ABSTRACT
The country united behind the ‘Merry Monarch’ who between dalliances with Nell Gwynne founded the Royal Society and Chelsea Hospital and revitalised the Royal Navy. The attempts of Charles’s Catholic brother, James II, to resurrect authoritarian rule based on Divine Right then led to revolution and the final triumph of Parliament, creating the constitutional system which represented perfection in the eyes of writers such as Dicey and Macaulay. The principal bones of contention in 1660 remained government finance and religion. Judicial decisions made during the Interregnum were confirmed; an Act of Indemnity granted a general pardon to all but those closely associated with the condemnation of Charles I. In religion, the toleration prefigured in the Declaration of Breda failed to materialise. Charles II, under the influence of his Catholic queen and mother, and possibly preferring Catholicism as the faith which supported the absolute monarchies of France, Spain and Austria, sought toleration for Catholics.
