430 The Comeback Kid

·40 min·2 clips

At Dover on 26 May 1660, George Monk dropped to his knees before Charles II — and Charles also dropped to his knees and gave him a hug.

1. The History of England episode 430, 'The Comeback Kid,' covers the political crisis of late 1659 to May 1660 and the Restoration of Charles II. 2. Host David Crowther narrates solo, drawing heavily on the diaries of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, and on letters and pamphlets of the period. 3. The episode's core question is how George Monk — the inscrutable Governor of Scotland — manoeuvred England from the chaos of the dissolved Rump Parliament to the peaceful Restoration without a battle. 4. The episode opens with the Rump Parliament facing the same constitutional dilemma it had in 1649 and 1653: any genuinely free election would vote it out of existence, yet the army under Lambert had seized power via the Committee of Safety and was besieging Parliament. 5. Monk, commanding a smaller but cohesive army in Scotland, had declared for civil authority — but his intentions were opaque; he was described as 'so dark a man no perspective can look through him.' 6. Crowther introduces Monk through his marriage: he met his wife Anne in the Tower of London in 1653 while he was imprisoned there and she was working as a seamstress; Cromwell misread his inscrutability as simplicity, calling him 'a very good, plain-hearted George.' 7. Anne, a blacksmith's daughter who had, as Crowther puts it, 'married well,' advised Monk strongly at dinner — her chaplain called her evening dress her 'treason gown' because she urged him against Lambert and the army sectarians. 8. Monk's chances of marching south against Lambert's numerically superior army were transformed by Welsh Colonel Thomas Morgan, a double agent who persuaded Thomas Fairfax to emerge from retirement at Nunappleton — where he had been listening to Andrew Marvell's poetry — in exchange for a promise of free elections. 9. Brian Fairfax watched his father come back to life on 1 January 1660 as he seized York: 'his motions so quick, his eyes so sparkling, giving words of command like a general.' 10. The same day Samuel Pepys began his diary, writing of 'great talk of many places have declared for a free parliament' — and Lambert's demoralised army, unpaid and outmanoeuvred, 'simply melted away.' 11. As Monk arrived in London in February 1660, Haselrig and the Rump tried to emasculate him by moving army control directly to Parliament — Crowther calls this 'extraordinarily bold if not daft' — and then ordered Monk to arrest the City of London's councillors and break its gates. 12. Monk complied with the humiliating order to act against the City, but his soldiers told onlookers they had been 'ordered to oppress their best friends'; the episode of forcing Monk to act against civil liberties was his breaking point. 13. On 11 February 1660, Monk sent Parliament an ultimatum: issue writs for free elections within one week or face consequences; Pepys rushed to Westminster Hall and saw Haselrig 'come out very angry.' 14. London's reaction was explosive: Pepys counted 31 bonfires from Strand Bridge, saw soldiers being given drinks and money, effigy rumps on sticks, and butchers at the Maypole ringing a peal with their knives before 'sacrificing their rumps.' 15. On 21 February, the 73 MPs expelled from Parliament by Colonel Pride in 1648 — 'Presbyterians and Royalists to a man' — walked into an astonished House; William Prynne arrived with 'an old basket-hilt sword on and had a great many great shouts on his going into the hall.' 16. The restored Convention Parliament voted Monk General of the Army, ordered elections, reinstated the House of Lords, and dissolved itself; Haselrig threw himself on Monk's mercy and retired to his country house, sending Monk 2 pence by letter. 17. In the weeks before the election, royalist sentiment was visible everywhere: a painter publicly restored the words at the Royal Exchange where Charles I's statue had stood; in Boston and Lincolnshire, Commonwealth arms were dragged through the streets. 18. John Milton published a desperate pamphlet attacking monarchy even as the election produced an overwhelming Royalist majority; at The Hague, Charles II received congratulations from Spain, Sweden, Denmark, and Brandenburg, and was met by a delegation including Thomas Fairfax, who gave him the foal of the mare Fairfax had ridden at Naseby. 19. Listeners interested in the constitutional crisis of the English Republic, the mechanics of political manoeuvring in a pre-democratic age, and the human texture of 17th-century events as recorded by Pepys and Evelyn will find this episode engrossing. 20. Those wanting coverage of what came next — the fates of regicides, Haselrig, Harry Vane, and the Royalists — should note this episode ends at the Restoration itself; those topics are reserved for the following episode, 'Afterlives.'

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