Restoration and revolution / Paper talk
O
ver its many Radio 4
series, Peter Snow’s
Random Edition has
explored stories of all
kinds found in
newspapers, dating as
far back as the 1650s. A
Parliamentary Intelligencer newspaper (or
‘newsbook ’) from the spring of 1660 is the
subject of one programme focused on the
Restoration of Charles II to the throne.
On its pages we see the work of some of the
very first professional journalists in
Britain. Yet there’s no sophisticated
computer page-setting here – the news
tumbles onto the printer’s tray as it arrives.
Somehow, that very rough-and-
readiness helps give the events a particular
authenticity, even if the slant of the paper
(printed by John Macock and Tho.
Newcomb) is clearly royalist.
The key scene reported is the appearance
before both Houses of Parliament of Sir
John Grenville, who had just arrived from
Breda in the Netherlands, Charles’s
continental home after a decade in exile.
The House being informed that Sir John
Greenvil [sic], a Messenger from the King,
was at the dore, it was resolved that he be
called in, who being called in accordingly,
at the Bar after obeisance made, said, “MrSpeaker, I am commanded by The King
my Master, to deliver this Letter to you,
and his desire is that you will
communicate it to the House”.
Enclosed within the letter was Charles’s
‘Declaration of Breda’, offering guarantees
should he be restored as king: a “free
general pardon” for (almost) all those
deemed to have offended against the
monarchy; freedom of religious expression
(“liberty to tender consciences”); payment
of army arrears; and a modus operandi for
dealing with all property claims.
Random Edition contributor John
Morrill of Selwyn College, Cambridge,
says: “Grenville’s handing over of the
declaration is the moment when the
members of a newly elected parliament,
having had no idea how the chaos of the
years since the killing of Charles I was to
be resolved, see that suddenly an answer
is available. They grab that moment and
declare Charles king.”
With parliamentary motions for the
Restoration carried, the Intelligencer takes
us onto the streets of London:
...the people throughout the whole city
and suburbs... this day made bonfires
everywhere and the Bells were generally
rung, and the great Guns went off at
the Tower.“Enclosed within the letter was Charles II’s
‘Declaration of Breda’, offering guarantees should
he be restored as king including a ‘free general
pardon’ and freedom of religious expression”
Paper
talk
Andrew Green explains how a newspaper published in
1660 paved the way for Charles II’s return from exile
Elsewhere we read of the enthusiasm of the
navy stationed at Deal in Kent, via letters
sent from the flagship, Naseby, which was
about to undergo a major refit for its
journey to bring Charles home as king.
Then might you see the Fleet in her Pride
with Pendants loose, Guns roaring, Caps
flying and loud Vive le Roye received from
one ship’s company to another.Military opposition
However, despite the political leanings of
the Intelligencer, clues on its pages point to
the fact that at least one major military
figure utterly opposed to the Restoration
had been willing to take up arms to defend
republicanism. A dispatch from Hereford
states that:
Lambert’s party are all dispersed in these
parts, there is onely a nest of them left in
Red Castle [probably in Shropshire].
The man referred to here is General John
Lambert, one of the outstanding military
leaders of the period, but at odds with
fellow general George Monck over high
politics. The latter’s forces had swept those
of Lambert aside earlier in 1660, allowing
Monck to set in motion the sequence of
events that were to lead to the Restoration.
Lambert, meanwhile, went to the Tower,
from which he nonetheless escaped,
thereafter rallying republican sympathisers
to take up arms at Edgehill, symbolic site of
the first great battle of the Civil War.
Alas, most of Lambert’s supporters
preferred to stand on the sidelines for the
moment, rather than risk their lives in