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History > The later Stuarts > Charles II (1660–85) > War and government

Charles II could not undo the effects of the revolution, but they were not all negative. The Commonwealth had had to fight for its survival, and in the process England had become a potent military power. Wars against France and Spain had expanded English colonial dominions. Dunkirk and Jamaica were seized, Barbados was colonized, and the North American colonies flourished. Colonial trade was an important source of royal revenue, and Charles II continued Cromwell's policy of restricting trade to English ships and imposing duties on imports and exports. The Navigation Acts (1660 and 1663) were directed against the Dutch, still the most powerful commercial force in Europe. The Cromwellian Navigation Act (1651) had resulted in the first Anglo-Dutch War (1652–54), and Charles's policy had the same effect. In military terms the Dutch Wars (1665–67; 1672–74) were a standoff, but in economic terms they were an English triumph (see Anglo-Dutch Wars). The American colonies were consolidated by the capture of New York, and the policy of the Navigation Acts was effectively established. Colonial trade and English shipping mushroomed.

Photograph:The Great Fire of London (1666) shown sweeping toward St. Paul's Cathedral in a painting from 1675.
The Great Fire of London (1666) shown sweeping toward St. Paul's Cathedral in a painting from 1675.
© Museum of London/Heritage-Images

In the long run Charles's spasmodically aggressive foreign policy solved the crown's perpetual fiscal crises. But in the short run it made matters worse. The Great Plague of London (1664–66) and the Great Fire of London (1666) were interpreted as divine judgments against a sinful nation. These catastrophes were compounded when the Dutch burned a large portion of the English fleet in 1667, which led to the dismissal and exile of Clarendon. The crown's debts led to the Stop of the Exchequer (1672), by which Charles suspended payment of his bills. The king now ruled through a group of ministers known as the Cabal, an anagram of the first letters of their names. None of the five was Anglican, and two were Roman Catholic.

Charles had wearied of repressive Anglicanism, underestimating its strength among rural gentry and clergy, and desired comprehension and toleration in his church. This fit with his foreign-policy objectives, for in the Treaty of Dover (1670) he allied himself with Catholic France against Protestant Holland. In exchange he received a large subsidy from Louis XIV and, in the treaty's secret clauses, known only to the king's Catholic ministers, the promise of an even larger one if Charles undertook, at some unspecified moment, to declare himself a Catholic. That moment came for the king on his deathbed, by which time his brother and heir, the duke of York, had already openly professed his conversion. In 1672 Charles promulgated the Declaration of Indulgence, which suspended the penal code against all religious Nonconformists, Catholic and Dissenter alike. But a declaration of toleration could not bring together these mortal enemies, and the king found himself faced by a unified Protestant front. Parliamentary Anglicans would not vote money for war until the declaration was abrogated. The passage of the Test Act (1673), which the king reluctantly signed, effectively barred all but Anglicans from holding national office and forced the duke of York to resign the admiralty.

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