ccepted king, the laws and Acts of Cromwell s government were automatically cancelled. Charles managed his return with skill. Although Parliament was once more as weak as it had been in the time of James I and Charles I, the new king was careful to make peace with his father «s enemies. Only those who had been responsible for his father »s execution were punished. Many Parliamentarians were given positions of authority or responsibility in the new monarchy. But Parliament itself remained generally weak.shared his father «s belief in divine right. He hoped to make peace between the different religious groups. He wanted to allow Puritans and Catholics who disliked the Anglican Church to meet freely. But Parliament was strongly Anglican, and would not allow this. Before the Civil War, Puritans looked to Parliament for protection against the king. Now they hoped that the king would protect them against Parliament.himself was attracted to the Catholic Church. Parliament knew this and was always afraid that Charles would become a Catholic. For this reason Parliament passed the Test Act in 1673, which prevented any Catholic from holding public office. Fear of Charles »s interest in the Catholic Church and of the monarchy becoming too powerful also resulted in the first political parties in Britain.of these parties was a group of MPs who became known as« Whigs », a rude name for cattle drivers . The Whigs, the City financiers, merchants and landowners turned bourgeois, were for limiting the power of the crown and extending that of Parliament. They were opposed to Catholicism as they connected it with an absolute monarchy. They also wanted to have no regular or «standing» army. In spite of their fear of a Catholic king, the Whigs believed strongly in allowing religious freedom. Because Charles and his wife had no children, the Whigs feared that the crown would go to Charles's Catholic brother, James. They wanted to prevent this, but they were undecided over who they did want as king.Whigs were opposed by another group, nicknamed «Tories», an Irish name for thieves. The Tories, the biggest landowners and Anglican clergy, upheld the authority of the Crown and the Church, and were natural inheritors of the «Royalist» position. The Whigs were not against the Crown, but they believed that its authority depended upon the consent of Parliament. As natural inheritors of the «Parliamentarian» values ??of twenty years earlier, they felt tolerant towards the new Protestant sects which the Anglican Church so disliked. These two parties, the Whigs and Tories, became the basis of Britain s two-party parliamentary system of government. [4, pp.93-94]
.5.2 The Glorious Revolution of 1688struggle over Catholicism and the Crown became a crisis when news was heard of a Catholic plot to murder Charles and put his brother James on the throne. In fact the plan did not exist. The story had been spread as a clever trick to frighten people and to make sure that James and the Catholics did not come to power. The trick worked. Parliament passed an Act forbidding any Catholic to be a member of either the Commons or the Lords. It was not successful, however, in preventing James from inheriting the crown. Charles would not allow any interference with his brother s divine right to be king. The Stuarts might give in on matters of policy, but never on matters of principle. [10, p. 182] II became king after hi...
