to maintain the support of the New Model Army. The period known as the Interregnum thereafter became one of competing military and parliamentary factions, none of which was able to establish lasting authority. General George Monck, commander of the Army of Scotland, concluded by late 1659 that only the return of the monarchy could restore constitutional order. He marched south in January 1660, entering London on 3 February. The Long Parliament was reconvened in full — including the members excluded by Pride's Purge in 1648 — and promptly dissolved itself, calling for new elections. The Convention Parliament that assembled in April 1660 voted, without a single dissenting voice recorded in the division lobbies, to invite Charles II to resume the throne.
The Declaration of Breda, issued by Charles on 4 April 1660 from the Dutch city of Breda, set out the terms under which he was willing to return. The Declaration promised a general pardon for acts committed during the Civil War and Interregnum, liberty of conscience in matters of religion, settlement of land disputes by Parliament, and payment of arrears owed to the army. These were deliberately broad commitments, designed to defer contentious particulars to Parliament rather than resolve them in advance. The Declaration was received by the Convention Parliament on 1 May 1660.
### Wednesday, 23 May 1660
Charles II departed the Dutch coast aboard the flagship *Naseby* — hastily renamed *Royal Charles* for the occasion — accompanied by a fleet of thirty-one vessels. The diarist [Samuel Pepys](/wiki/samuel-pepys), serving as secretary to Admiral Edward Montagu, recorded the embarkation in detail in his diary entry for that date, noting the weather as "extraordinary good" and the mood aboard ship as "very merry."
### Monday, 25 May 1660
The fleet made landfall at Dover. Charles was received on the beach by General Monck and presented with a Bible, which Charles declared to be "the thing he loved above all things in the world" — a remark which Pepys recorded with evident skepticism. The formal procession to London commenced immediately.
### Thursday, 29 May 1660
Charles II entered London on his thirtieth birthday. Contemporary accounts recorded crowds lining the route from Blackheath to Whitehall, with [Samuel Pepys](/wiki/samuel-pepys) noting that the streets were "all covered with flowers" and that the bells had been ringing continuously since dawn. The date — 29 May — was subsequently designated a public holiday by Act of Parliament under the name *Oak Apple Day*, commemorating both the Restoration and Charles's earlier escape from the Battle of Worcester in 1651, during which he had hidden in an oak tree at Boscobel. Oak Apple Day was observed as a compulsory public holiday until its abolition in 1859.
The Restoration was greeted with widespread public celebration, though the political settlements that followed were more contested. The Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, passed in August 1660, pardoned the majority of those who had acted against Charles I, exempting only the regicides — those who had signed the death warrant of Charles I — from its protections. Of the fifty-nine signatories, nine were executed; the remainder either escaped abroad or were sentenced to imprisonment for life. The bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, and John Bradshaw were exhumed from Westminster Abbey and subjected to posthumous execution at Tyburn on 30 January 1661, the twelfth anniversary of Charles I's death.
The re-establishment of the Church of England as the state church, and the subsequent passage of the Act of Uniformity in 1662, proved considerably more divisive than the political settlement. Approximately 2,000 Nonconformist clergymen refused to subscribe to the Act and were ejected from their livings on 24 August 1662, an event known as the Great Ejection. The diarist [John Evelyn](/wiki/samuel-pepys) recorded the day as one of "very great sadness" in the parishes he visited, noting that many congregations wept openly during final services.
The Restoration settlement established a constitutional framework that, while not formally codified, defined the relationship between Crown and Parliament for the remainder of the seventeenth century. The period from 1660 to 1688 — when the Glorious Revolution replaced James II with William III and Mary II — is conventionally designated *Restoration England* by historians, covering not only the political settlement but a distinct cultural era characterised by the reopening of the theatres, the flourishing of Restoration comedy, the founding of the Royal Society in 1660, and the rebuilding of London following the [Great Fire of 1666](/wiki/great-fire-of-london).
The Restoration also initiated a period of colonial expansion and commercial legislation, including the Navigation Acts, which governed trade with English colonies and contributed directly to mercantile tensions with the Dutch Republic that produced the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars. The constitutional tensions left unresolved by the Declaration of Breda — particularly regarding religion and the succession — accumulated over the subsequent two decades until they produced the crisis of 1688.
The Convention Parliament's decision to omit any formal conditions from Charles II's restoration — in contrast to the terms imposed on Charles I before the Civil War — has been interpreted by constitutional historians as a deliberate act of political amnesia: Parliament chose to proceed as though the Interregnum had not legally occurred. Royal proclamations, statutes, and legal instruments issued under Charles II were accordingly dated from 1649, the year of his theoretical accession, rather than 1660, the year of his actual return.
The Restoration has been a persistent subject of English literary and theatrical culture. John Dryden, appointed Poet Laureate in 1668, produced several works commemorating the period, including *Annus Mirabilis* (1667), which addressed the events of 1666 — the Great Fire and the Second Anglo-Dutch War — as providential tests of the restored monarchy. Samuel Pepys's diary, covering the years 1660 to 1669, remains the most cited primary source for daily life during the early Restoration period and was first published in a partial transcription in 1825 by Lord Braybrooke. The complete, unexpurgated edition was not published until 1970 by Robert Latham and William Matthews for the University of California Press.
The period has also attracted sustained attention in academic historiography. The historian Tim Harris's *Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms* (2005) and Ronald Hutton's *The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales 1658–1667* (1985) are among the most frequently cited monographs. The Restoration is represented in the national curriculum of England and Wales at Key Stage 3, where it is typically paired with the [English Civil War](/wiki/english-civil-war) as a unit on seventeenth-century constitutional change.