Cavalier Parliament
In January 1661, the Fifth Monarchists, anticipating the arrival of Jesus Christ to claim the throne, led a succession of revolts under the command of Vavasor Powell and Thomas Venner.
The importation of Irish cattle into Britain was forbidden (1666), giving English beef producers a protected home market (in trade, Scotland was already excluded altogether, treated as a foreign country on par with France).
The prior Convention of 1660 had promised King Charles II a generous annual revenue of £1.2 million, secured on customs duties and excise taxes.
But when the war turned out poorly in 1667, parliament decided to lay the blame on Charles II's chief minister Edward Hyde (Earl of Clarendon) and the king's brother and lord admiral, James, Duke of York.
Clarendon's departure opened the way for the rise of a new crop of young ministers, known as "the Cabal", a loose ministerial coalition consisting of Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, Lauderdale.
Disillusioned by the lukewarm reception, Charles II re-oriented his foreign policy and struck up the notorious secret Treaty of Dover in May 1670, allying England and Louis XIV's France, in a plan to dismember the Netherlands.
Finding the Cabal insufferable, Sir William Coventry resigned as Secretary to the Admiralty and went back to the House of Commons, where he emerged in 1669 as the formidable leader of a group of parliamentarians known as the "Country Party" – a group of MPs held together by their suspicion of corruption in high places, suspicious of the king's dubious foreign policy and, increasingly, suspicious of his loyalty to Protestantism.
While parliament was prorogued, the Cabal had unwisely engineered the "Great Stop of the Exchequer" in January 1672, redirecting the revenues designated for the paying of government debt towards financing a new fleet for the upcoming war.
The default prompted the goldsmith bankers of London to cease all further credit to the crown, forcing Charles II to finally call parliament again in early 1673 for its 10th Session to plead for funds.
Facing the Anglo-French onslaught, the Dutch republic had delivered itself into the hands of the charismatic young stadtholder William III of Orange, Charles's own nephew.
English public opinion (encouraged by Dutch propaganda) embraced the image of the heroic young Protestant prince valiantly defying an "international Catholic conspiracy" (uncomfortably close to the truth, given the secret Treaty of Dover).
The Cabal defended the war vigorously – Ashley making his famous "Delenda est Carthago" speech before the House of Lords, comparing England to Rome and Holland to Carthage (an unusual classical reference for this audience).
But Commons wanted to address a different item of business—the Declaration of Indulgence that had been issued by Charles II during the recess in 1672 suspending penal laws on Dissenters and Catholics.
To that end, parliament used its purse-strings to force not only the repeal of the Declaration but also the passage of the first Test Act in May 1673, requiring all office-holders to deny Catholic transubstantiation and take Anglican communion.
When the next session opened in October 1673, Ashley (now Earl of Shaftesbury), sensing the new mood, turned up at the House of Lords to loudly denounce the proposed marriage of James of York to the Catholic princess Mary of Modena.
Around that same time, Arlington and Buckingham fell into a quarrel, in the process of which the details of the secret Treaty of Dover were leaked to parliament, provoking an alarmed parliamentary inquiry.
With the fall of the Cabal (only Lauderdale lingered on in Scotland), Charles II turned to Thomas Osborne (Earl of Danby) as his chief minister.
The House of Commons, which had played a significant role in the events of 1673, was comparatively calmed by Danby's orthodox Anglican government and vigorous enforcement of the Test Act.
But the drama now shifted to the House of Lords, where the dismissed Ashley-Shaftesbury, in alliance with the disgruntled Buckingham and George Savile (Viscount Halifax) (Coventry's nephew), emerged as leader of the opposition to the government.
[3] Through the brief 12th session of early 1674, Shaftesbury and his friends, flexing their new muscles, steered a slew of provocative bills in the House of Lords, e.g. expelling Catholics from London, forcing an oath that renounced the Pope, requiring royal family members to get parliamentary consent on marriage and how to raise their children.
Shaftesbury (joined by Buckingham, Salisbury and Wharton), proclaimed the session illegitimate, claiming that the "Long Prorogation" implied that parliament was effectively dissolved and that the king must call for new elections.
To this end, Danby negotiated the marriage of James of York's eldest daughter Mary to the Dutch Stadtholder William III of Orange in November 1677.
This has led some historians to speculate that parliament's war-call was a bluff from the start, that they were more interested in denying the king a foreign policy victory and embarrassing Danby.
Nonetheless, Charles II hurried things along in late 1677 by precipitously signing a treaty with William III to re-enter the war, and presenting it to parliament as a fait accompli.
In June, parliament quickly voted a sum to finance the disbanding of the expeditionary force, but Charles II decided to use the money to maintain it instead for a few months longer, in the hope he might still affect the final treaty.
In return for saving Danby from trial in the House of Lords, Charles II reluctantly agreed to their demands to finally dissolve parliament and call for new elections.
So the citation "15 Cha 2. c. 4" means "the fourth chapter of the act passed by the parliamentary session that sat in the 15th year of the reign of Charles II".
Charles II's regnal year begins January 30, so if a single parliamentary session overlaps that date, it will usually be given a double label, e.g. "19 & 20 Cha.
