The Declaration of Breda.

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Breda, Charles II of England and Scotland, English Civil War, General Monck, Kings and Queens of England, kings and queens of Scotland, Restoration, The Declaration of Breda, the Netherlands

On this date in History: April 4, 1660. Charles II, King of England, Scotland and Ireland issues The Declaration of Breda.

The Declaration of Breda (dated April 4, 1660) was a proclamation by Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland in which he promised a general pardon for crimes committed during the English Civil War and the Interregnum for all those who recognised Charles as the lawful king; the retention by the current owners of property purchased during the same period; religious toleration; and the payment of pay arrears to members of the army, and that the army would be recommissioned into service under the crown. The first three pledges were all subject to amendment by acts of parliament.

The declaration was named after the city of Breda in the Netherlands. It was actually written in the Spanish Netherlands, where Charles had been residing since March 1656; however, at the time of writing, England had been at war with Spain since 1655. To overcome the difficulties, both practical and in terms of public relations, of a prospective King of England addressing his subjects from enemy territory, Monck advised Charles to relocate himself to the United Netherlands, and to date his letters as if they were posted from Breda. Charles left Brussels, his last residence in the Spanish Netherlands, and passing through Antwerp arrived in Breda on April 4, and resided there until May.

Backgrounds

The declaration was written in response to a secret message sent by General George Monck, who was then in effective control of England. Monk believed, as the country was beginning to succumb to anarchy, that the king could be the only person to restore stability to the realm. On May 1, 1660, the contents of the declaration and accompanying letters were made public. The next day Parliament passed a resolution that “government ought to be by King, Lords and Commons” and Charles was invited to England to receive his crown. On May 8, Charles was proclaimed King. On the advice of Monck, the commons rejected a resolution put forward by jurist Matthew Hale (a member for Gloucestershire) for a committee to be formed to look into the concessions offered by Charles and to negotiate conditions with the King such as those put forward to his father in the treaty of Newport.

Contents

The declaration was drawn up by Charles and his three chief advisors, Edward Hyde, the James Butler, Marquis of Ormond, and Sir Edward Nicholas, in order to state the terms by which Charles hoped to take up “the possession of that right which God and Nature hath made our due”.

The declaration promised a “free and general pardon” to any old enemies of Charles and of his father who recognised Charles II as their lawful monarch, “excepting only such persons as shall hereafter be excepted by parliament”. However it had always been Charles’s expectation, or at least that of his chancellor, Edward Hyde (later Earl of Clarendon), that all who had been immediately concerned in his father’s death should be punished, and even while at a disadvantage, while professing pardon and favour to many, he had constantly excepted the regicides.

Once Charles was restored to the throne, on his behalf Hyde steered the Indemnity and Oblivion Act through parliament. The act pardoned most who had sided with Parliament during the Civil War, but excepted the regicides, two prominent unrepentant republicans, John Lambert and Henry Vane the Younger, and around another twenty were forbidden to take any public office or sit in Parliament.

In the declaration Charles promised religious toleration in areas where it did not disturb the peace of the kingdom, and an act of parliament for the “granting of that indulgence”. However parliament chose to interpret the threat of peace to the kingdom to include the holding of public office by non-Anglicans. Between 1660 and 1665 the Cavalier Parliament passed four statutes that became known as the Clarendon Code. These severely limited the rights of Roman Catholics and nonconformists, such as the Puritans who had reached the zenith of their influence under the Commonwealth, effectively excluding them from national and local politics.

The declaration undertook to settle the back-pay of General Monck’s soldiers. The landed classes were reassured that establishing the justice of contested grants and purchases of estates that had been made “in the continued distractions of so many years and so many and great revolutions” was to be determined in Parliament. Charles II appeared to have “offered something to everyone in his terms for resuming government”.

Copies of the Declaration were delivered to both houses of the Convention Parliament by Sir John Grenville. Other copies with separate covering letters were delivered to Lord General George Monck to be communicated to the Lord President of the Council of State and to the Officers of the Army under his command, and to the Generals of the “Navy at Sea” and to the Lord Mayor of London.

Three Events in History, March 16.

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Assassination, Charles II of England and Scotland, Frederick the Great of Prussia, General Monck, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Gustav III of Sweden, Kingdom of England, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of the Netherlands, Prussia, The Long Parliament, William I of the Netherlands

Three significant events on this date in History. March 16.

The Netherlands, March 16, 1815.

Prince Willem VI of Orange-Nassau becomes King of the Netherlands.

Willem I (Willem Frederik, Prince of Orange-Nassau; August 24, 1772 – December 12, 1843) was a Prince of Orange and the first King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg.

Prince Willem VI was the ruler of the Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda from 1803 until 1806 and of the Principality of Orange-Nassau in the year 1806 and from 1813 until 1815. In 1813 he proclaimed himself Sovereign Prince of the United Netherlands. He proclaimed himself King Willem I of the Netherlands and Duke of Luxembourg on March 16, 1815. In the same year on June 9, Willem I became also the Grand Duke of Luxembourg and after 1839 he was furthermore the Duke of Limburg. After his abdication in 1840 he styled himself King Willem-Frederik, Count of Nassau.

On October 1, 1791, Prince Willem VI of Orange-Nassau married his cousin Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia, in Berlin. Princess Wilhelmine was the fourth child of eight born to King Friedrich-Wilhelm II of Prussia and Queen Frederica-Louisa (the daughter of Ludwig IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, and Caroline of Zweibrücken). Her upbringing was dominated by the strict regime of her great-uncle, Friedrich II the Great, but in general very little is known about her youth. The marriage was arranged as a part of an alliance between the House of Orange and Prussia, but it was also, in fact, a love match and became very happy.

Sweden, March 16, 1792

Assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden.

Gustav III (January 24, 1746 – March 29, 1792) was King of Sweden from 1771 until his assassination in 1792. He was the eldest son of King Adolf-Frederik of Sweden and Queen Louise Ulrika (a sister of King Friedrich II the Great of Prussia), and a first cousin of Empress Catherine the Great of Russia by reason of their common descent from Christian August of Holstein-Gottorp, Prince of Eutin, and his wife Albertina Frederica of Baden-Durlach.

Gustav III married Princess Sophia Magdalena of Denmark, by proxy in Christiansborg Palace, Copenhagen, on October 1, 1766 and in person in Stockholm on November 4, 1766. Sophia Magdalena of Denmark was the eldest daughter of Frederik V of Denmark and his first wife Louise of Great Britain. Louise of Great Britain was Queen of Denmark and Norway from 1746 until her death, as the first wife of King Frederick V. She was the youngest surviving daughter of King George II of Great Britain and Caroline of Ansbach. Gustav III was first impressed by Sophia Magdalena’s beauty, but her silent nature made her a disappointment in court life. The match was not a happy one, owing partly to an incompatibility of temperament, but still more to the interference of Gustav’s jealous mother, Queen Louisa Ulrika.

Assassination

Gustav III’s war against Russia and the implementation of the Union and Security Act in 1789 helped to increase a hatred against the king among the nobility that had been growing ever since the coup d’état in 1772. A conspiracy to have the king killed and reform the constitution took place within the nobility in the winter of 1791-92. Among those involved were Jacob Johan Anckarström, Adolph Ribbing, Claes Fredrik Horn, Carl Pontus Lilliehorn and Carl Fredrik Pechlin.
The assassination of the king took place at a masked ball at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm at midnight on March 16, 1792. Gustav had arrived earlier that evening to enjoy a dinner in the company of friends. During dinner, he received an anonymous letter that contained a threat to his life (written by the colonel of the Life guards Carl Pontus Lilliehorn), but, as the king had received numerous threatening letters in the past, he chose to ignore it. After dining, he left his rooms to take part in the masquerade.

Soon upon entering, he was surrounded by Anckarström and his co-conspirators, Count Claes Fredrik Horn and Count Adolf Ludvig Ribbing. The king was easily spotted, mainly due to the breast star of the Royal Order of the Seraphim that glowed in silver upon his cape. The conspirators were all wearing black masks and accosted him in French with the words: Bonjour, beau masque (“Good-day, fine masked man”). Anckarström moved behind the king and fired a pistol-shot into the left side of his back. The king jumped aside, crying in French: Ah! Je suis blessé, tirez-moi d’ici et arrêtez-le (“Ah! I am wounded, take me away from here and arrest him!”)

The king was carried back to his quarters, and the exits of the Opera were sealed. Anckarström was arrested the following morning and immediately confessed to the murder, although he denied a conspiracy until informed that Horn and Ribbing had also been arrested and had confessed in full.
The king had not been shot dead; he was alive and continued to function as head of state. The coup was a failure in the short run. However, the wound became infected, and on March 29, the king finally died with these last words: Jag känner mig sömnig, några ögonblicks vila skulle göra mig gott (“I feel sleepy, a few moments’ rest would do me good”)

Ulrica Arfvidsson, the famous medium of the Gustavian era, had told him something that could be interpreted as a prediction of his assassination in 1786, when he visited her anonymously – a coincidence – but she was known to have a large network of informers all over town to help her with her predictions, and she was in fact interrogated about the murder.

The king was succeeded on the throne by his eldest son who became King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden.

England. March 16, 1660

The Long Parliament is dissolved.

The Long Parliament was an English Parliament which lasted from 1640 until 1660. It followed the fiasco of the Short Parliament which had been held for three weeks during the spring of 1640, and which in its turn had followed an 11-year parliamentary absence. In September 1640 writs were issued summoning a parliament to convene on 3 November 1640 by King Charles I. The parliament was summoned to pass financial bills, a step that was necessary as a result of the cost of the Bishops’ Wars. It received its name from the fact that through an Act of Parliament, it could be dissolved only with the agreement of the members, and those members did not agree to its dissolution until after the English Civil War was close to the end of the Interregnum on 16 March 1660.

It sat from 1640 until 1648, when it was purged by the New Model Army. In the chaos following the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658, General George Monck allowed the members barred in 1648 to retake their seats, so that they could pass the necessary legislation to allow the Restoration and dissolve the Long Parliament. This cleared the way for a new Parliament to be elected, which was known as the Convention Parliament. Some key members of Long Parliament, such as Sir Henry Vane the Younger and General Edmond Ludlow, barred from the final acts of the Long Parliament, claimed it was not legally dissolved; its final votes a procedural irregularity (words used contemporaneously “device” and “conspiracy”) by General George Monck to ensure the restoration of King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland. On the restoration the general was awarded with a Dukedom.

Legal Succession: The House of Stuart, Part II

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Anglican, Catherine of Braganza, Exclusion Bill, General Monck, James Scott, Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, The 1st Duke of Monmouth, Titus Oates

The Commonweath period ended after the death of Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector in 1658 and the brief stint of his son, Richard Cromwell, in the same position which lasted until May 12, 1659. There followed a period of virtual anrachy as the great ship of state was left without a captain. In steps George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, General of the Army in Scotland. Fearing the country would fall further into disarray he marched his army south into London and forced the Rump Parliament to reinstate the Long Parliament which had the monarchist members ejected during Pride’s Purge toward the end of the Civil War. This new pro-Monarchist Parliament restored Charles II to his throne in May of 1660.

Charles II was now the rightful King of England and Scotland having been legally called to the throne by Parliamanet. At the time of his restoration Charles was 30 years old, unmarried and his brothers, Prince James, Duke of York and Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester were the male hiers to the throne. Prince Henry did not live long with his brother as king, he died, unmarried, from smallpox in September of 1660 at the age of 20. This left his bother, the Duke of York, as hier to the throne. One of the responsibilities of kingship is to provide for the succession. Although Charles had a string of mistresses and many natural children he needed to find a wife. His choice of bride was the Catholic Princess, Catherine of Braganza, the daughter of King João IV of Portugal and Luisa de Guzmán. The queen was not popular in England due to her belonging to the Catholic faith. It is difficult to say whether this was a love match or not. Chalres always dealt with his wife with kindness and consideration but it did not stop him from bringing a consistent flow of mistresses to his bed.

One of the sad aspects of the marriage between Charles and Catherine is that the union did not produce any legitimate hiers. Catherine became pregnant and miscarried three times during the course of her marriage. By the late 1670s many people began to fear that the Duke of York would succeed his brother. The problem with this is that at this time James, Duke of York had openly converted to Catholicism and as a Protestant Nation there were many that did not want another Catholic King sitting on the throne. One of the positive apsect of the possible accession of James as King of England and the Scots was the fact that he had two Protestant duaghters who could succeed him, Princesses Mary and Anne. In 1677 Princess Mary of York married the Protestant Prince Willem III of Orange who was also her first cousin, being the son of Princess Mary, The Princess Royal, sister to both Charles II and the Duke of York. At the time of their marriage Willem was fourth in line to the English and Scottish thrones.

There was such anti-Catholic feeling in the air at this time when a rumor was started by a defrocked Anglican clergyman, Titus Oates, that a “Popish Plot” to assassinate Charles II and to put the Duke of York on the throne, it eventually lead to a bill being propposed in Parilament to exclude the Duke of York from the Succession. There were some members of Parliament that wanted to replace the Duke of York with James Scott, The 1st Duke of Monmouth and eldest illigitimate son of Charles II and his mistress Lucy Walter. In 1679, with the Exclusion Bill one the verge of passing into law, Charles had Parliament dissolved four times that year. During the 1680s the popularity of the Exclusion Bill fadded and when Charles II died he was legally and lawfully succeeded by his brother who became James II-VII, King of England and King of Scots.

There was a brief attempt to usurp the the throne from James when his nephew, James Scott, The 1st Duke of Monmouth tried to depose his uncle. Feeling that his Protestantism would outweigh his illegitimacy the Mounmouth Rebellion tried to depose King James II-VII. The rebellion failed and despite please for mercy from the Duke of Monmouth to his uncle, the Duke was executed July 1685, on Tower Hill. Reports range from anywhere from 5-8 blows to sever his head.

King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland.

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Charles II, Charles II of England and Scotland, General Monck, Pride's Purge, Royal Declaration of Indulgence, Royal Society, Sir Issac Newton

Today I’d like to finish my write up on King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland. After the death of Cromwell his son Richard took over as Lord Protector. It was soon realized that he was not the same as his father and he was not respected by either the Army or Parliament. He fell from power within a year. The Army fell under the power and control of General Monck. After the Protectorate was dissolved there was no stable government and things were falling into anarchy. Monck knew that unless order was restored the country would fall further into anarchy. Monck marched the army into London and demanded the Rump Parliament return the members who had been evicted in Pride’s Purge. New elections to Parliament were held and restrictions against royalists were abolished. The new pro-monarchy Parliament that convened recalled Charles II to the throne. He arrived in London on May 29, 1660, his 30th birthday.

One of the things I admire about Charles II is that he was a patron of the arts and sciences. Two areas of study very close to my heart. During the Puritanical rule of Cromwell arts and theater were abolished and the study of science was negligible. Charles founded the Royal Observatory and gave patronage to the Royal Society, a scientific group whose members included Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton. Charles was also the personal patron of Sir Christopher Wren, the architect who helped rebuild London after the Great Fire of 1666. The Commonwealth period of the Cromwells is often seen as a melancholy period where a dark cloud hung over England. The restoration of Charles II with the coming to life of the culture of arts and science is seen as a new birth of spring, a golden area.

That doesn’t mean all was rosy. Charles was not always soundly on the throne. Despite his recall by Parliament the conflicts between Crown and Parliament, which had lead to Civil War, were never resolved or faced and there were times when they two bodied butted heads. It took skill and bravery on the part of Charles to navigate the Crown during these times. There were moments when it was feared that Civil War would once again raise its ugly head. One time was when he challenged Parliament over the Royal Declaration of Indulgence which would give the right of the freedom of worship (mainly for Catholics) and the repeal of anti Catholic laws. Parliament would have none of that. They did not think the king had the right to dismiss laws which they had legally established. In his enlightened view of freedom of worship he was a man ahead of his times. I could list many other problems between Charles and Parliament but many of them surround the fears of Catholic uprisings. The fact that he also was clandestinely dealing with his cousin, King Louis XIV of France who was very Catholic, was probably foolhardy. In the end Charles had to concede to the wishes of Parliament. To have done otherwise would have cost him his head.

Charles II died in February of 1685 and was only 54. Despite a string of illegitimate children from a string of mistresses Charles did not have any legitimate children with his wife, the Portuguese Princes, Catherine de Braganza. Therefore the throne passed to his brother, Prince James, Duke of York who became King James II-VII of England, Scotland and Ireland.

The “Merry Monarch” as he was called was a man ahead of his times in many ways and also a product of his times. He tried to be a good king and in many ways he did successfully navigate England and Scotland and Ireland through difficult times and brought stability to a nation torn apart by war. He was a man of arts and science and of culture. He over came adversity and struggle and became a better and not embittered person because of it.