Q: What was the Restoration?
A: In short, the Restoration was the re-establishment of Charles II as king of England following more than a decade of different types of constitutional regime. Charles II's father, Charles I, had acceded to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1625, but his reign had been tumultuous. In the late 1630s, his authority had started to collapse, and he'd faced increasing challenges to his rule in all three kingdoms, which blew up into what we think of now as the Civil Wars. The conflict lasted through the 1640s until the decision was taken by a purged parliament and army leaders to put Charles I on trial, and he was executed in 1649. At that point, his eldest son, Charles, Prince of Wales, who was 18, was immediately named as his father's successor in Scotland, thereby becoming King Charles II.
The Scots very pointedly declared the young Charles to be not only king of Scotland, but also king of England and Ireland, and he spent the next 11 years in exile, trying to support royalist attempts to re-establish the monarchy during the very unstable years of first the
