1661 and continued till January 1679,
declared the command of the forces inherent in the crown, repudiated the
taking up of arms against the king, and repealed in 1664 the Triennial
Act, adding only a provision that there should not be intermission of
parliaments for more than three years. In Ireland the church was
re-established, and a new settlement of land introduced by the Act of
Settlement 1661 and the Act of Explanation 1665. The island was excluded
from the benefit of the Navigation Laws, and in 1666 the importation of
cattle and horses into England was forbidden. In Scotland episcopacy was
set up, the covenant to which Charles had taken so many solemn oaths
burnt by the common hangman, and Argyll brought to the scaffold, while
the kingdom was given over to the savage and corrupt administration of
Lauderdale. On the 21st of May 1662, in pursuance of the pro-French and
anti-Spanish policy, Charles married Catherine of Braganza, daughter of
John IV. of Portugal, by which alliance England obtained Tangier and
Bombay. She brought him no children, and her attractions for Charles
were inferior to those of his mistress, Lady Castlemaine, whom she was
compelled to receive as a lady of her bedchamber. In February 1665 the
ill-omened war with Holland was declared, during the progress of which
it became apparent how greatly the condition of the national services
and the state of administration had deteriorated since the Commonwealth,
and to what extent England was isolated and abandoned abroad, Michael de
Ruyter, on the 13th of June 1667, carrying out his celebrated attack on
Chatham and burning several warships. The disgrace was unprecedented.
Charles did not show himself and it was reported that he had abdicated,
but to allay the popular panic it was given out "that he was very
cheerful that night at supper with his mistresses." The treaty of Breda
with Holland (21st of July 1667) removed the danger, but not the
ignominy, and Charles showed the real baseness of his character when he
joined in the popular outcry against Clarendon, the upright and devoted
adherent of his father and himself during twenty-five years of
misfortune, and drove him into poverty and exile in his old age,
recalling ominously Charles I.'s betrayal of Strafford.

To Clarendon now succeeded the ministry of Buckingham and Arlington, who
with Lauderdale, Ashley (afterwards Lord Shaftesbury) and Clifford,
constituted the so-called Cabal ministry in 1672.