"It's interesting Pepys missed the presence of "Ned" Montagu. He must have come aboard amongst the crowd of commanders, stayed with the senior officers while Sam was mixing with the others in the roundhouse, then quietly left. Maybe Sam isn't "in the loop" quite as much as has sometimes been assumed."
Or maybe the Secretary is keeping his secrets. Pepys rarely shares what the documents say that he is writing, or what he hears at mealtimes or in meetings unless it's gossip about current events or the ladies.
Elsewhere Stephane found the report written by the Venetian Ambassador in London to the Doge today, He gives the following explanation for Montagu aboard the SWIFTSURE to still be in the Thames:
"The squadron of ships under General Montagu charged with the defense of the Channel remains motionless and still at anchor. There are many reasons for this, notably the lack of money and of sailors. To make this good an act was passed yesterday to press them, but as the people here do not love violence it may lead to some disturbance in the present crisis."
I think you're crediting me with great expertise??? The only insight I have on Pepys' and Balty's relationship is from Balty's biography.
Jeannine tells us Elizabeth was born 23 October 1640. None of our notes seem to say if Balty was older or younger (I suspect younger, just because of his behavior). So in 1660 he was roughly 20 years old. Maybe 17 -- maybe 23. Jobs are hard to find. The Army isn't hiring. He has no education that we know of. He's just a poor, healthy young male with French claims to the nobility.
It's very presumptuous of him to just turn up at the ship of one of England's two Generals-in-Chief and ask for employment for which he has no qualifications or experience that we know of. Montagu -- who is not related to Balty and owes him nothing -- very graciously hosts him to a meal and apparently Balty did not embarrass himself. Pepys fortunately could park him in the missing clerk's bunk, and since then Balty has made himself useful. Hopefully, Captain Stokes will find a spot for Balty, and he will continue to behave himself.
Council of State. An Act, constituting a Council of State, was read the Third time.
Resolved, That the Names of the Persons named the Council of State be inserted, in the Blank, in the Second Line of this Bill.
The Question being put, That a particular Time be limited for the Continuance of the Council of State;
The House was divided.
The Yeas went forth.
Sir Wm. Wheeler, Tellers for the Noes: 36. Lord of Ancram, With the Noes, Mr. Attorney-General, Tellers for the Yeas: 26. Mr. Corbet, With the Yeas, So it passed with the Negative.
Resolved, That the Blank for the Continuance of the Council of State be filled up with these Words; viz. "until the Parliament take further Order."
Resolved, That this Bill, so amended, be ingrossed.
Dissolving Parliament. Resolved, That a Bill be brought in on Monday next, for the Dissolution of this Parliament: And that Mr. Ansley, Mr. Pryn, and Mr. Solicitor General, do prepare and bring in the said Bill.
Gen. Monck Commander in Chief. Resolved, That the Bill constituting George Monck Esquire, Captain-General, and Commander in Chief, of all the Land-Forces in England, Scotland, and Ireland, be ingrossed.
@@@
114 people voted for the participants, but only 62 voted on the bill, which passed with a majority of 10. I wonder what the 26 wanted to do? Hardly a ringing endorsement.
Council of State. The House, according to former Order, proceeded in Election of the Council of State.
Mr. Speaker nominated Colonel Norton, Lord Ancrame, Colonel Hutchinson, Colonel Harley, to tell the House.
Resolved, That the Door be shut.
The Tellers report the Number of Names of the Members in the House to be 113.
Mr. Serjeant Maynard, Mr. Wrey, and Sir Gilbert Gerrard, came in after the House was told.
Two Glasses were prepared, for every Member to put in his Paper of Names of the Persons whom he would have to be of the Council of State.
The Clerk of the Parliament, and Clerk-Assistant, thereupon went to the several Members, with the Glasses; and received from every of them, respectively, a Paper of Names for the Council of State: And so both the Glasses were brought, and set upon the Table.
Mr. Speaker appoints Tellers of the Papers; Colonel Norton, Lord Ancrome, Colonel Feilder, Colonel Harley:
They report the Number of the Papers to be 114.
Mr. Gold and Sir Gilbert Pickering, put in no Papers.
And the Four Members opened each Paper in the Glass; and caused the Clerk to read each Name, distinctly, and to write down each Name, and, with a strait Line drawn against that Name, to give one Stroke of the Pen cross the said Line; and, as often as any Name was repeated, the Clerk did make another Stroke cross the said Line.
The Lord Ancrome reports from the Gentlemen appointed to tell the Papers, these Gentlemen to have the greatest Number of Voices; viz. William Peirpoint, John Crew, Colonel Rosseter, Richard Knightley, Colonel Popham, Colonel Morley, Lord Fairfax, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Sir Gilbert Gerrard, Lord Chief Justice St. John, Lord Commissioner Widdrington, Sir John Evelyn of Wilts, Sir Wm. Waller, Sir Richard Onslow, Sir Wm. Lewis, Colonel Edward Mountague, Colonel Edward Harley, Richard Norton, Arthur Ansley, Denzell Hollys, Sir John Temple, Colonel Geo. Thompson, John Trevor, Sir John Holland, Sir John Potts, Colonel John Birch, Sir Harbottle Grimston, Mr. John Swinsen, Mr. John Weaver, Serjeant Maynard.
New Parliament to be summoned. Resolved, That a new Parliament be summoned to appear, upon the 25th Day of April 1660: And that the Lords Commissioners for Custody of the Great Seal do issue forth Writs for Election of Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses, and Barons of the Cinque Ports, with the Members thereof, and the Town of Berwick upon Tweed, to sit and serve in Parliament, returnable the 25th Day of April 1660.
Members Qualifications. ¶Ordered, That it be referred to a Committee, to prepare Qualifications of Members to sit and serve in Parliament; and report them to the Parliament: Viz. Sir Gilbert Gerrard, Mr. Ansley, Mr. Crew, Colonel Morley, Colonel Dove, Mr. Scoen, Mr. Long, Mr. Pryn, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Mr. Robert Goodwin, Sir John Potts, Mr. Hay, Mr. Ralegh, Sir Roger Burgoyn, Colonel Montague, Sir Richard Onslo, Sir John Evelyn, Mr. Corbet, Mr. West, Mr. Hungerford, Colonel Thompson, Mr. Stevens, Mr. Lechmere, Mr. Gerrard, Sir Wm. Brereton, Mr. Weaver, Sir John Holland, Sir Peter Wentworth, Colonel Fagg, Mr. Knightley, Colonel Rossiter, Lord Chief-Baron Wild, Mr. Nelthorpe, Mr. John Goodwin, Colonel John Birch, Mr. Baker, Mr. Povey, Mr. Solicitor Ellys, Mr. Attorney-General, Colonel Lee, Sir Anthony Irby, Mr. Serjeant Maynard: And are to meet this Afternoon, in the Inner Court of Wards; and bring in the Qualifications on Friday next, the first Business; nothing to intervene: And that Mr. Scoen do take care of it.
Council of State. Ordered, That the House do proceed To-morrow Morning, at Ten of the Clock, to the Election of the Council of State: And that the Members of this House do prepare their Names, accordingly.
Council of State. Mr. Weaver acquaints the House, That he had given Notice, to the Council of State, of the Order of this House for suspending the Council of State, according to the Command of the Parliament: And that ready Obedience will be yielded thereunto.
Instructions, formerly given to the Council of State, were read.
Mr. Serjeant Maynard reports, A Bill, constituting a Council of State: Which was this Day read the First and Second time; and, upon the Question, committed: Viz. unto Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Colonel Lassells, Sir Wm. Lewis, Sir John Evelyn, Mr. Weaver, Sir John Holland, Serjeant Maynard, Mr. Francis Bacon, Sir Wm. Brereton, Sir Richard Onslow, Sir Wm. Waller, Sir Gilbert Gerrard, Colonel Mountague, Mr. Ralegh, Mr. Knightley, Colonel Birch, Mr. Ansley, Mr. Pryn, Sir John Temple, Colonel Ingoldsby, Colonel Harvey, Colonel Norton, Mr. Jennings, Colonel Rossiter, Mr. Trevor, Colonel White, Lord St. John, Mr. Nelthorpe, Colonel Popham, Mr. Solicitor Ellys; or any Five: And they are to meet this Afternoon, in the Speaker's Chamber: With Power to consider of these Instructions, and of former Instructions given to the Council of State: And to present such Instructions, to . . given to the Council of State, to the Parliament, for their Consideration, as they shall think fit.
Council of State. Resolved, That the Number of the Council of State be One-and-thirty.
Resolved, That General George Monck be one of the Council of State.
¶Resolved, That the respective Members of Parliament do, To-morrow Morning, prepare their Papers, to make up the Thirty Persons more, to be of the Council of State: And that the Council of State be chosen by the Glasses, as formerly was accustomed, To-morrow Morning.
'"By order" of whom, would be nice to know. We likely won't.'
Stephane, I bet this was on the list of "Quick and Easy PR Things TO DO Whenever" for Hyde, Nicholas and Charles II. And I suspect Mr. Doneman alias Mr. Mills' name tells us who dun it.
"Great talk to-night that the discontented officers did think this night to make a stir, but prevented."
They were dangerous times; rioting and fighting could have broken out at any moment.
Even under normal circumstances, respectable women did not/could not live alone. People lived together for economic and security reasons: cooking 3 meals a day was a full time occupation; doing the laundry took at least 3 days (including drying); someone had to bring enough water from a communal pump for the household every day; someone had to bring up the coal or wood from the basement for all the fires, every day; someone had to go shopping every day; they needed to clean and mend everything themselves all the time. Elizabeth and Jane could keep it together at home for the 3 of them, but as we've seen, Pepys rarely eats at home. They were living on the Mickey D's of the day. As for security, respectable women did not leave the house alone. They are targets if they do. There will be examples of street crime later in the Diary later, so I won't speculate.
So, yes, go to an established house with servants in the country and have a change of pace. Elizabeth will observe how to run a house with servants while she's there, making Pepys some new smocks. She didn't experience these things growing up in the impoverished St.Michel household or the convent. I doubt she'll be conscious of these lessons, but what she experiences will come in useful. Teenage Jane will learn useful tips from experienced maids on how to do Elizabeth's hair and be efficient, so she becomes a more valuable employee.
Pepys has experienced these things, having lived around the Montagus all these years.
I suspect the reason Phil hasn't linked the Nore is that Pepys must have been confused. Maybe he should have said that they left the Nore yesterday and reached the Forelands today on this shakedown cruise for the Naseby.
The Nore: A sandbank at the mouth of the Thames Estuary, near the town of Sheerness, Kent, on the Isle of Sheppey. It marks the point where the River Thames meets the North Sea.
The MPs who assembled at Westminster on 25 April were a mix of experienced men and novices. Half of them had never been MPs before, a quarter had sat in the Long Parliament, and about one in three had been Members of Richard Cromwell’s Parliament the previous year.
Their political views are more difficult to pin down. This Parliament has few diaries and no division lists. On the biggest issues, most especially the Restoration of the monarchy, many seem just to have accepted, albeit with misgivings, the prevailing mood. The History’s Commons 1660-1690 volumes state that about half of the Members were ‘Anglican’ (implying they were committed to bishops and the Book of Common Prayer), but that is a crude measure, especially at a moment when the shape of any religious settlement was still open.
The Commons began by electing Sir Harbottle Grimston as its Speaker. A professional lawyer who had first been elected as an MP in 1628, he had made a famous speech on the nation’s grievances during the opening days of the Long Parliament. George Monck, the man of the hour, helped drag him to the Speaker’s chair was surely deliberate symbolism.
The Lords re-elected Gen. Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester, who had been their Speaker during some of the most eventful periods of the 1640s.
In the Commons the first 3 days were dominated by routine business – appointing its officials, hearing election disputes, setting a fast day and a day of thanksgiving. The only legislation introduced was a bill against vagrants. Monck was thanked, as was Richard Ingoldsby, who had recently arrested John Lambert, the leader of the diehard republicans in the army.
The key move by the Lords was its decision to admit those peers who had succeeded to their peerages since 1649. The first steps were also taken by them to appoint Monck as the captain general for England, Scotland and Ireland.
Neither House then met over the weekend and the Monday had been set aside as a fast day, although the Lords did transact some minor matters before processing to the service in Westminster Abbey. In truth, all this was just marking time. Everyone was waiting for Monck to declare his hand. The Commons agreed that when they resumed on the Tuesday (1 May), they would discuss the ‘Settlement of these Nations’. Meanwhile, the Lords asked for a joint conference with them on that day ‘to make up the Breaches and Distractions of this Kingdom’.
The ‘Convention’ that wasn’t: the Opening of the 1660 Parliament
By Dr. Andrew Barclay, senior research fellow for our Commons 1640-1660 project. …
Prior to dissolving itself on 16 March 1660, the Long Parliament had agreed that a new Parliament should meet on 25 April.
The elections held over the next 6 weeks used the old franchises revived for the 1659 Parliament. Unlike then, the new Parliament did not include MPs from Scotland and Ireland. The other obvious difference from 1659 was that it included the traditional House of Lords, not the Cromwellian ‘Other House’. The new assembly was consciously intended as the Long Parliament’s successor, although one with a fresh electoral mandate.
But was this a ‘Parliament’?
Modern historians usually say at this stage it was a ‘Convention’,because it had not been summoned by a monarch. It thus did not become a Parliament until the June 1660 when by its first Act, which received the assent of the newly restored king, Charles II, it declared itself to be one. ... That the 1660 body was initially only a ‘Convention’ is why it is sometimes called ‘the Convention Parliament’. All this however rests on an anachronistic distinction. The Long Parliament’s ordinance of the previous March by which this replacement was summoned spoke of it only as a ‘Parliament’ and the Journals of both the Commons and the Lords call it a ‘Parliament’ from the first entries on 25 April. The later Act declaring it to be a ‘Parliament’, while acknowledging the doubts over the lack of royal writs, never say it had not been one before.
Nor is there evidence that contemporaries called it a ‘Convention’. Sir Edward Dering, whose notes are the only surviving diary by a sitting MP covering its opening days, just calls it a Parliament (Dering, Diaries, 35).
The body meeting at the same time in Dublin was the ‘General Convention’, but, as Patrick Little has recently explained, that was not quite the same as a full Irish Parliament.
Tellingly, the earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary for the word ‘convention’ being used for a English parliamentary assembly of questionable legality does indeed date from 1660, but it is from a comment by Sir Orlando Bridgeman at the trial of the regicides and is really an unflattering reference to the Rump (1648-1653, 1659-60).
The idea that a Convention is a Parliament-like body summoned without royal writs dates only from the next such occasion, the ‘Convention Parliament’, summoned in 1689 following the flight of James II, when the issue of the writs was far messier and thus more precisely considered.
Historians only later applied the term ‘Convention’ to the 1660 Parliament retrospectively, as well as, even more anachronistically, the 1399 Parliament.
Following Monck’s entry into London on 3 February, the clamour for the re-admission of the purged Members and the return of the Long Parliament became overwhelming. Amid popular celebrations, the Rump was symbolically ‘roasted’ as meat was barbecued in the streets in anticipation of that body’s demise.
On 21 February, with Monck’s support, 73 of the excluded MPs still alive reclaimed their seats. A day of thanksgiving was held. But what would happen next was unclear.
Hampshire landowner Richard Norton, previously close to the protectorate, was reported to have responded to Monck’s earlier offer to ‘procure’ the admission of the secluded Members ‘if they would only promise not to bring in the king’ with an ominous comment. ‘Freedom of Parliament’, he had apparently said, ‘was the just right and interest of the nation, and if [MPs] thought it fit to bring in the Turk, they ought not to be imposed on the contrary’ [Mems. of the Verney Fam. iii. 462].
The final outcome was not as startling as that, but, as will be seen in the next blog in our series, the influence of individual MPs waxed and waned, and successive deals foundered, before a resolution emerged.
One who had thrown in his lot with the army officers in the vain hope of effecting legitimacy and reconciliation faced ‘daily hazards’, Bulstrode Whitelocke, commissioner of the great seal, heard that two leading civilian republicans, the regicides Henry Neville and Thomas Scot, ‘and others, had threatened to take away my life; and Scot said, That I should be hanged wth the great seal about my neck’. Responding fearfully to a summons from Lenthall to attend the House, he ‘found many of my old acquaintance … very reserved to me’ [Whitelocke, Memorials, 690-2].
Cracks soon appeared in the coalition that had secured the return of the Rump. Victory exposed divisions between those MPs who espoused republicanism for its own sake, those for whom parliamentary sovereignty was paramount, those for whom this was just a stage along the route to the restoration of the monarchy, and those who simply sought order or survival. Dissension stymied political settlement.
Seeking to consolidate their position, Hesilrige and Scot introduced an oath requiring members of the new council of state to renounce the ‘pretended title of Charles Stewart and the whole line of the late King James and of every other person, as a single person, pretending … to the crown of these nations’ [Journal of the House of Commons vii. 806b]; this excluded another protectorate as well as the monarchy.
Morley, of whom the royalists had high hopes, refused to take it, but hung on to key military positions and remained an MP. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, who had co-operated closely with Hesilrige and friends the previous autumn, and who, in command of Fleetwood’s former regiment, was a significant military force in London, worked with Morley to oppose the republicans in the House and to undermine radicals like Edmund Ludlowe, the commander in Ireland.
Meanwhile, through January 1660 Gen. Monck marched south from Scotland with his army. Cultivated by all political and religious factions, he was careful to keep in touch with leading MPs, but his intentions were the subject of intense speculation.
On 23 January the Rump, which had already voted for by-elections rather than the reinstatement of Members excluded in 1648 at Pride’s Purge, issued a declaration affirming the commonwealth, as established without a king or House of Lords.
Exiting the English Republic, part 1: political flux in early 1660
Dr Vivienne Larminie, assistant editor of the Commons 1640-1660 section, looks at the manoeuvrings of politicians and army officers in a period of great tension and uncertainty:
By late January 1660 the English republic had entered its last days – although its imminent extinction was probably not inevitable, and certainly not apparent to all contemporary observers.
The ‘interruption’ of Parliament forced by dissident army officers in October 1659 had ended when their alliance crumbled from within and was assailed from without.
In early December forces led by Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Harbert Morley, who weeks earlier had mounted unsuccessful resistance to the military coup in Whitehall, captured strategically significant Portsmouth.
On 14 December they issued a strongly-worded condemnation of coup leader Charles Fleetwood and his colleagues, asserting that the army officers were not ‘competent persons to judge of governments, and to break Parliaments, and put new fancies of their own instead thereof, as they please’ [Thurloe State Papers vii. 795].
Regiments based in Scotland and Ireland, naval commanders and the common council of London were among those who endorsed the return of Parliament.
On 24 December troops gathered outside Speaker William Lenthall’s house, apologised for their actions in October and ‘professed their resolution to live and die with the Parliament, and never more to swerve from their fidelity to it’ [Clarendon, History, vi. 140].
On the 26th Lenthall led a procession of MPs to the Palace of Westminster and the Rump Parliament reassembled.
Briefly all, or almost all, was sweetness and light. Hesilrige and Morley made a triumphant entry to Westminster, and received the thanks of the House of Commons.
Informed of the new developments, Gen. Monck, commander-in-chief in Scotland, assured Lenthall that he blessed ‘the Lord that hee hath restored you to your just and lawfull authority, and these Nations [i.e. England, Scotland and Ireland] to their rights and freedomes’. Monck, whose stance at this point is a mystery, ventured the optimistic comment that ‘I knowe that all the officers and souldiers heere doe looke upon itt as a rich mercy, and doubt nott but you will improve itt to the glory of God and the good and happines of these three Nations’ [Clarke Papers, iv. 238].
A newsletter writer predicted ‘We are neere an end of our troubles; all parts are uppe for the Parliament’. Not only had Fleetwood conceded defeat but he had also acknowledged that God was not on his side, telling Lenthall that ‘the Lord had blasted’ him and his colleagues ‘and spitt in their faces, and witnessed against their perfidiousness, and that hee was freely willing to lie att [MPs’] mercy’ [Clarke Papers, iv. 220].
John Milton’s growing disenchantment with the governments of the 1650s and the collapse of Richard Cromwell’s regime failed to shake his faith in republican government.
Shortly after the arrival in London of Gen. Monck and his army on 3 February 1660 Milton composed “The Readie & Easie Way.” Milton feared that Monck and the Rump might agree to an election with few restrictions on who voted or stood for office. Such an election would almost surely produce a majority of members keen to restore Charles II.
“The Readie & Easie Way” was a frantic appeal to Monck, the Rump, and the English people to resist the overwhelming sentiment for a return to monarchy. In it Milton acknowledges past problems with the republican experiments and makes various suggestions for reform.
The tract was published on 3 March 1660, but the essay may have been composed as early as 22 February.
Political events overtook the tract, and Milton composed another version, softening his tone and adding additional sections. This second edition appeared in early April. It was all to no avail.
SPOILERS FROM HERE ON: On 21 April, Gen. Monck invited former members of the Long Parliament to resume their seats. With their support a monarchist Council of State was created with authority to invite Charles II to return.
Many of Milton’s warnings about the repercussions of the reestablishment of the monarchy came to pass. Milton narrowly escaped execution. In his bitterness, pain, and blindness he would create what some consider to be the greatest epic poem in the English language, Paradise Lost.
The reinstatement of the Rump Parliament and the subsequent resignation of Richard Cromwell brought the Protectorate to an end in May 1659.
A 31-member Council of State was elected on 19 May with wider-ranging powers than the Protectorate Council. A majority of its members was opposed to military rule, which led to friction with high-ranking officers.
Parliament was again forcibly dissolved by the Army in October 1659, leaving the Council of State as the sole legal constitutional authority until it was dissolved by order of the Council of Officers and superseded by the Committee of Safety on 25 October 1659.
However, 9 members of the Council of State, headed by Thomas Scot, Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Anthony Ashley-Cooper, continued to meet in secret and to agitate for the restoration of Parliament and a civilian republic.
Two months later, with Gen. Monck threatening to march from Scotland in support of Parliament, Gen. Fleetwood once again restored the Rump Parliament to power (26 December 1659).
Elections were held for a new 31-member Council of State which held office until 21 February 1660 when the MPs excluded by Pride's Purge in 1648 were re-admitted.
The fully restored Long Parliament voted to call an election, then dissolved itself on 16 March.
A new Council of State governed the nation between the dissolution of the Long Parliament and the meeting of the Convention Parliament on 25 April 1660. The Council continued to sit for another month and initiated proceedings against the regicides. It was finally dissolved on 28 May 1660 when Charles II arrived in London.
Comments
Third Reading
About Tuesday 10 April 1660
San Diego Sarah • Link
"It's interesting Pepys missed the presence of "Ned" Montagu. He must have come aboard amongst the crowd of commanders, stayed with the senior officers while Sam was mixing with the others in the roundhouse, then quietly left. Maybe Sam isn't "in the loop" quite as much as has sometimes been assumed."
Or maybe the Secretary is keeping his secrets. Pepys rarely shares what the documents say that he is writing, or what he hears at mealtimes or in meetings unless it's gossip about current events or the ladies.
About Monday 26 March 1660
San Diego Sarah • Link
Elsewhere Stephane found the report written by the Venetian Ambassador in London to the Doge today, He gives the following explanation for Montagu aboard the SWIFTSURE to still be in the Thames:
"The squadron of ships under General Montagu charged with the defense of the Channel remains motionless and still at anchor. There are many reasons for this, notably the lack of money and of sailors. To make this good an act was passed yesterday to press them, but as the people here do not love violence it may lead to some disturbance in the present crisis."
found at https://www.british-history.ac.uk…
About Friday 6 April 1660
San Diego Sarah • Link
I think you're crediting me with great expertise??? The only insight I have on Pepys' and Balty's relationship is from Balty's biography.
Jeannine tells us Elizabeth was born 23 October 1640. None of our notes seem to say if Balty was older or younger (I suspect younger, just because of his behavior). So in 1660 he was roughly 20 years old. Maybe 17 -- maybe 23. Jobs are hard to find. The Army isn't hiring. He has no education that we know of. He's just a poor, healthy young male with French claims to the nobility.
It's very presumptuous of him to just turn up at the ship of one of England's two Generals-in-Chief and ask for employment for which he has no qualifications or experience that we know of.
Montagu -- who is not related to Balty and owes him nothing -- very graciously hosts him to a meal and apparently Balty did not embarrass himself. Pepys fortunately could park him in the missing clerk's bunk, and since then Balty has made himself useful.
Hopefully, Captain Stokes will find a spot for Balty, and he will continue to behave himself.
I posted L&M's take on him
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
About Wednesday 4 April 1660
San Diego Sarah • Link
SPOILER: Montagu runs for the Weymouth election in 1660, and Cuttance was his PR guy.
https://www.historyofparliamenton…
About Council of State
San Diego Sarah • Link
House of Commons Journal Volume 7:
https://www.british-history.ac.uk…
Friday, 24 February, 1659
Council of State.
An Act, constituting a Council of State, was read the Third time.
Resolved, That the Names of the Persons named the Council of State be inserted, in the Blank, in the Second Line of this Bill.
The Question being put, That a particular Time be limited for the Continuance of the Council of State;
The House was divided.
The Yeas went forth.
Sir Wm. Wheeler, Tellers for the Noes: 36.
Lord of Ancram, With the Noes,
Mr. Attorney-General, Tellers for the Yeas: 26.
Mr. Corbet, With the Yeas,
So it passed with the Negative.
Resolved, That the Blank for the Continuance of the Council of State be filled up with these Words; viz. "until the Parliament take further Order."
Resolved, That this Bill, so amended, be ingrossed.
Dissolving Parliament.
Resolved, That a Bill be brought in on Monday next, for the Dissolution of this Parliament: And that Mr. Ansley, Mr. Pryn, and Mr. Solicitor General, do prepare and bring in the said Bill.
Gen. Monck Commander in Chief.
Resolved, That the Bill constituting George Monck Esquire, Captain-General, and Commander in Chief, of all the Land-Forces in England, Scotland, and Ireland, be ingrossed.
@@@
114 people voted for the participants, but only 62 voted on the bill, which passed with a majority of 10. I wonder what the 26 wanted to do? Hardly a ringing endorsement.
About Council of State
San Diego Sarah • Link
CONT.
Whereupon the Question being put upon each of the aforesaid Names distinctly; It was
Resolved, That Wm. Peirpoint be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That John Crew be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Colonel Rosseter be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Richard Knightley be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Colonel Popham be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Colonel Moreley be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That the Lord Fairfax be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Sir Gilbert Gerrard be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That the Lord Chief-Justice St. John be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That the Lord Commissioner Widdrington be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Sir John Evelyn of Wilts be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Sir Wm. Waller be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Sir Richard Onslow be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Sir Wm. Lewis be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Colonel Edward Mountague be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Colonel Edward Harley be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Richard Norton be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Arthur Ansley be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Denzell Hollis be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Sir John Temple be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Colonel Geo. Thompson be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That John Trevor be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Sir John Holland be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Sir John Potts be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Colonel John Birch be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Sir Harbottle Grimston be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That John Swinfin be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That John Weaver be one of the Council of State.
Resolved, That Serjeant Maynard be one of the Council of State.
¶Ordered, That Mr. Ansley do bring in the Instructions for the Council of State, To-morrow Morning.
About Council of State
San Diego Sarah • Link
House of Commons Journal Volume 7:
https://www.british-history.ac.uk…
Thursday, 23 February, 1659.
Council of State.
The House, according to former Order, proceeded in Election of the Council of State.
Mr. Speaker nominated Colonel Norton, Lord Ancrame, Colonel Hutchinson, Colonel Harley, to tell the House.
Resolved, That the Door be shut.
The Tellers report the Number of Names of the Members in the House to be 113.
Mr. Serjeant Maynard, Mr. Wrey, and Sir Gilbert Gerrard, came in after the House was told.
Two Glasses were prepared, for every Member to put in his Paper of Names of the Persons whom he would have to be of the Council of State.
The Clerk of the Parliament, and Clerk-Assistant, thereupon went to the several Members, with the Glasses; and received from every of them, respectively, a Paper of Names for the Council of State: And so both the Glasses were brought, and set upon the Table.
Mr. Speaker appoints Tellers of the Papers; Colonel Norton, Lord Ancrome, Colonel Feilder, Colonel Harley:
They report the Number of the Papers to be 114.
Mr. Gold and Sir Gilbert Pickering, put in no Papers.
And the Four Members opened each Paper in the Glass; and caused the Clerk to read each Name, distinctly, and to write down each Name, and, with a strait Line drawn against that Name, to give one Stroke of the Pen cross the said Line; and, as often as any Name was repeated, the Clerk did make another Stroke cross the said Line.
The Lord Ancrome reports from the Gentlemen appointed to tell the Papers, these Gentlemen to have the greatest Number of Voices; viz. William Peirpoint, John Crew, Colonel Rosseter, Richard Knightley, Colonel Popham, Colonel Morley, Lord Fairfax, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Sir Gilbert Gerrard, Lord Chief Justice St. John, Lord Commissioner Widdrington, Sir John Evelyn of Wilts, Sir Wm. Waller, Sir Richard Onslow, Sir Wm. Lewis, Colonel Edward Mountague, Colonel Edward Harley, Richard Norton, Arthur Ansley, Denzell Hollys, Sir John Temple, Colonel Geo. Thompson, John Trevor, Sir John Holland, Sir John Potts, Colonel John Birch, Sir Harbottle Grimston, Mr. John Swinsen, Mr. John Weaver, Serjeant Maynard.
About Council of State
San Diego Sarah • Link
House of Commons Journal Volume 7:
Wednesday, 22 February 1659
https://www.british-history.ac.uk…
New Parliament to be summoned.
Resolved, That a new Parliament be summoned to appear, upon the 25th Day of April 1660: And that the Lords Commissioners for Custody of the Great Seal do issue forth Writs for Election of Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses, and Barons of the Cinque Ports, with the Members thereof, and the Town of Berwick upon Tweed, to sit and serve in Parliament, returnable the 25th Day of April 1660.
Members Qualifications.
¶Ordered, That it be referred to a Committee, to prepare Qualifications of Members to sit and serve in Parliament; and report them to the Parliament: Viz. Sir Gilbert Gerrard, Mr. Ansley, Mr. Crew, Colonel Morley, Colonel Dove, Mr. Scoen, Mr. Long, Mr. Pryn, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Mr. Robert Goodwin, Sir John Potts, Mr. Hay, Mr. Ralegh, Sir Roger Burgoyn, Colonel Montague, Sir Richard Onslo, Sir John Evelyn, Mr. Corbet, Mr. West, Mr. Hungerford, Colonel Thompson, Mr. Stevens, Mr. Lechmere, Mr. Gerrard, Sir Wm. Brereton, Mr. Weaver, Sir John Holland, Sir Peter Wentworth, Colonel Fagg, Mr. Knightley, Colonel Rossiter, Lord Chief-Baron Wild, Mr. Nelthorpe, Mr. John Goodwin, Colonel John Birch, Mr. Baker, Mr. Povey, Mr. Solicitor Ellys, Mr. Attorney-General, Colonel Lee, Sir Anthony Irby, Mr. Serjeant Maynard: And are to meet this Afternoon, in the Inner Court of Wards; and bring in the Qualifications on Friday next, the first Business; nothing to intervene: And that Mr. Scoen do take care of it.
Council of State.
Ordered, That the House do proceed To-morrow Morning, at Ten of the Clock, to the Election of the Council of State: And that the Members of this House do prepare their Names, accordingly.
About Council of State
San Diego Sarah • Link
House of Commons Journal Volume 7:
Tuesday, 21 February, 1659
https://www.british-history.ac.uk…
Council of State.
Mr. Weaver acquaints the House, That he had given Notice, to the Council of State, of the Order of this House for suspending the Council of State, according to the Command of the Parliament: And that ready Obedience will be yielded thereunto.
Instructions, formerly given to the Council of State, were read.
Mr. Serjeant Maynard reports, A Bill, constituting a Council of State: Which was this Day read the First and Second time; and, upon the Question, committed: Viz. unto Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Colonel Lassells, Sir Wm. Lewis, Sir John Evelyn, Mr. Weaver, Sir John Holland, Serjeant Maynard, Mr. Francis Bacon, Sir Wm. Brereton, Sir Richard Onslow, Sir Wm. Waller, Sir Gilbert Gerrard, Colonel Mountague, Mr. Ralegh, Mr. Knightley, Colonel Birch, Mr. Ansley, Mr. Pryn, Sir John Temple, Colonel Ingoldsby, Colonel Harvey, Colonel Norton, Mr. Jennings, Colonel Rossiter, Mr. Trevor, Colonel White, Lord St. John, Mr. Nelthorpe, Colonel Popham, Mr. Solicitor Ellys; or any Five: And they are to meet this Afternoon, in the Speaker's Chamber: With Power to consider of these Instructions, and of former Instructions given to the Council of State: And to present such Instructions, to . . given to the Council of State, to the Parliament, for their Consideration, as they shall think fit.
Council of State.
Resolved, That the Number of the Council of State be One-and-thirty.
Resolved, That General George Monck be one of the Council of State.
¶Resolved, That the respective Members of Parliament do, To-morrow Morning, prepare their Papers, to make up the Thirty Persons more, to be of the Council of State: And that the Council of State be chosen by the Glasses, as formerly was accustomed, To-morrow Morning.
About Friday 16 March 1659/60
San Diego Sarah • Link
'"By order" of whom, would be nice to know. We likely won't.'
Stephane, I bet this was on the list of "Quick and Easy PR Things TO DO Whenever" for Hyde, Nicholas and Charles II. And I suspect Mr. Doneman alias Mr. Mills' name tells us who dun it.
Great find -- thanks for sharing.
About Thursday 15 March 1659/60
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Great talk to-night that the discontented officers did think this night to make a stir, but prevented."
They were dangerous times; rioting and fighting could have broken out at any moment.
Even under normal circumstances, respectable women did not/could not live alone.
People lived together for economic and security reasons: cooking 3 meals a day was a full time occupation; doing the laundry took at least 3 days (including drying); someone had to bring enough water from a communal pump for the household every day; someone had to bring up the coal or wood from the basement for all the fires, every day; someone had to go shopping every day; they needed to clean and mend everything themselves all the time.
Elizabeth and Jane could keep it together at home for the 3 of them, but as we've seen, Pepys rarely eats at home. They were living on the Mickey D's of the day.
As for security, respectable women did not leave the house alone. They are targets if they do. There will be examples of street crime later in the Diary later, so I won't speculate.
So, yes, go to an established house with servants in the country and have a change of pace. Elizabeth will observe how to run a house with servants while she's there, making Pepys some new smocks. She didn't experience these things growing up in the impoverished St.Michel household or the convent. I doubt she'll be conscious of these lessons, but what she experiences will come in useful. Teenage Jane will learn useful tips from experienced maids on how to do Elizabeth's hair and be efficient, so she becomes a more valuable employee.
Pepys has experienced these things, having lived around the Montagus all these years.
A time of growth for all.
About Tuesday 13 March 1659/60
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Things seem very doubtful what will be the end of all; for the Parliament seems to be strong for the King, while the soldiers do all talk against."
They were dangerous times; fighting could have broken out at any moment.
About Monday 9 April 1660
San Diego Sarah • Link
I suspect the reason Phil hasn't linked the Nore is that Pepys must have been confused. Maybe he should have said that they left the Nore yesterday and reached the Forelands today on this shakedown cruise for the Naseby.
The Nore: A sandbank at the mouth of the Thames Estuary, near the town of Sheerness, Kent, on the Isle of Sheppey. It marks the point where the River Thames meets the North Sea.
About Wednesday 25 April 1660
San Diego Sarah • Link
PART 2
The MPs who assembled at Westminster on 25 April were a mix of experienced men and novices. Half of them had never been MPs before, a quarter had sat in the Long Parliament, and about one in three had been Members of Richard Cromwell’s Parliament the previous year.
Their political views are more difficult to pin down. This Parliament has few diaries and no division lists.
On the biggest issues, most especially the Restoration of the monarchy, many seem just to have accepted, albeit with misgivings, the prevailing mood.
The History’s Commons 1660-1690 volumes state that about half of the Members were ‘Anglican’ (implying they were committed to bishops and the Book of Common Prayer), but that is a crude measure, especially at a moment when the shape of any religious settlement was still open.
The Commons began by electing Sir Harbottle Grimston as its Speaker. A professional lawyer who had first been elected as an MP in 1628, he had made a famous speech on the nation’s grievances during the opening days of the Long Parliament.
George Monck, the man of the hour, helped drag him to the Speaker’s chair was surely deliberate symbolism.
The Lords re-elected Gen. Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester, who had been their Speaker during some of the most eventful periods of the 1640s.
In the Commons the first 3 days were dominated by routine business – appointing its officials, hearing election disputes, setting a fast day and a day of thanksgiving. The only legislation introduced was a bill against vagrants. Monck was thanked, as was Richard Ingoldsby, who had recently arrested John Lambert, the leader of the diehard republicans in the army.
The key move by the Lords was its decision to admit those peers who had succeeded to their peerages since 1649.
The first steps were also taken by them to appoint Monck as the captain general for England, Scotland and Ireland.
Neither House then met over the weekend and the Monday had been set aside as a fast day, although the Lords did transact some minor matters before processing to the service in Westminster Abbey.
In truth, all this was just marking time. Everyone was waiting for Monck to declare his hand.
The Commons agreed that when they resumed on the Tuesday (1 May), they would discuss the ‘Settlement of these Nations’.
Meanwhile, the Lords asked for a joint conference with them on that day ‘to make up the Breaches and Distractions of this Kingdom’.
The events of 1 May would end the uncertainty.
https://thehistoryofparliament.wo…
About Wednesday 25 April 1660
San Diego Sarah • Link
From the House of Commons blog:
The ‘Convention’ that wasn’t: the Opening of the 1660 Parliament
By Dr. Andrew Barclay, senior research fellow for our Commons 1640-1660 project. …
Prior to dissolving itself on 16 March 1660, the Long Parliament had agreed that a new Parliament should meet on 25 April.
The elections held over the next 6 weeks used the old franchises revived for the 1659 Parliament. Unlike then, the new Parliament did not include MPs from Scotland and Ireland. The other obvious difference from 1659 was that it included the traditional House of Lords, not the Cromwellian ‘Other House’. The new assembly was consciously intended as the Long Parliament’s successor, although one with a fresh electoral mandate.
But was this a ‘Parliament’?
Modern historians usually say at this stage it was a ‘Convention’,because it had not been summoned by a monarch. It thus did not become a Parliament until the June 1660 when by its first Act, which received the assent of the newly restored king, Charles II, it declared itself to be one. ... That the 1660 body was initially only a ‘Convention’ is why it is sometimes called ‘the Convention Parliament’. All this however rests on an anachronistic distinction. The Long Parliament’s ordinance of the previous March by which this replacement was summoned spoke of it only as a ‘Parliament’ and the Journals of both the Commons and the Lords call it a ‘Parliament’ from the first entries on 25 April.
The later Act declaring it to be a ‘Parliament’, while acknowledging the doubts over the lack of royal writs, never say it had not been one before.
Nor is there evidence that contemporaries called it a ‘Convention’.
Sir Edward Dering, whose notes are the only surviving diary by a sitting MP covering its opening days, just calls it a Parliament (Dering, Diaries, 35).
The body meeting at the same time in Dublin was the ‘General Convention’, but, as Patrick Little has recently explained, that was not quite the same as a full Irish Parliament.
Tellingly, the earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary for the word ‘convention’ being used for a English parliamentary assembly of questionable legality does indeed date from 1660, but it is from a comment by Sir Orlando Bridgeman at the trial of the regicides and is really an unflattering reference to the Rump (1648-1653, 1659-60).
The idea that a Convention is a Parliament-like body summoned without royal writs dates only from the next such occasion, the ‘Convention Parliament’, summoned in 1689 following the flight of James II, when the issue of the writs was far messier and thus more precisely considered.
Historians only later applied the term ‘Convention’ to the 1660 Parliament retrospectively, as well as, even more anachronistically, the 1399 Parliament.
About Monday 23 January 1659/60
San Diego Sarah • Link
PART 3 -- ALL HELPFUL SPOILERS:
Following Monck’s entry into London on 3 February, the clamour for the re-admission of the purged Members and the return of the Long Parliament became overwhelming.
Amid popular celebrations, the Rump was symbolically ‘roasted’ as meat was barbecued in the streets in anticipation of that body’s demise.
On 21 February, with Monck’s support, 73 of the excluded MPs still alive reclaimed their seats. A day of thanksgiving was held. But what would happen next was unclear.
Hampshire landowner Richard Norton, previously close to the protectorate, was reported to have responded to Monck’s earlier offer to ‘procure’ the admission of the secluded Members ‘if they would only promise not to bring in the king’ with an ominous comment. ‘Freedom of Parliament’, he had apparently said, ‘was the just right and interest of the nation, and if [MPs] thought it fit to bring in the Turk, they ought not to be imposed on the contrary’ [Mems. of the Verney Fam. iii. 462].
The final outcome was not as startling as that, but, as will be seen in the next blog in our series, the influence of individual MPs waxed and waned, and successive deals foundered, before a resolution emerged.
https://thehistoryofparliament.wo…
About Monday 23 January 1659/60
San Diego Sarah • Link
Part 2
One who had thrown in his lot with the army officers in the vain hope of effecting legitimacy and reconciliation faced ‘daily hazards’, Bulstrode Whitelocke, commissioner of the great seal, heard that two leading civilian republicans, the regicides Henry Neville and Thomas Scot, ‘and others, had threatened to take away my life; and Scot said, That I should be hanged wth the great seal about my neck’. Responding fearfully to a summons from Lenthall to attend the House, he ‘found many of my old acquaintance … very reserved to me’ [Whitelocke, Memorials, 690-2].
Cracks soon appeared in the coalition that had secured the return of the Rump. Victory exposed divisions between those MPs who espoused republicanism for its own sake, those for whom parliamentary sovereignty was paramount, those for whom this was just a stage along the route to the restoration of the monarchy, and those who simply sought order or survival. Dissension stymied political settlement.
Seeking to consolidate their position, Hesilrige and Scot introduced an oath requiring members of the new council of state to renounce the ‘pretended title of Charles Stewart and the whole line of the late King James and of every other person, as a single person, pretending … to the crown of these nations’ [Journal of the House of Commons vii. 806b]; this excluded another protectorate as well as the monarchy.
Morley, of whom the royalists had high hopes, refused to take it, but hung on to key military positions and remained an MP.
Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, who had co-operated closely with Hesilrige and friends the previous autumn, and who, in command of Fleetwood’s former regiment, was a significant military force in London, worked with Morley to oppose the republicans in the House and to undermine radicals like Edmund Ludlowe, the commander in Ireland.
Meanwhile, through January 1660 Gen. Monck marched south from Scotland with his army. Cultivated by all political and religious factions, he was careful to keep in touch with leading MPs, but his intentions were the subject of intense speculation.
On 23 January the Rump, which had already voted for by-elections rather than the reinstatement of Members excluded in 1648 at Pride’s Purge, issued a declaration affirming the commonwealth, as established without a king or House of Lords.
https://thehistoryofparliament.wo…
About Monday 23 January 1659/60
San Diego Sarah • Link
The House of Commons blog:
Exiting the English Republic, part 1: political flux in early 1660
Dr Vivienne Larminie, assistant editor of the Commons 1640-1660 section, looks at the manoeuvrings of politicians and army officers in a period of great tension and uncertainty:
By late January 1660 the English republic had entered its last days – although its imminent extinction was probably not inevitable, and certainly not apparent to all contemporary observers.
The ‘interruption’ of Parliament forced by dissident army officers in October 1659 had ended when their alliance crumbled from within and was assailed from without.
In early December forces led by Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Harbert Morley, who weeks earlier had mounted unsuccessful resistance to the military coup in Whitehall, captured strategically significant Portsmouth.
On 14 December they issued a strongly-worded condemnation of coup leader Charles Fleetwood and his colleagues, asserting that the army officers were not ‘competent persons to judge of governments, and to break Parliaments, and put new fancies of their own instead thereof, as they please’ [Thurloe State Papers vii. 795].
Regiments based in Scotland and Ireland, naval commanders and the common council of London were among those who endorsed the return of Parliament.
On 24 December troops gathered outside Speaker William Lenthall’s house, apologised for their actions in October and ‘professed their resolution to live and die with the Parliament, and never more to swerve from their fidelity to it’ [Clarendon, History, vi. 140].
On the 26th Lenthall led a procession of MPs to the Palace of Westminster and the Rump Parliament reassembled.
Briefly all, or almost all, was sweetness and light. Hesilrige and Morley made a triumphant entry to Westminster, and received the thanks of the House of Commons.
Informed of the new developments, Gen. Monck, commander-in-chief in Scotland, assured Lenthall that he blessed ‘the Lord that hee hath restored you to your just and lawfull authority, and these Nations [i.e. England, Scotland and Ireland] to their rights and freedomes’. Monck, whose stance at this point is a mystery, ventured the optimistic comment that ‘I knowe that all the officers and souldiers heere doe looke upon itt as a rich mercy, and doubt nott but you will improve itt to the glory of God and the good and happines of these three Nations’ [Clarke Papers, iv. 238].
A newsletter writer predicted ‘We are neere an end of our troubles; all parts are uppe for the Parliament’. Not only had Fleetwood conceded defeat but he had also acknowledged that God was not on his side, telling Lenthall that ‘the Lord had blasted’ him and his colleagues ‘and spitt in their faces, and witnessed against their perfidiousness, and that hee was freely willing to lie att [MPs’] mercy’ [Clarke Papers, iv. 220].
About Saturday 3 March 1659/60
San Diego Sarah • Link
John Milton’s growing disenchantment with the governments of the 1650s and the collapse of Richard Cromwell’s regime failed to shake his faith in republican government.
Shortly after the arrival in London of Gen. Monck and his army on 3 February 1660 Milton composed “The Readie & Easie Way.”
Milton feared that Monck and the Rump might agree to an election with few restrictions on who voted or stood for office. Such an election would almost surely produce a majority of members keen to restore Charles II.
“The Readie & Easie Way” was a frantic appeal to Monck, the Rump, and the English people to resist the overwhelming sentiment for a return to monarchy. In it Milton acknowledges past problems with the republican experiments and makes various suggestions for reform.
The tract was published on 3 March 1660, but the essay may have been composed as early as 22 February.
Political events overtook the tract, and Milton composed another version, softening his tone and adding additional sections. This second edition appeared in early April. It was all to no avail.
SPOILERS FROM HERE ON: On 21 April, Gen. Monck invited former members of the Long Parliament to resume their seats. With their support a monarchist Council of State was created with authority to invite Charles II to return.
Many of Milton’s warnings about the repercussions of the reestablishment of the monarchy came to pass. Milton narrowly escaped execution. In his bitterness, pain, and blindness he would create what some consider to be the greatest epic poem in the English language, Paradise Lost.
The text of the pamphlet is at
https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/…
About Council of State
San Diego Sarah • Link
THE COUNCIL OF STATE 1659-60
The reinstatement of the Rump Parliament and the subsequent resignation of Richard Cromwell brought the Protectorate to an end in May 1659.
A 31-member Council of State was elected on 19 May with wider-ranging powers than the Protectorate Council. A majority of its members was opposed to military rule, which led to friction with high-ranking officers.
Parliament was again forcibly dissolved by the Army in October 1659, leaving the Council of State as the sole legal constitutional authority until it was dissolved by order of the Council of Officers and superseded by the Committee of Safety on 25 October 1659.
However, 9 members of the Council of State, headed by Thomas Scot, Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Anthony Ashley-Cooper, continued to meet in secret and to agitate for the restoration of Parliament and a civilian republic.
Two months later, with Gen. Monck threatening to march from Scotland in support of Parliament, Gen. Fleetwood once again restored the Rump Parliament to power (26 December 1659).
Elections were held for a new 31-member Council of State which held office until 21 February 1660 when the MPs excluded by Pride's Purge in 1648 were re-admitted.
The fully restored Long Parliament voted to call an election, then dissolved itself on 16 March.
A new Council of State governed the nation between the dissolution of the Long Parliament and the meeting of the Convention Parliament on 25 April 1660. The Council continued to sit for another month and initiated proceedings against the regicides. It was finally dissolved on 28 May 1660 when Charles II arrived in London.
http://bcw-project.org/church-and…