A XVIII. század angol irodalma [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION The Restoration Age (1660-1688)The Restoration of Charles II in 1660 was far from a simple return to the status quo of pre-revolutionary circumstances. It produced a new arrangement of social forces in order to create a government corresponding to the actual proportion of powers. The middles classes of the towns proved too weak to be a firm governmental basis; the political change did not simply mean the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy, but rather a compromise between landowners and the higher strata of society. The character of the Restoration is clearly manifested in the rearrangement of landownership. Church and Crown-property confiscated by the Republic were reestablished, but feudal tenures were never restored. "In the days of the Stuart Restoration" says Marx, "the English landowners carried out under the new form of law an usurpation which upon the Continent was everywhere affected without any legal formalities. They abolished the feudal tenure of land, this meaning that they got rid of all the landowners' obligations to the state; they indemnified* the state by imposing taxes upon the peasantry and the common people in general, they established modern proprietary rights to estates hitherto held upon feudal tenure" (Capital, II. p. 801) In this respect the Restoration was not the reversal, but rather the completion of the Revolution. Parliamentary Power.Politically the royal prerogative^Buffered a mortal blow. The control of trade and finance, the judiciary and the army had been transferred into the hands of Parliament. The Cavalier Parliament of 1661 was dominated by the royalist gentry, and it created the "Clarendon Code" to settle religious questions. It- 5 -