Restorations and Rebellions

Cromwell and his co-belligerents claimed to be aiming for the restoration of English liberties; they did not consider themselves rebels. Yet, in much English historiography, the Puritan Revolution goes down as the “Great Rebellion,” the term “restoration” having been snagged by the Stuarts who returned in 1660. Significantly, as Rosenstock-Huessy points out, the Stuarts in 1660 claimed not only to be restoring monarchy but to be restoring the rights of Englishmen. Lord Clarendon penned a speech for Charles II that appealed to Englishman for their efforts “in restoring the whole nation to its primitive temper and integrity.” The Declaration of Breda, which procalimed Charles II king, spoke of the “Restoration, both of King, Peers and people to their just, ancient and fundamental Rights.”

The Puritans who had begun the effort to “restore” English liberties were denounced as rebels by the Stuart kings who in some ways endorsed precisely the same “restoration” program.