The Restoration was probably the single most popular political event of the seventeenth century in England. Public jubilation in 1660 is well attested in most contemporary sources and their accounts do not need to be re-iterated here. Suffice it to say that Hampshire was no exception to the national pattern. Many people turned out for the proclamation of Charles II at Winchester, and showed ‘greate joy and rejoycing’. Four thousand people including all the gentry joined in the celebrations in the Isle of Wight. It is hard to determine the exact grounds for the popular enthusiasm for the restored monarchy. Some of it at least may have stemmed from false expectations as to what its rule would actually bring. Before the Restoration, Marchamont Nedham had attributed popular royalism to a belief that Charles II's return would mean ‘Peace and no taxes’. On both counts the people were to be rudely disillusioned.

Those who expected less government would also have been disillusioned. As has been seen hitherto in this part, the restoration of traditional institions such as the Exchequer, the lieutenancy and the episcopate did not herald a retreat of central government from involvement in the localities or a decline in effective government generally; in fact quite the reverse was the case. The Restoration in some respects saw a re-assertion of central control after the troubled years of the Interregnum.