Hello. My name is Neil Johnson and I’m a historian and Head of Early Modern Records at The National Archives. Today, we’re going to look at some documents from our State Papers, which are a key record series for understanding the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries in Britain and beyond. The documents in this collection concern domestic and foreign matters in the Early Modern period.
At the National Archives, the collection is arranged in such a way to cover a longer period than usual, 1485 to 1782, as by 1782 there was too much business for the Secretaries of State to deal with, so two separate government departments were created, the Home Office and the Foreign Office. The State Paper series is a large and wide ranging collection of records that was compiled in the 19th century after the establishment of the Public Records Office in the 1830s.
Unlike other collections at The National Archives, which are often the continued output of Government departments or law courts, sometimes spanning centuries, the State Paper series was intentionally assembled to create a comprehensive collection of records. So what kind of material can we find in this collection? In the Early Modern period, all authority was vested in the person of the monarch and all justice was understood to come from them.
As a result, they received thousands of pieces of correspondence each year, petitioning them for offices, lands, assistance, money, forgiveness, you name it and a letter for it was probably sent to the King or Queen. Alongside these occurrences, we also find matters of national importance. The Monarch’s Secretaries of State were the senior officials in government who manage the royal correspondence, and they had a team of clerks to sort, respond to, and bring matters to the King or Queen’s attention.
For this reason, you will find an extraordinary variety of topics within the State Papers as, when they were compiled, they were sorted into date order rather than theme or content.
Therefore, you will find a letter from another European Monarch or the Pope bound into a volume beside a request for some land or clemency or assistance. This is what makes the State Papers one of the gems of the collection at The National Archives and allows historians wonderful insights into the Tudor and Stuart worlds.
Now, when historians are writing history, they need to use many sources, often from multiple archives. I want to show you several documents that date early from Charles II’s reign that help to reveal how he secured his restoration in 1660. Alongside the State Papers, I also have an original enrolment from Parliament that recorded legislation for the government. By using these variety of sources, we can build up a clear picture of events. Before we look at our example from this collection, notice that each document has a unique reference so we can use our catalogue to find it and you can see it here. It’s SP 18/221.
The records in this volume of State Papers date from April to May 1660, the weeks before Charles secured his restoration. Oliver Cromwell had died in September 1658, but this did not result in the collapse of the English Republic as Oliver’s son, Richard, succeeded as Lord Protector. Richard, however, did not have his father’s political skill and the protectorate collapsed in May 1659, as he could not control the competing interests in the army who were dissatisfied with government policy, especially religious policy.
Richard was forced to resign, and with his departure from power, political anarchy engulfed England. By the end of 1659, there were several competing factions within parliament in the Army, where the generals refused to take orders from civilian politicians, and the civil authorities tried to retain control of the army.
This situation was only resolved by an unlikely source, General George Monk, commander of the army in Scotland, who marched his troops into England in January 1660 in support of Parliament.
By February, he faced down the army in England and had taken control of London, calling new elections in March 1660 that returned a new set of MPs most of whom supported a restoration of the monarchy in England. Only now did Charles Stuart’s restoration move from a possibility to a probability. The new parliament, known as the Convention, met in April 1660, and while there were some resistance from within it to the restoration, General Monck quelled any efforts to place limits on the King’s prerogative powers. Once this happened, Charles II’s emissary, Sir John Granville, presented the King’s proposals to Parliament, the fleet and the City of London. And that’s what we can see here. Known as the King’s Declaration of Breda, where he was staying at the time in the Netherlands, Charles performed a very clever political manoeuvre by addressing the main concerns many people in England had about his return.
Mainly that he would reignite the civil wars of the 1640s and seek vengeance on those who had prospered at the monarchy’s expense. But through his Declaration of Breda, Charles did the opposite. He demonstrated that he did not intend to relitigate the arguments that had been so divisive in the 1640s. Instead, he promised three things. Except for those who were directly involved in the death of his father, he would issue a general pardon so that the kingdom could move on. He would ensure a liberty of conscience, hoping to create circumstances where people could worship as they chose once they did not disturb the peace. And he would ask Parliament to resolve the issue of land, especially those that had changed hands in the 1640s and the 1650s.
The proposals were a success and the Houses of Parliament both recognised Charles II as the rightful ruler on the 8th May, meaning that the King could start his journey home. That’s what we can see here in this second document, which is the public declaration of the House of Commons, supporting the return of the King.
Charles arrived back in London on the 29th May 1660, his 30th birthday.
There were widespread celebrations, but the King knew he had to follow through on his promises. But he also had a chance now, after 11 years, to avenge the death of his father. Having promised to ensure there would not be indiscriminate retribution, he nonetheless wished to punish the men directly involved in the death of his father. He quickly issued instructions to Parliament to draft a bill of indemnity that would only punish the people who were present the day Charles I was sentenced on the 27th January 1649. They, the act said, were guilty of treason. This totalled 59 men, some of whom had handed themselves in, others fled, and more had died. The document here is the Act of General Pardon, Indemnity and Oblivion that clearly stated the King did not wish to cause more bloodshed and would only punish those directly involved in the death of his father.
It dates from August 1660 and is the Government’s copy. It’s written on to parchment that is sewn at the top and the bottom and rolled up, meaning that once it’s stored correctly, the contents are safe and they survive very well. These documents represent just a few of the many hundreds that the National Archives holds on Charles II’s Restoration and are just a few of the many millions of archival objects here at Kew.