Crowds lined the streets as Charles II returned from exile to reclaim the throne his father Charles I had lost to the executioner's block in 1649. The Restoration ended the Puritan Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell's successors and ushered in a new era of theaters reopening, courtly excess, and eventual religious and political turbulence.
Eleven years after Parliament executed his father and abolished the monarchy, Charles II entered London on May 29, 1660, which happened to be his 30th birthday, to a city bursting with pent-up celebration. Diarist John Evelyn recorded the streets strewn with flowers, the bells ringing, and wine flowing from fountains as the exiled king rode through crowds many of whom had lived their entire adult lives under Cromwell's austere Commonwealth.
The Restoration reversed years of Puritan rule that had banned theater, Christmas celebrations, and other perceived frivolities. Within months theaters reopened, and for the first time women were permitted to perform on the English stage. Charles's court became famous for its licentiousness and patronage of science and the arts, including the founding of the Royal Society.
Yet the Restoration settlement papered over deep divisions rather than resolving them. Charles's later flirtations with Catholicism and his brother James's open conversion would trigger renewed political crisis, culminating in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Still, the scenes of jubilation on that spring day in 1660 marked one of the most dramatic reversals of fortune in English political history.
Key people: Charles II, John Evelyn