Restoration
After the Restoration on 14 October 1660 Major-General Thomas Harrison was the first person to be found guilty of the regicide of Charles I. He had been the seventeenth of fifty-nine commissioners (judges) to sign the death warrant of the king in 1649. He was the first regicide to be hanged, drawn and quartered because he was considered by the new government to represent a continued real threat to the re-established order. This threat was realised when on 6 January 1661, 50 Fifth Monarchists, headed by a wine-cooper named Thomas Venner, made an effort to attain possession of London in the name of "King Jesus." Most of the fifty were either killed or taken prisoner, and on 19 and 21 January, Venner and ten others were hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason.
The failure of Venner's Rising led to repressive legislation to suppress non-conformist sects. Although some physical events such as the Great Plague of London and the Great Fire of London continued to encourage belief in "the end of the world" ruled by carnal human beings; the doctrine of the sect either died out, or became merged in a milder form of Millenarianism.
Read more about this topic: Fifth Monarchists
Famous quotes containing the word restoration:
“In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despite the fact that the American Revolution was successful—realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime—while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.”
—Irving Kristol (b. 1920)
“I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption. The restoration of the wheel arrests the progress of the fell disease.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)
“Men who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)