INTRODUCTION

The subject of this chapter is the first phase of restoration, from its establishment to near unravelling. This analysis falls naturally into three phases. The first (1660–7) is the period of reconstruction ending with the fall of Clarendon. During the second (1667–73) the most important minister was Arlington, but the guiding spirit was the king. The result was a series of reversals of policy, particularly in foreign affairs and religion. These laid the basis for the descent, from 1670, from the first phase of restoration to the second full-scale crisis of popery and arbitrary government.

The third period (1673–8) spans that descent, from the parliamentary confrontation of royal policy (1672–3) to the crisis that followed. A crisis followed because in fact in this period royal policies did not change. Those policies were considered an attack upon the fundamentals of the restored state: protestantism and parliaments. They were considered thus by members of the Cavalier Parliament, whose prescription for restoration had always differed from that of the king. Between 1662 and 1667 parliament had triumphed. What the king attempted to recover, between 1667 and 1673, was an aspect of his own original agenda for peace and settlement.