Editing Stuart Restoration (section)

==The Protectorate==

After [[Richard Cromwell]], [[Lord Protector]] from 1658 to 1659, ceded power to the [[Rump Parliament]], [[Charles Fleetwood]] and [[John Lambert (general)|John Lambert]] then dominated government for a year. On 20 October 1659, [[George Monck]], the governor of Scotland under the Cromwells, marched south with his army from Scotland to oppose Fleetwood and Lambert. Lambert's army began to desert him, and he returned to London almost alone whilst Monck marched to London unopposed. The Presbyterian members, excluded in [[Pride's Purge]] of 1648, were recalled, and on 24 December the army restored the [[Long Parliament]].{{Sfn|Chisholm|1911a|p=108}}

Fleetwood was deprived of his command and ordered to appear before Parliament to answer for his conduct. On 3 March 1660, Lambert was sent to the [[Tower of London]], from which he escaped a month later. He tried to rekindle the civil war in favour of the [[Commonwealth of England|Commonwealth]] by issuing a proclamation calling on all supporters of the "[[Good Old Cause]]" to rally on the battlefield of Edgehill, but he was recaptured by Colonel [[Richard Ingoldsby]], a participant in the [[regicide]] of Charles I who hoped to win a pardon by handing Lambert over to the new regime.{{Sfn|Chisholm|1911a|p=108}} Lambert was incarcerated and died in custody in 1684; Ingoldsby was pardoned.{{sfn|Firth|1892|p=10}}

{{Blockquote|The restoration was not what George Monck, as an apparent engineer of the Restoration, had intended – if indeed he knew what he intended, for in Clarendon's sardonic words; "the whole machine was infinitely above his strength ... and it is glory enough to his memory that he was instrumental in bringing those things to pass which he had neither wisdom to foresee, nor courage to attempt, nor understanding to contrive".|source=[[Hugh Trevor-Roper]] Great Tew Circle{{cn|date=June 2024}}}}